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Home , Jean Gebser, William Irwin Thompson

ARCHITECTS

of the

Integral World

2015

society 2015 california institute of integral studies

Architects of the Integral World

Forty-Fifth Annual International

Jean Gebser Society Conference

In conjunction with the , & Cosmology Program; Philosophy and Department

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF INTEGRAL STUDIES

16–18 October 2015 SAN FRANCISCO, California

day one friday 16 October

10:00 Arrival and Registration

10.30 Das integrale Bewusstsein— 1969, John Dotson

11:15 The Integral Skeptic: Gebser and , Michael Purdy, PhD

12:00 Lunchbreak (90 minutes)

1:30 Holotropic Breathwork and Jean Gebser’s Analysis of Miracles at Lourdes, Peter Weston, ms

2:15 Can the West be Integralized without Christianity? Daniel Kealey, PhD

3.00 Break (30 mins)

3:30 We are Eternally Chinese: Mythic Identity in Outbound Chinese Exchange Students, S. David Zuckerman, PhD

4.15 The Wisdom of the Whole: Integral Coaching Model, Linda Bark, PhD

5:00 Close.

5 day two saturday 17 October

9:30 Arrival and Registration

10:00 Technosophia: The Emerging Integral-Technological Wisdom Tradition, Theo Badashi

10:45 Ecophilosophy and the Feminine Divine: Creating the Climate for Aperspective Consciousness, Barbara Karlsen, ma

11:30 Meta Matrixes, Planetary Lattices and Integral A-Waring: A Comparative Look at and in Light of Jean Gebser, Jeremy Johnson, MA

12:15 Lunchbreak (1 hour 45 minutes) (Gebser Society Annual Meeting)

2:00 The Interrupted Irruption of : Towards an Integral Cosmology, with Help from Bergson and Whitehead, Matthew David Segall, abd

2:45 Henryk Skolimowski on the Participatory , Leslie , PhD

3:30 Break (30 minutes)

4:00 Towards a of the Aperspectival World, Jeremy Strawn, ma

4:45 Hearing the Metron, Sabrina Dalla Valle, MFA, and corey Grandmaison

5:30 Close.

7:00 Conference Dinner

6 day three sunday 18 October

10:30 Arrival and Registration

11:00 Rilke in and Beyond: Gebser’s Origin, Daniel Joseph Polikoff, PhD

11:45 Rendering Darkness and Light Present: Jean Gebser and the Principle of Diaphany, Aaron Cheak, PhD

12:30 Assaying the World Statement in, as, and through : Revealing the Poetics of Praxis in Gebser’s Eteology, Heather Fester, PhD

1:15 Lunchbreak (one hour 15 minutes)

2:30 Nishida and the Place of Absolute Nothingness, Lisa daus Neville, PhD

3:15 Approaching the Origin: the Diaphonous Body and Classical Chinese Medicine, Brandt Stickley, ma, lac

4:00 Close.

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Conference Information

Location

The forty-fifth International Jean Gebser Society Conference is held over three full days at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Friday 16 October 2015 Saturday 17 October 2015 Sunday 18 October 2015

Room 304 (Third Floor) California Institute of Integral Studies 1453 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94103

The campus is located in theSOMA district of San Francisco, between 10th Street and 11th Street. The closest BART station is a few blocks away at Civic Center. A public parking garage is located across the street at the NEMA building off 11th Street.

Arrival and Registration

Doors will open half an hour before the first lecture each day.

Tickets must be purchased online before the conference commences, or at registration (in which case they must be finalised by Saturday morning at the latest): www.gebser.org/2015-program

Conference pass* (Friday – Sunday) $35.00 Single day pass* $20.00 CIIS Students * Free of charge Conference dinner tba

* Does not include conference dinner

8 Accommodation

While there is no official conference hotel, there are a variety of conve- nient options listen on the CIIS website:

Good Hotel Hotel Tomo Holiday Inn Civic Center Hotel Whitcomb Hotel Nikko Phoenix Hotel Hotel Monaco SF Airport Marriot Waterfront

Conference Dinner

The conference dinner will be held on Saturday evening from 7.00–9.00 p.m. at the Basil Canteen Thai Restaurant. Please note that the dinner is not included in the standard conference fee, and must be paid for separately.

Basil Canteen (Thai Restaurant) 1489 Folsom Street at 11th Street San Francisco

Contact

Please contact the conference convenors if you have any further queries:

Aaron Cheak Jeremy Johnson Society President Society Treasurer, Webmaster Conference convener Conference coordinator [email protected] [email protected]

9

About Jean Gebser

Jean Gebser (1905-1973) was a German poet, , and phenome- nologist of consciousness. He is best known for his magisterial opus, The Ever-Present Origin (Ursprung und Gegenwart, 1949/1953), in which he ar- ticulates the structures and mutations of consciousness underpinning the pivotal shifts in human civilization. Gebser’s key insight was that as con- sciousness mutates toward its innate integrality, it drastically restructures human and with it civilization as a whole. Five hundred years before Christ, the fundamental mode of reali- ty-perception mutated from mythos to logos through the agency of figures such as Socrates, Siddhartha, and Lao Tzu. For Gebser, we are on the cusp of a new mutation, presaged by figures such as , who in Gebser’s view passed through “things” into the integral, transparent lucidity “behind” things, thus breaking through to a new, aperspectival perception of reality. Not only do we stand amidst the final death-throes of the deficient, declining mental-rational ontology, which atomises culture and consciousness day by day, we also stand on the threshold of a new consciousness that is capable of revolutionising the spiritual foundations of human civilization. The task of crystallizing the integral world out of the prevailing cultural dissolution stands before us. Indeed, it is perhaps more pertinent now than it was when Gebser first articulated it.

