JOURNEY THROUGH THE STRUCTURES OF CONSCIOUSNESS... REALIZE THE INTEGRAL WORLD
Jean Gebser (1905-1973) was a philosopher, poet, and phenomenologist of consciousness who is best known for The Ever-Present Origin (Ursprung und Gegenwart, 1949). 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. As William Irwin Thompson writes, “Gebser was a brilliantly intuitive mystic with a profound understanding of poetry and art,” and that The Ever-Present Origin is, “the kind of book that changed one’s life.”
Georg Feuerstein, Gebser's colleague and friend, wrote that, “Socratic spirits like Gebser typically live before their time… perhaps the present climate is more receptive to Gebser’s arguments.” This course provides a guide not only to Gebser’s magnum opus but its relevance for our time, offered by a scholar who has spent the last decade working with The Ever-Present Origin and an integral aperspectival approach to thinking about cultural evolution.
Knowing that this book is what Jeremy calls a “catalytic reading,” this course has been designed to be a rich, multimedia learning environment emphasizing a phenomenological encounter with the structures of consciousness. We will host nine live Q&A calls (bi-weekly), eight pre-recorded lectures (audio and video), and suggested experiential and contemplative practices. Live discussions will emphasize student integration—application—of the concepts that Gebser is putting forth in the book to their own experiences of time and space and perceptions of art and culture.
The aim of this course is to introduce Jean Gebser’s primary text, Ever-Present Origin (Ursprung und Gegenwart) to scholars, artists, and integral practitioners. The class will consist of twelve weeks reading through the text (Part One, Foundations, and Two, Manifestations), drawing from the aid of secondary sources, recommended readings, additional translations, and multimedia lectures provided by your instructor. Bi-weekly discussion group sessions are hosted live on Zoom Meetings every other Saturday until the completion of the course. A Class Portal, which houses all course materials, and a Class Forum, where students can engage between the sessions, will also be made available.
Georg Feuerstein, Gebser's colleague and friend, wrote that, “Socratic spirits like Gebser typically live before their time… perhaps the present climate is more receptive to Gebser’s arguments.” This course provides a guide not only to Gebser’s magnum opus but its relevance for our time, offered by a scholar who has spent the last decade working with The Ever-Present Origin and an integral aperspectival approach to thinking about cultural evolution.
Knowing that this book is what Jeremy calls a “catalytic reading,” this course has been designed to be a rich, multimedia learning environment emphasizing a phenomenological encounter with the structures of consciousness. We will host nine live Q&A calls (bi-weekly), eight pre-recorded lectures (audio and video), and suggested experiential and contemplative practices. Live discussions will emphasize student integration—application—of the concepts that Gebser is putting forth in the book to their own experiences of time and space and perceptions of art and culture.
The aim of this course is to introduce Jean Gebser’s primary text, Ever-Present Origin (Ursprung und Gegenwart) to scholars, artists, and integral practitioners. The class will consist of twelve weeks reading through the text (Part One, Foundations, and Two, Manifestations), drawing from the aid of secondary sources, recommended readings, additional translations, and multimedia lectures provided by your instructor. Bi-weekly discussion group sessions are hosted live on Zoom Meetings every other Saturday until the completion of the course. A Class Portal, which houses all course materials, and a Class Forum, where students can engage between the sessions, will also be made available.
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"This book has been written in such a way to require a certain participation in the reader. Anyone who takes to heart the solution to our problems, and who has not forgotten that we partake every moment of our lives in the originary powers of an ultimately spiritual nature, will be willing to participate in this task."
- Jean Gebser
CLASS OUTLINE
Nine pre-recorded lectures and nine live, interactive Q&A calls
(Q&A sessions begin promptly at 11 a.m. PST / 2 p.m. EST on Zoom. Ongoing Q&A available for students registering after posted dates.)
(Q&A sessions begin promptly at 11 a.m. PST / 2 p.m. EST on Zoom. Ongoing Q&A available for students registering after posted dates.)
