Deep Dive into the Unknown

You don't need to read this to get the benefit of this program, but if you would like to understand how our culture may change into a deeper consciousness, then have a go!

In the winter of 1932-33 Jean Gebser had a profound mystical experience in Spain that led to his 1949 book The Ever-present Origin. The mystic and wisdom teacher Cynthia Bourgeault wrote that the book is "...the most dense and intellectually challenging prose ever written on this planet." She is probably right, but Gebser developed a concept of an Integral consciousness structure that helps us understand our present deteriorating condition and what can come next. Ken Wilber based his life work on Gebser's book, but Wilber took it more toward the individual than toward the culture as Gebser did.

Gebser described four structures of consciousness that we live in: Archaic, Magical, Mythic, and Mental. The Mental has been dominant for about 2,500 years, but the other three are still within us. He proposed that since the Renaissance we are in the decline of the Mental structure, called the Mental-Rational. We are struggling to mutate to the Integral, in which all of the consciousness structures will play synergistic roles. 

Gebser's Structures of Consciousness

The Archaic (1), Magical (2), Mythic (3), and Mental (4) are all part of Integral Conscousness (5).

In Gebser's model, wisdom, wholeness, and integral consciousness are inseparable and draw on all of the intelligences. We cannot have one without the others. Integral consciousness is the "hardware" or the state of being. Wholeness is the "content" or the realization that nothing is separate. Wisdom is the "application"—the lived ability to navigate the world to serve the Greater Good.

From his analysis of mutations from previous consciousness structures, Gebser recognized the impossibility of imagining the next structure. In The Ever-present Origin he wrote:

 ...the integral structure will not be conceivable; nevertheless we are already in the inception of this integral structure—a circumstance that provides support for events which still seem unrealizable.

He did predict that the spiritual would become actually present and perceivable -- seen as the inner radiance of all existence. 

Cynthia Bourgeault described our work very clearly to facilitate the mutation:

I believe that the cultural work we must undertake together is to help REPAIR and HEAL the traditional structures we’ve inhabited so that they can become healthy vessels of the repressed mythical and magical (and for that matter, mental!) structures. My wager is that when this imbalance is corrected, the full emergence of the Integral (so clearly already waiting in the wings) will be its own unstoppable force.  Exploring Jean Gebser