10

The Gebser Society

Members of the Jean Gebser Society support the preservation and further- ance of the work of Jean Gebser through academic symposia, publications, discussion list, website, social media, and other means. As part of a forthcoming initiative, we are hoping to grant Society members contributor access to the Jean Gebser Society website to increase dialogue, interaction, and creative expression. Among other things, this will enable members to contribute to the Gebser blog in order to generate and sustain a richer and wider Gebserian presence on the internet. Mem- bers are also encouraged to inform the Society of any projects of Gebserian interest—whether academic or artistic—that they are engaged in. We are currently pooling resources among Gebserians in order to showcase exist- ing and upcoming publications, courses, artwork, and other explorations of integral consciousness. These will be available on the Gebser website in due course. If you would like to assist in helping this come into being, please let us know.

Regular membership $35 per annum Student membership $15 per annum Lifetime membership $350

Officers of the Society

Aaron Cheak, PhD President

Sabrina Dalla Valle, MFA Vice President

Jeremy Johnson, MA Webmaster and Treasurer

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Architects of the Integral World

In the winter of 1932, from a grammatical detail in the poet- ry of Rilke, Jean Gebser intuited an entire shift in the structure of western consciousness. Diapha- nous, liberated from time, and free from the constraints of per- spective, Gebser’s integral vision came to him in a “lightning-like flash of inspiration”. As he un- folded this seed, he later remarked that it bore “extensive similar- ities to the world-design of ”, whose work he was originally unaware of. Alongside Gebser and Aurobindo, thinkers such as Pierre Teilhard de Char- din (theology and palaeontolo- gy), (philosophy), and David Bohm (cosmol- ogy) would independently confirm the significance of Gebser’s integral vision. Such instances speak to the relevance of an integral reality beyond mere intellectual theory. Spanning the sciences and , this conference seeks to explore the work of leading and neglected figures in the emergence of integral philosophy, past and present. By charting the “morphic res- onances” that appear to exist among the works of diverse evolutionary and holarchical theorists, we aim to further Gebser’s commitment to a genuinely interdisciplinary methodology, and the rendering transparent of the integral world.

12 Orienting Questions

• How has Gebser’s intimation of an emerging integral structure of consciousness directly influenced or been independently confirmed by the work of congenial thinkers? • How has Gebser’s intimation of an emerging integral structure of consciousness directly influenced or been independently confirmed by the work of congenial thinkers? • In what ways can his account of integral consciousness be further fleshed out by the work of those who follow in his wake? • In what ways does Gebser’s overarching account of the evolu- tion of consciousness illumine and enhance the contributions of these thinkers? • How have Gebser’s ideas been anticipated by currents within eastern and western ? • How do precepts and practices from the world’s esoteric lineages, ancient or modern, contribute to the realisation of integral consciousness? • In what ways might Gebser’s work be legitimately criticised, refined, or revised? • To what extent has Gebser’s work been appropriated or misread, constructively or otherwise, by integral theorists?

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Abstracts& Biographies Technosophia

The Emerging Integral-Technological Wisdom Tradition

Creating an integral orientation towards is one of the most im- portant tasks of our time. It is becoming clear that neither the materialist scientists nor the anti-technology Naturalists are capable of addressing our current and future planetary issues from within their own perspectives. What is needed now is a new holistic technological worldview, one found- ed upon a deep reverence for Nature and Life, and empowered by the innovative creativity of modern science. In this presentation we will explore some of the core propositions and insights of Technosophia, the technological wisdom tradition that is emerging from within integral consciousness. We will discuss how integral culture is participating in bringing forth a new mode of technological be- ing on Earth, and how the ideas of Gebser, Berry, Swimme and others are informing this new techno-cosmological vision. At the heart of our discussion we will explore what a new Techno- sophic orientation can look like as we move into the future, and some of the opportunities we face in bringing forth a new technological culture in harmony with the evolutionary dynamics of the universe.

Theo Badashi is a filmmaker and doctoral student in the Philoso- phy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS, and a student of Brian Swimme and Sean Kelly. His research focuses on developing cosmo-ecological orientations towards technology and the creation of a new technological wisdom culture. He lives in Berkeley.

The Wisdom of the Whole

Integral Coaching Model

If accepted, this presentation will have three components. First, Dr. Bark will briefly present The Wisdom of the Whole® coaching model that she developed, which helps coaches and clients understand, move into, and operate from an integral structure of consciousness based on Jean Gebser’s work as described in his book, The Ever-present Origin. Second, Dr. Bark

16 will share the strategies that she has found, after working with Gebser’s framework for over 15 years, which help people understand and operate from these concepts. She will utilize a PowerPoint presentation which demonstrates the philosophical grounding for the coach training program. Finally, she will lead interactive experiences to demonstrate techniques and teaching methods that draw on different structures of conscious- ness (depending on time allotted), including an integral decision-making process that explores multiple options, a simple but powerful method to build new behavior patterns, a technique to see how story can predict and change outcome (emphasizing the Mythical structure), and/or a dialog method for exploring integral possibilities.

Dr. Linda Bark has used her interest and passion in Gebser’s work to bring his ideas into a practical form by developing coaching tools that have and will help people see, , and function from multiple perspectives. The fact that using her methods is faster, more effective, and more authentic demonstrates the benefits of an integral approach. Coming from a multidimensional framework supports her belief that when we have a world where everyone feels unique and is strongly connected to all parts of themselves, others, and all things and where people operate from this place of wholeness, ultimately a different and better world will be created. www.wisdomofthewhole.com

Rendering Darkness and Light Present:

Gebser, Rilke, and the Principle of Diaphany

The emphasis on diaphany (transparency) arises in Gebser’s work from the perception that the nature of origin (Ursprung) is neither a primor- dial light nor a primordial darkness but a Diaphainon—that which ‘ren- ders darkness as well as brightness transparent or diaphanous’. Where- as phenomenology is the study of pure appearances as they manifest to consciousness, diaphany is concerned with that which appears or shines through phenomena (dia, ‘through’, + phainomai, ‘to appear, shine’). Rather than delineating a ‘world-view’ (Weltanschauung) diaphany is, more specifically, a ‘view through the world’ (Welt-durch-anschauung). According to Paul Klee, ‘Nature is not at the surface but in the depths. Colours are an expression of this depth at the surface. They surge up from

17 the roots of the world’. In a similar vein, this study seeks to explore the idea of diaphany not by examining Gebser’s philosophical articulation of it—its surface—but by looking at the vital experiences that under- pinned it—its depths. Rather than a purely conceptual approach, which risks mere abstraction, I have chosen to explore the principle of diaphany through Gebser’s life experiences, through his poetic perceptions, and in particular, through his relationship to the work of Rainer Maria Rilke. In doing this I seek to illuminate the ‘lightning-like flash of inspiration’ that, according to Gebser himself, seeded his entire life’s work.