February 2 • Introduction to a Catalytic Reading
February 16 • Foundations, Part One - From the Archaic to the Integral Structures
March 2 • Foundations, Part One - Mutations and Space-Time Considerations
March 16 • Foundations, Part One - Time, Presence and the Integral Mutation
March 30 • Manifestations, Part Two - Time Interruption in the Janus-Faced World
April 13 • Manifestations, Part Two - The Nature of Creativity and the New Concepts
April 27 • Manifestations, Part Two - Manifestations in the Arts and Sciences, A Summary
May 11 • Manifestations, Part Two - The Integral Two-Fold Task, Praeligio, and the Concretion of the Spiritual
May 25 • Concluding Remarks, The Diaphanous Present: Towards an Integral World
February 16 • Foundations, Part One - From the Archaic to the Integral Structures
March 2 • Foundations, Part One - Mutations and Space-Time Considerations
March 16 • Foundations, Part One - Time, Presence and the Integral Mutation
March 30 • Manifestations, Part Two - Time Interruption in the Janus-Faced World
April 13 • Manifestations, Part Two - The Nature of Creativity and the New Concepts
April 27 • Manifestations, Part Two - Manifestations in the Arts and Sciences, A Summary
May 11 • Manifestations, Part Two - The Integral Two-Fold Task, Praeligio, and the Concretion of the Spiritual
May 25 • Concluding Remarks, The Diaphanous Present: Towards an Integral World
STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES
- Students will cultivate insight into Gebser's unique, time-oriented transmission of integral consciousness; they will gain both theoretical and experiential knowledge into difficult concepts such as "verition," "systasis," "synairesis," and the “achronon,” or "time-freedom."
- Students will acquire a concrete, experiential sense of the archaic, magic, mythic, mental and integral structures of consciousness and explore how each of these structures constitute the student’s own being.
- Students will be able to free themselves—or appreciate the growing capacity to do so—from fixation in the mental structure, or spatial, perspectival consciousness.
- Students will develop profound insight into the “story” of consciousness unfoldment and mutation at key transformational moments interspersed through history. They will also gain insight into how the structures are at play in the technological, climatological and spiritual conditions of the contemporary world, i.e. the Anthropocene, what Thomas Berry called the “Ecozoic” and what Sean Kelly describes as the “planetary era.”
- Students will begin to appreciate and apply their exciting insights on the aperspectival world to their own fields of engagement in creative work, academics, therapeutic settings, spiritual praxis, social, political and ecological activism and the larger task of cultural renewal.
ASSIGNED READING
The Ever-Present Origin, Jean Gebser, 1985 translation
RECOMMENDED READING
Seeing Through The World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness, Jeremy Johnson
A Nuralogical book in collaboration with Revelore Press
A Nuralogical book in collaboration with Revelore Press
ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR
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 psychology. 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.
See Jeremy's interview with Jeff Salzman on The Daily Evolver about Jean Gebser and the structures of consciousness
WHAT STUDENTS RECEIVE
- Nine pre-recorded lectures by your instructor, Jeremy Johnson
- Nine live, interactive video discussion sessions (scheduled posted above) hosted on Zoom Meetings and facilitated by your instructor. Future Zoom calls available for individuals who register after the scheduled Q&A.
- Audio and video recordings of each live session for easy listening. Yours to keep.
- A detailed Class Syllabus, with a weekly reading schedule, secondary sources, and reading recommendations
- Access to a Class Portal, where recordings and course materials are hosted
- A dedicated Class Forum where the class will host engaged discussions and the instructor can answer questions
- Connection with a vibrant community of integral artists, scholar-practitioners, and consciousness explorers! Explore the nature of consciousness and culture together
Class Registration: $150
“Our concern is with a new reality—a reality functioning and effectual integrally, in which intensity and action, the effective and the effect co-exist; one where origin, by virtue of “presentiation,” blossoms forth anew; and one in which the present is all-encompassing and entire. Integral reality is the world’s transparency, a perceiving of the world as truth: a mutual perceiving and imparting of truth of the world and of the human and of all that transluces both.”
— Jean Gebser
Featured artwork: Design by Jenn Zahrt, original Gebser portrait by Nina Bunjavec
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