Aaron Cheak, PhD, is a scholar of comparative religion, philos- ophy, and esotericism. He is author and editor of Alchemical Tradi- tions: From Antiquity to the Avant-Garde (2013), editor (with Sa- brina Dalla Valle and Jennifer Zahrt) of Diaphany: A Journal and Noctu¬rne (2015), and current president of the International Jean Gebser Society. Broadly speaking, Cheak’s research encompasses east- ern and western philosophy of mind, the and phenomenology of alchemy, and nondualistic modes of reality perception. Dr Cheak is presently trying to break the bad habit of residing in Australia, where he avoids the sun, maintaining his youth on an exclusive diet of red wine, dark chocolate, and aromatic tobacco.

Henryk Skolimowski on the Participatory Mind

Astrophysicist John Archibald Wheeler may have been the first to an- nounce, in the early 1970s, the idea of the Participatory Universe. He ob- served, “The universe does not exist ‘out there’ independent of us. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be hap- pening. We are participators. In some strange sense this is a Participatory Universe.” The notion of an integral cosmos, one in which consciousness is in- fused into the fabric of the cosmos and in which the idea of reality in the absence of consciousness is unthinkable, has continued to grow in both philosophy and science since that time. Contemporary representatives in- clude Robert Lanza’s principle of “biocentrism” and Thomas Nagel’s de- construction of “objective” reality (The View from Nowhere). As far back as the early 1980s, drawing on the insights of Wheeler, and building on the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin (“We are evolution[ary] conscious of itself”),

18 Skolimowski developed a theory of the Participatory Mind. This theory, on the one hand, attempted to vindicate the claims of the new about the participatory nature of the cosmos, and on the other to fill the missing dimension in Teilhard’s opus — which wonderfully describes the unfolding of evolution but misses the essential role of the mind. In line with this, I propose that Skolimowski, like Gebser for whom he had great respect, is also an architect of the emerging integral world, and also like Gebser, has often been overlooked by even the philosophical public. Skolimowski considers himself in line with Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin. In common with these predecessors he shares Gebser’s view that mind and consciousness are far from completed; that the evolutionary journey is ongoing. “What new structures of consciousness or new forms of Mind the future will bring as evolution unfolds, not even God may know at present.”

Allan Combs, PhD, is a consciousness researcher, neuropsycholo- gist, and systems theorist at The California Institute of Integral Stud- ies where he is the Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies. In 2012 he was named the Navin and Pratibha Doshi Professor of Consciousness Studies at CIIS and elected to the Board of Directors of Nalanda International. He also holds appointments at the Saybrook University and is Co-Director of the MA in Consciousness Studies at the Graduate Institute of Connecticut. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. Professor Combs is the author of over 200 articles, chapters, and books on consciousness and the brain, and is the founder and President of the Society for Con- sciousness Studies and co-founder of The Society for in Psychology and the Life Sciences, a member of The General Evo- lution Research Group, the Integral Institute, and the one-hundred member Club of Budapest. He is Executive Editor of CONSCIOUS- NESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century; Co-Editor of the Journal of Conscious Evolution; and serves on a variety of Edi- torial Boards including World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research. For his CV and some of his publications please visit his page at Academia.edu.

19 Hearing the Metron

Hearing the metron is a proposal for a multi-media presentation that tests Jean Gebser’s notion of natural cosmic periodicity as it relates to the mythical structure of consciousness. Accordingly, there exists a pri- mordial temporality, something beyond human, that makes itself known through tempos and rhythms of the imagination, what is embedded in our theta brain-wave state of consciousness. To test this, Gebser states (The Ever-present Origin, p. 173), “We must attempt to render audible certain specific and highly differentiated primordial sounds … How do we find these values?” He suggests we look at the precision of etymology. However, this proposal attempts to show that we can also create inner imaginative simulating the physical movement of the natural world to access these same periodic values. Furthermore, leaning on Goethe’s botanical theories we will explore the possibility that the way we imagine not only echoes the tempos and processes of the universe, and more directly, of our natural world on earth, but that reciprocally, a rhythmic observation of the natural botanical world can act as a catalyst for the imagination to move more dynamically in the purity of universal tempos at large in a way that consciously concretizes time.

This presentation will be created bySabrina Dalla Valle, MFA, experimental writer, and Corey Grandmaison, singer/songwriter/ bass-player for numerous bands including The Blue Notes, The Hot Heads, and Deloris Telescope.

Das Integrale Bewusstsein—Chicago 1969

Forty-five Years After First Reading Gebser

As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, co-majoring in com- munications theory and philosophy, I frequented Great Expectations, the legendary north shore bookstore specializing in philosophy and the hu- manities. There, on a bright spring day, the title of a newly released book, Eastern Wisdom and Western Thought: A Comparative Study in the Modern Philosophy of Religion, by P. J. Saher, caught my eye. Opening it, I saw the name Jean Gebser, author of the foreword, for the first time. I bought the book on sight.

20 In the foreword, Gebser states “Today a new consciousness is rising… in the dawn of which mankind is now living.” Later, in the chapter “The Revitalization of Metaphysical Thought,” Saher writes “Today integrale Bewusstsein (integral consciousness) is the most hotly discussed topic in Continental circles…[and] the grand doyen of the Integral movement is the Swiss poet philosopher Jean Gebser, who is an ardent admirer of Radhakrishnan and Aurobindo.” In following paragraphs, Saher sketches the “different dimensions of consciousness…magical…-derived… [and]… mental.” He adds the terms Bewusstseins-Mutationen, integrale Einsicht, Systase, and Synairese. Then he presents Diaphanierung—“the perception of the presence of anything simultaneously in all its aspects both past and present.” I immediately grokked that these expressions inte- grated my studies of phenomenology and communications with the inten- sities of my psychedelic adventures and the happenings in Chicago, New York, and elsewhere in America and the world. Since that day, Gebser’s thought has been quintessential for me. In the temporics of this presentiation, I will summon some details of my 20th-century experiences in synairesis with the ambiance of the 2015 International Jean Gebser Society Conference, CIIS, San Francisco.

John Dotson: My ancestral roots run very deep in Kingsport, on the Holston River in the Appalachian mountains of east Tennessee, my birthplace. I graduated from Northwestern (communication studies/philosophy). Various involvements in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle have always been important. After living in Iowa and Colorado, some forty years ago, I moved to California. For twenty years, I was a teacher and dean of faculty at Santa Catalina School and also an instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Extension. With journeys to and India and on-going links in Wales, I want to participate as fully as possible in the world in which the lives of my two young grandchildren are unfolding. I am devoted to , playwriting, multi-media and performance art. My forthcoming book is Singing in My Chains: Dylan Thomas at the Birth of an Age. I am a director of the Monterey Friends of C. G. Jung and have been a Gebser Society member since 1999.

21 Assaying the World Statement in, as, and through Language

Revealing the Poetics of Praxis in Gebser’s Eteology

“Every eteologeme is a ‘verition,’ and as such is valid only when it al- lows origin to become transparent in the present. To do this it must be formulated in such a way as to be free of ego, and this means not just free of subject but also free of object; only then does it sustain the verity of the whole. This has nothing to do with representation; only in philo- sophical thought can the world be represented; for the integral percep- tion of truth, the world is pure statement, and thus ‘verition.’” (Gebser, Ever-Present Origin, 309). Can writing be understood as an act of integral eteology, as a pliable tool revealing origin as “transparent in the present” to “sustain the verity of the whole”? This presenter will explore traditions of sacred writing that would say yes. These spiritual, magical, and wisdom writing traditions point to the prophetic levels of poetic texts and the transformative trans- missions the texts give as acts of verition. This may seem strange in a world of that treat language as purely symbolic, and arbitrarily so, but against these conceptual treatments of the written word, various tra- ditions have cultivated states of awareness in which the written symbol is transfigured into a deep feeling-based tuning device for consciousness and transformative process that relies on embodied awareness and working with the felt sense (Gendlin). In the phrasing of axial artist George Quasha, in this way, prophetic or transformative language becomes “axial” and takes on “performative indicative” qualities. This presentation will explore how George Quasha’s “axial poetics” and “preverbs” are two tools that disclose verition intention- ally, revealing the world as “pure statement,” in Gebser’s terms (EPO 309). Beyond Quasha’s methods, a sampling of prophetic and oracular writing forms will be evaluated according to a rubric of poetic praxis. Writing practices will be explored in the traditions of depth psychology, Unique Self prophecy as described in the work of Kabbalistic lineage holder Marc Gafni, and Sufi poetics as explored throughout the work of Henry Corbin.

Heather Fester, PhD, is currently attending Naropa University in Boulder, CO as an MFA Poetics and Creative Writing student and Allen Ginsburg Fellow in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied 22 Poetics. Heather is returning to full-time study after nearly fifteen years of teaching college writing in order to satisfy her long-time quest to find the time to “actually write.” The preparatory steps she’s made for this moment include her recent role as Director of the Center for Writing and Scholarship at the California Institute of Integral Studies and, prior to that, Associate Professor of English at Lincoln Univer- sity of Missouri. She holds an MA and PhD in Rhetoric and Writing from Bowling Green State University. Her work explores interfaces between writing and spirit, including various ways that writing itself can be used as a tool in personal and transpersonal development. Heather is also a certified Unique Self Coach specializing in unique voice, style, and creative process, and she currently serves as an advisory board member of the Center for Integral Wisdom activist think tank, where her current writing projects include co-editing the forthcoming Integral Leadership Review issue on Unique Self in the disciplines and completing a manuscript entitled Enlightenment of Fullness: The Essential Collected Essays of Dr. Marc Gafni.

Meta Matrixes, Planetary Lattices, and Integral A-Waring

A Comparative Look at William Irwin Thompson and Ken Wilber in Light of Jean Gebser

Since the original publication of Ever-Present Origin in 1949/1953, there has been a tremendous and diverse body of work surrounding the no- tion of a “new consciousness”, and the planetization of human cultures. The constellation of these thinkers is too numerous to mention in a brief introduction, but to note a few: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s Inte- gral Yoga at Auroville, Teilhard de Chardin’s planetization of human kind through his evolutionary theology, and William Irwin Thompson’s inten- tional community and fellowship at the are all examples following the shared daemon of planetary culture. Since the late 1970s, inspired in part by Jean Gebser’s structures of consciousness, the Colorado-based philosopher Ken Wilber has popularized the “integral” term in his Integral Theory denote a philosophical movement ingrained with a “meta”—or big picture—theoretical impulse and a developmen- tal and evolutionary worldview. Integral Theory has since inspired a me-

23 ta-theoretical turn starting with the 2013 Integral Theory Conference’s “Kosmopolitan” theme. In the spirit of collaboration, Wilber’s Integral Theoretical praxis was introduced to Edgar Morin’s complexity studies and Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism. It is the intention of this essay to elucidate, in a comparative light, both the works of Jean Gebser and William Irwin Thompson as critically illuminative in their own light – not merely to be subsumed into a larger theoretical body. On the contrary, it is Gebser’s unique insights on time, the non-linearity of emergence in the evolution of consciousness, and Thompson’s insights on notion of planetary culture that provide unique and arguably missing insights to the emergent land- scape of contemporary integral thought.

Jeremy D. Johnson, MA, is an editor for Reality Sandwich mag- azine. He also serves as Community Manager and IT specialist for Evolver’s online webinar series, the Learning Lab. Jeremy received his MA in Consciousness Studies from Goddard College, concentrating in transpersonal psychology, new media and cultural studies. He cur- rently serves as treasurer and webmaster for the International Jean Gebser Society.

Ecophilosophy and the Feminine Divine

Creating the Climate for the Next Human Evolution

As humans we have altered the Air, the Earth, and the Ocean. A rapid- ly changing world is demanding that we adapt in order to survive as a species, much less flourish. It is precisely these changing conditions that have signaled the next phase of our human evolution. A phase that that is forcing us to wake up and participate consciously in our own evolution in order to meet the challenges ahead. We now know it is not enough to just be aware of the changes that are occurring on our planet, we must participate with our biology in order to receive the transmutation of a rapidly changing biosphere. Perhaps the greatest resource we have is our own human Origins. An embodied evolutionary history of anatomic cel- lular transmutation that stretches back billions of years. A sophisticated resource of bio-cosmic technology that makes cells from long chain amino acids, organelles from bacteria, and brains from sensory neurons. A pro-

24 cess echoing the immensity of what it means to be human. The nature of evolutionary consciousness that is urgently pressing to- ward us cannot be expressed in rational or categorical systems. And so long as it remains inexpressible, it cannot effectively enter into our awareness. We are compelled, therefore, to find a “new form of statement”(Gebser, 306). What is necessary to turn the tide of our situation are “eteologemes.” Eteology must replace philosophy just as philosophy once replaced the . Every eteologeme is a “verition” and as such, is valid only when it allows origin to become transparent in the present (Gebser, 307–309.) The human body with its primordial endowment and symbolic consciousness is one such verition- an embedded and embodied context for integral be- ing and becoming.

Barbara Karlsen, MA is a transformational movement teacher. She holds a Master’s degree in Somatic Counseling Psychology from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado and a Bachelor of Nursing degree from Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada. She has been teaching movement-based work for the past 20 years, and is an authorized Continuum movement teacher. Barbara has been explor- ing the formative dynamics of somatic organization alongside studies in Pre and Perinatal Psychology. Integrating these with her life long passion for deep ecology, she has developed an eco-somatic based practice for birthing the new human. She is currently a PhD candi- date in the Transformative Studies Program at California Institute of Integral Studies where her area of research is Eco philosophy and the Feminine Divine: Towards an Integral Futurology.

Can the West be Integralized without Christianity?

The short answer is that with or without Christianity, Gebser found the initial blossoming of the integral happening in various Western cultural domains. Just as one can ask whether Christianity will nurture or resist integralization, so we must ask whether increasing secularization will help or retard it. There are good reasons to suspect secularization as a nota- ble obstacle to the spread of the integral in many ways. If so, it would seem that Christianity has a role to play in dealing with secularism, a role that would complement other forces of integralism and may arguably be

25 necessary for integralism to take hold in the West. However influential the present sweep of secularism, the fact remains that Europe has been deeply structured by Christianity and this past is not so easily forgotten or dismissed. Moreover, integralists wouldn’t want to excise the Christian past but to integrate it. It makes sense that many Christians would also be keen to see that an integral Europe and America be Christian, as much as possible. The most widely promoted Christian contribution to integralism is the evolutionary theology of Teilhard de Chardin, until recently a seed sown on infertile church land, but receiving a great upgrade with Pope Francis’s encyclical on environment, Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Com- mon Home. This proclamation needs to be analyzed for implications for integralism. It is to be noted that chapter four of the encyclical is titled Integral Ecology. As a pioneer in publishing a proposal for an integral environmental ethic, I am delighted to see the ripening of this seed at the highest level of the Church. There are bridges being built here between Catholicism and the integral community, an invitation for crossings over. I propose to analyze the encyclical for its relevance to Integral theory.

Daniel Kealey, PhD, had his worldview formed during the six years he spent studying at the California Institute of Asian Studies, since renamed as CIIS. He earned his doctorate in philosophy at SUNY-Stony Brook and is professor emeritus from Towson Univer- sity, MD. He wrote what may have been the first book on an integral approach to environmental . He resides at his homestead in Mt. Shasta, CA, where he also teaches at the College of the Siskiyous.

Integrality and the Place of Absolute Nothingness

Nishida Kitaro (1870-1954) is a primary figure in the development of what is now known as the Kyoto school of Philosophy. Born at the onset of the Meiji period, when Japan opened itself to Western trade and experienced an influx of , Nishida immersed himself deeply in the for- mal structures of Western philosophy. At the same time, he demonstrates a rigorously creative engagement with and deep-rooted experiential un- derstanding of Eastern and Zen Buddhist thought. As a result, he has been called a philosopher “of world status.” Yet his integration of East and West is no mere synthesis. Nishida determined himself to work out, as a

26 philosopher, fundamental problems of human being, consciousness, mor- al action and knowing. Engagement with these philosophical problems led him to formulate a non-dual standpoint, a “world of contradictory self-identity” that demands its own, paradoxical, logic. Gebser uses the term “paradoxical thinking” as a hinge. He locates it first within the efficient rational, where it operates as a unifying function of mutually opposing concepts, and rather grudgingly he admits paradox as artistic expression that partially transcends conceptualization and invites a-waring. While Gebser considers paradoxical logic to operate within a rel- ative framework, and thus to be primarily synthetic, Nishida’s formulation of paradoxical logic is entirely non-relative, informed by assertions of total interpenetration and interdependence of individuals found in Mahayana Buddhism. Ultimately, however, I believe we can understand the function of Nishida’s philosophy as providing a formal structure in which thinkers can take up the standpoint of integrality and the concretion of the spiritu- al as Gebser presents them. Nishida, in a letter to his friend D.T. Suzuki, clarifies his aim to advance a new foundation for philosophizing that both expresses and produces the process of concretion or lived spiritual reality. “I want to make clear that religious reality cannot be grasped by conven- tional objective logic, but it reveals itself to the “logic of contradictory identity…From the standpoint of prajna, I want to discuss what a ‘person’ is and want to connect that ‘person’ to the actual historical world.”

Lisa Daus Neville, PhD, is a writer of scholarly criticism, exper- imental fiction and poetry. Her work explores Buddhist theory and practice, philosophy of language, contemporary poetics and literary praxis and consciousness studies. She received her MFA in Fiction, and MA in American from . She is a Senior Lecturer at State University of New York at Cortland where she teaches writing, literature, theory and film.

Rilke in Spain and Beyond

Gebser’s Origin

Rilke counts as a point of departure—even origin—for Gebser himself. Gebser first articulates the kernel of his integral vision in Rilke in Spain. In that book, Gebser suggests that Rilke’s linked experiences of the Spanish

27 landscape and El Greco’s paintings proved vital to his eventual completion of the Duino Elegies, and thus constituted a crucial turning point in the poet’s life-work. Rilke in Spain offers Gebser’s interpretation of the gist of that breakthrough, adumbrating Gebser’s own vision of an aperspectival consciousness. In this presentation, I aim both to rehearse the of Gebser’s insightful reading of Rilke, and to amplify it by way of relevant commen- tary on the Duino Elegies and their companion work, Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. I endeavor to do so by employing Gebser’s mature formula- tions of the structures of consciousness to illuminate defining aspects of Rilke’s late poetic masterpieces, and vice versa—for Rilke’s late poetry is not only a springboard for Gebser’s vision of aperspectival consciousness, but a powerful exemplification of it. More specifically, I suggest that Ril- ke’s Duino Elegies can be understood as a work one dimension of which self-consciously represents the apogee of the deficient mode of Gebser’s mental consciousness-structure, dramatically enacting its negative conse- quences with such intensity of force and insight that the poem simultane- ously prepares (and to some degree performs) a leap to a whole different mode of consciousness. Consequently, Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus—the poet’s last great masterpiece—may be understood to flow from and fully embody a new more integral mode of consciousness. I will draw upon my own recently published translation of the Sonnets to aid the interpretive enterprise, which will engage, too, the topic of the formative role of the language of poetry in the emergence and cultivation of integral vision.

Daniel Joseph Polikoff, PhD: I am a poet, scholar, translator and teacher whose scholarly work has revolved largely around Rilke and the interpretation of this poet’s work in the light of depth-psy- chological and esoteric tradition. I received my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University and my Diploma in Waldorf Ed- ucation from College. I have taught literature in three Waldorf High Schools, and (more recently) courses in Rilke, alchemy and depth psychology at Sonoma State University and CIIS. I have lectured on Rilke scores of over the last twenty-some-odd years at venues such as the San Francisco Jung Institute, CIIS, the Napa Valley Writer’s Conference, and (in German) sessions of the Interna- tional Rilke Society in Europe and the United States. In addition to two full-length collections of poetry and many poems published in literary journals, I have published two book-length translations in- 28 cluding my just published translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, as well as (in 2011) a seven-hundred page book on Rilke titled In the Image of Orpheus: Rilke—A Soul History, which includes an entire chapter on Rilke’s Spanish/El Greco experience. I have only recent- ly “discovered” Gebser and have been deeply moved to find such a profound and comprehensive thinker whose vision originates in the poetic ground of being, and whose understanding of Rilke resonates with my own.

The Integral Skeptic

Gebser and Metaphysics

‘For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them’.—Thich Nhat Hanh

Orienting question: In what ways might Gebser’s work be legitimately criticized? I am challenging a metaphysical interpretation, or reading of Gebser, and I think there is some peripheral, at least, metaphysics in The Ever-present Origin (EPO). Did Gebser intentionally add or reinforce/re- new metaphysics? (The only reference to metaphysics inEPO is to meta- physical literature.) What he does focus on is idealism (and its contrasting duality, ). Idealism is the Platonic sense that there is some pure form (primal image). Gebser says both idealism and materialism miss the “sense” of mythic soul through its symbolization in which both aspects of the polarity must be appreciated, EPO, 212). Idealists and materialists (or today “meaning in people” or “meaning in the world”) take turns being on top, but miss the fulcrum on which they teeter (EPO, 213). “…the primal image and its likeness are no longer a polarity, but a duality ‘united’ in the idea, the third component, the synthesis above both” (EPO 257). Perhaps it is this ideal third component that is above, rather than concrete and grounded, as in integral. This is also the language of phenomenological such Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. There is certainly a German sense of order in Gebser’s major work, of ordering the chaos of the cosmos, giving a nice chart of descriptors. Phenomenologically he is describing the invariants as he and others have known them, he is exploring the field of civilizational categories of ex- perience, civilizational-universal phenomena. But his attempt to order

29 and provide invariants gives an opening for linear chartist/with elaborate graphs of re-presented and idealized experience (Wilber). The paper will sketch out briefly what metaphysics meant for the ancients, for the heyday of philosophy, and for moderns beginning with Nietzsche—though Nietzsche carefully lays the ground for an integral awareness that is multi-performative, an field that integrates the multiple perspectives that he observes in the modern world. I will deal briefly with terms related to metaphysics, such as ideolo- gy—where it begins and its relation to metaphysics. This will be, for the most part, a phenomenological sense of metaphysics, how it might be grounded, or not, in lived experience and the lived world—the mental -rational (perhaps the efficient mental) and cosmic integral. But I also want to contrast the rational-mental with recent research into the mythic. The Singer of Tales (Alfred B. Lord), would suggest that the of mythic awareness—not to nail this down as some-thing, a conscious- ness—was an excellent foil for understanding the metaphysical as a devel- opment of rational awareness. I have found The Singer of Tales profound in its comparative distinctions between the mythic oral mode and the ra- tional literate. Lord presents evidence for what he calls the “oral poet”, a phenomenal description of the everpresent creative per-(multi) formance of the narrative poet. Then he applies it to to show that his was not a literate work but a truly oral, creative storytelling. Metaphysics was then, for Gebser, the ideal bridge for the duality of the mental, and particularly the deficient rational. I think his intent was to surpass the ideal of metaphysics, but maybe not—this is the challenge for an integral skeptic.

Michael W. Purdy, PhD (Ohio University; MA Kansas State; BS SUNY) is Emeritus Professor, College of Arts and Sciences, Governors State University (il). He is co–editor with Deborah Borisoff (NYU) of Listening in Everyday Life: A Personal and Professional Approach (2nd ed.), University Press. He has authored articles for the International Journal of Listening, and Integrative Explorations Journal (and was ed- itor), among others. His publications include: ‘Listening and Qual- itative Research’, in Listening and Human Communication in the 21st Century (Blackwell, 2009); ‘Listening and the Non–Technologized Self’ in Cultura De Guatemala (U. Landivar, Guatemala City) and ‘Transparency and communication: Dialogue in financial reporting and media communication’ in Communication, Comparative Cultures 30 and Civilizations (Hampton, 2008). He has two articles appearing in The International Journal of Listening in 2015. His interest in listening and dialogical communication has integrated his writing across var- ious areas from listening and media to intercultural communication and philosophy.

The Interrupted Irruption of Time

Towards an Integral Cosmology, with Help From Bergson and Whitehead

Gebser suggests that the world-constituting reality of time first irrupt- ed into Western consciousness with the publication in 1905 of Einstein’s special theory of relativity. This was the first indication of an emerging mutation from the three-dimensional, Copernican world of the mental structure into the four-dimensional world of the integral structure. My presentation will critically examine Einstein’s role in this evolutionary ini- tiation by situating his concept of a -time continuum within its early 20th century context. While Einstein’s relativity theory played a central role in the 20th century revolution in physics, revisiting the debates he was engaged in with thinkers like and Alfred North White- head reveal that his perception of time was still obscured by the residue of the mental structure’s spatializing tendency. As Gebser remarked, we are “compelled to become fully conscious of time—the new component—not just as a physical-geometric fourth dimension but in its full complexity” (EPO, 288, 352). During his controversial debate with Bergson in in 1922, Einstein argued that the former’s understanding of time as “creative evolution” was merely the subjective fantasy of an artist, and that, as a hard-nosed scientist, he was concerned only with the real, objective time made manifest by the geometrical reasoning of relativity theory. Bergson, for his part, argued that Einstein had mistaken a particular way of mea- suring time (i.e., clock-time) for time itself. Whitehead’s meeting with Einstein shortly after this debate with Bergson, though not as public, was no less significant. Whitehead similarly argued that the philosophical im- plications of Einstein’s brilliant scientific theory must be saved from Ein- stein’s faulty interpretation. My presentation will review these early 20th century debates about the nature of time in light of Gebser’s prophetic announcement of the birth of a new structure of consciousness. More

31 than a century after Einstein’s theory was published, mainstream scientific cosmology still has not fully integrated the immeasurably creative charac- ter of qualitative time. I will argue that Bergson and Whitehead’s largely neglected critiques and reconstructions of relativity theory help show the way towards the concrete realization of Gebser’s integral structure.

Matthew David Segall, ABD, is a doctoral candidate in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS. His dis- sertation focuses on the role of imagination in the philosophy of na- ture, especially as exemplified in the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Friedrich Schelling. He has published journal articles and books on a wide range of topics including ecology, economics, the interplay of science and myth, and the significance of psychedelics for partici- patory theory. He blogs regularly about these and other cosmic topics at footnotes2plato.com.

Approaching the Origin

The Diaphonous Body and Classical Chinese Medicine

The Classical texts of Chinese Medicine, especially the Su Wen, Ling shu and the Warring States period Shang Han Lun, describe the highest as- piration of the physician as perceiving the manifestation of phenomena from incipient or unseen states taking form in the world and the body. Traditionally Yin and Yang, the dark and light, were the principal means for the perception of this unfolding. Underlying the application of these concepts to medicine is the Han and pre-Han corpus of proto-Daoist phi- losophy, as articulated in the Yi Jing, Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi. Applying Gebser’s concept of Diaphany as that which “renders Yin as well as Yang transparent or diaphanous” creates a means not for seeing Yin/Yang in the world, but rather viewing the world through Yin/Yang. Indeed, even this view can be transcended when directly perceiving Yin/Yang as the very breathing of the cosmos, dissolving dualities into the constant ebb and flow of the continuum that invites one into the springing forth of the origin in our embedded consciousness. This is the leap that both returns one to the origins of Chinese medicine, and orients one to the immediate, ever-present emerging origin itself.

32 Following close examination of the principles underlying Classical Chinese medicine, especially through the dynamic between three Yin and three Yang (pivoting, opening, and closing through bian and hua) this presentation will explore correlations between the organizing principles of Chinese applied philosophy (medicine), and Gebser’s philosophy of the origin. I will demonstrate how conceptions of the body in Chinese medi- cine, with its view of myriad pathways of animation, illustrate the relation- al, rhizomic unfolding of physiology and consciousness alike. In so doing, I will be making a case for Chinese medicine as a vehicle for embodying the emergence of an integral aperspectival consciousness.

Brandt Stickley, MS, LAc is an Assistant Professor in the School of Classical Chinese Medicine at the National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) in Portland, Oregon and Visiting Faculty at Pa- cific Rim College and Dragon Rises College of Oriental Medicine. He received his BA from Cornell University, and MS from the Amer- ican College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He teaches a series of courses in Classical Chinese Medical Psychology, Pathology, and tra- ditional mentorship, and is active in the formation of the Integrative Mental Health program at NCNM. He is Director of Acupuncture at Outside In (Portland), as well as maintaining a private practice, writ- ing, and travelling to teach Shen-Hammer Pulse Diagnosis.

Towards a Geometry of the Aperspectival World

Throughout The Ever-Present Origin, Jean Gebser refers to projective, non-Euclidean geometry as a manifestation of an emerging, integral consciousness. A significant development in the history of mathematical thought, projective geometry has remained largely a field explored only by trained mathematicians, and has yet to find its way into wider spheres of culture. Since geometric conceptions are fundamental to our current un- derstanding of space, time, and the forces that work within them, if we are to free ourselves from a perspectival, rational structure, we must reconsider the geometric premises such a structure is built upon. Projective geometry gives us that possibility. In general, it can be seen, not as a study of forms and their properties, but of the processes and law- ful relationships out of which all forms emerge. These processes necessitate that we participate, with our thinking, in order to grasp them. To study,

33 or rather, do projective geometry is to recreate these lawful relationships in our imagination. As we do this, we can become aware of how our Euclid- ean/Cartesian conception of space arises out of our projection of a fixed perspective, a perspective which assumes a framework by which measur- ability is possible. In so doing, we free ourselves from this perspective, and instead attend to that which is true (invariant) regardless of perspective. In a geometric sense, the threshold of the rational, measurable world is infinity. We have mostly been taught to think there is nothing there (parallel lines shall never intersect, so sayeth the commandment), nor any- thing beyond. Projective geometry, having well established the veracity of infinite elements (point, line, and plane), is thus a pathway by which we can supersede the rational boundaries, while still preserving the quality of mathematical clarity, that crowning achievement of the mental structure of consciousness. By taking the audience on a participatory journey into the archetypal processes of geometry, this presentation will demonstrate how the practice of geometry can be a potent means of becoming aware, and integrating the mental structure.

Jeremy Strawn just earned an MA in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at CIIS, his research being the intersection of projective geometry and the evolution of consciousness. He has spent the great- er part of his working life either teaching, mostly high school science and math, or farming. He also earned a BS in Biology from Hum- boldt State University, becoming familiar with the modern scientific paradigm so as to better effect its usurpation. His working hypothesis is that a revolution in our geometric imagination is indispensable to achieving integrality, and is currently writing an experiential guide with that purpose in mind. He resides in rural Sonoma County, Cal- ifornia, and is currently enthralled with the Inklings.

Holotropic Breathwork and Jean Gebser’s Analysis of Miracles at Lourdes

This paper intends to explore the similarities and differences between -Ho lotropic Breathwork and Jean Gebser’s description and analysis of miracles at Lourdes (EPO, pp. 162-165). “The power which was individually lacking in the afflicted hands flows from the healthy hands with which they are

34 united.” “When the suppliant reemerges from the depths of meditation and returns to his rational wakeful consciousness, he brings along from the magic depths his recovery and health.” Is there a non-material medi- um through which this transfer happens? Some candidates might be the Tibetan Bardo, the Catholic Purgatory, Robert Monroe’s Locale II, Jung’s Collective Unconscious, and Teilhard de Chardin’s Noosphere. Assuming that such a medium is an envelope of the Earth and came into existence during the evolution of the planet, I will contextualize Gebser’s mutations of consciousness in Teilhard’s evolution of consciousness throughout geo- logic time and speculate when the medium began. With this “big picture” view in mind, I would like to ask why healing is necessary in the first place. A new born baby is the image of pure inno- cence. When does this new child need healing? A physically defective hand needs physical healing, but that kind of healing doesn’t seem to be what Stanislav Grof had in mind when coined the neologism ‘holotropic’, that is, tending towards wholeness. And, finally, is healing an individual issue or is it a collective phenomenon? Using Teilhard’s word, does the noo- sphere need healing? To help answer that question I will discuss Teilhard’s view that energy has tangential and radial components and that an Omega point is drawing the noosphere to convergence.

Peter Weston, MS, is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Math- ematics Department at UMass Lowell, teaching primarily Calculus II and III. He began his career in education teaching mathematics and coaching basketball for twelve years at the high school level. Af- ter earning a Master’s degree he taught Computer Science for twen- ty-five years at the college level. At the age of eighteen he entered the Xaverian Brothers, a lay Catholic teaching congregation, where for twelve years he pursued his interest in spirituality. His favorite author is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, who transformed Christianity for him. He began a PhD program at Saybrook University in 2005 where he encountered Jean Gebser and The Ever-Present Originin a Nature of Consciousness course. He has participated in over fifty Holotropic Breathwork sessions over the past nine years. He recently founded The NouSchool, a non-profit seeking to support self knowledge and creativity in young adults.

35 We are Eternally Chinese

Mythic Identity in Outbound Chinese Exchange Students

This paper applies ethnographic methods to student writings in university classes taught in the People’s Republic of China in 2014 to understand the construction and performance of personal and national identity. The study applies Gebser’s Consciousness Structures to an analysis of 90 stu- dent papers to understand how the Chinese students’ expressed personal and national identity dwells largely in the magical and mythical realms.

S. Dave Zuckerman, PhD (University of Oklahoma, 2003) is Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Sacramento, and a past-President of the International Jean Gebser Society. Dave has taught in the US, Canada, Germany, Belgium, China, and, as a Fulbright Scholar, in Finland in 2013. Dave Zucker- man teaches in the areas of terrorism, international communication, and intercultural communication, and is co-author, along with Eric Kramer and Clark Callahan, of a Gebser-based textbook in intercul- tural communication. Dave has a healthy consulting practice, deal- ing with business and government clients around the world, and has presented more than sixty papers and presentations around the globe over the past fifteen years.

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