GENIUS for all

 

Retired Prof. Dr. Walther Dreher

University of Cologne

Germany

Florilegium

  GENIUS for all - Walther Dreher
Prof. Dr. Walther Dreher
Walther Dreher

Florilegium

 

 

Gathering of Thoughts-Flowers and Experience-Blossoms – metaphor for an „expression of an aperspectival epistemology“

 
(Johnson, STTW, 178)

 

„What I’m going to talk about through these Websites is on the one side closely bound to my own biography. But beyond I understand it as a ‘response’ of something superseding our mental fixations and their deficient view of the world.

 

The following text aims to combine especially Paths which I discovered when meeting Jean Gebser in the 1970ies and later Otto Scharmer, starting around 2000. I recognize that the people all over the Globe being engaged in Theory U and the PI-Community – being guided through the ‘Eye of the Needle’ and being confronted with Martin Bubers ‘Grand will’ – should be encouraged to express in which ‘analogue language’ they might talk about ‘Presencing’ and or ‘The Ever-Present Origin’.

This is the reason I add remarks about ‘Zen’, Anthroposophy from the view of Bernard Lievegoed and the secular approach of the ‘Great Rethink’ of Collin Tudge. The Metamorphosis of our attitudes might be connected with education, or arts, or…

 

To allow myself to open to such different aspects is liberating and opening a Portal to what Gebser calls ‘Praeligio’: A tie which ‘excludes all delusions and prepossessions; it is without expectation, without hope of something, since everything to be hoped for is latent in us and is realized through praeligio’ (Gebser, EPO, 271).

All these are trials for a ‘Leap of thinking style from pyramidic linearity to spherical systasis. Having a placeholder left for us in this challenge of systasis, we cannot simply fall back in earlier styles of thinking; a leap from the mental into the integral will truly be a leap out of familiar world. In the dissolution of the deficient mental structure and the solution of the efficient integral, the new mutation is often a complete departure; another plateau.’ (Johnson, STW, 72).

 

Everybody reading this is invited to add his or her own view and how we may find together to a new ‘departure’ and another ‘plateau’.

 

Currently gathered...

 

The Spiritual – das Geistige

 

The Spiritual – das Geistige – in Jean Gebsers ‘Transformation of the West’ and ‘The Ever-Present Origin’.

A few years ago, I tried to make some hints how ‘Origin’ and the ‘Spiritual’ in Gebsers History of the Awakening of Consciousness and the Attempt at the Concretion of the Spiritual could be connected with other trials to find answers on our disturbing time. The theme of the paper reads: ‘Lighthouses for GAIA Journeys. Navigating out of the Unknown’ (https://www.genius-for-all.de/florilegium.php).

 

Today I recognize step by step that such writings and the references which came in my hands are results out of the given ‘Mutation Climate’ and are connected with Gebsers view: “The restructuration of the entire reality has begun; it is up to us whether its final irruption, its final consolidation, will occur with our help, or despite our lack of insight” (EPO, 532). Noticing this ‘Climate’ helps to become aware that others also feel surrounded by it, participating in that ‘restructuration’ and creating a ‘New Reality’.

 

Though knowing SEKEM since many years just these days the ‘inner eye opens’ for identifying SEKEM as a place of being born this ‘Reality’ and Ibrahim Abouleish as a witness and creator of this ‘new world’.


Looking from this recognition on ‘SEKEM -Vitality of the Sun’

or could one also translate with Gebser ‘Vitality of Origin’?


Is it ‘over-pointed’ to see Ibrahim Abouleish as an ‘Individuality’ breathing in the ‘Mutation Climate’, first unconsciously when he moved 1956 – not yet 20 years old -, to Austria, during his research work more consciously and lastly recognizing two ‘spiritual streams’ in himself, the Oriental and the European which guided him to Egypt again and to the vision of SEKEM and made him to a Visionary and Messenger of connecting earth and heaven: ‘… everything we do and experience is not only of earthly nature, but is supported by spiritual worlds,” and “SEKEM has been created as something new out of both earthly and spiritual encounters” referring to Allah’s ‘Qualities’ of Love, Generosity a.s.o. as Abouleish expresses (https://sekem.com/en/about/founders/dr-ibrahim-abouleish/ - Three Questions to Ibrahim Abouleish)?
The latest publication in German: Helmy Abouleish, Christine Arlt, SEKEM; Inspirationen. Impulse für einen zukunftsfähigen Wandel , Info3, 2022, let us participate in the different sources of the Sekem-Vision: „Of the Islam as well as Anthroposophy; of the native Egyptian Culture as the European; of Goethe and Beethoven as well as the Arabic Mystic” (a.a.o. 27). For Ibrahim Abouleish it was an utmost concern to grasp the ‘Source Islam’: “For many parts of the world it is a mystery, what Islam wants and what it represents.” He wanted to illuminate it as background of SEKEM and through SEKEM.

 

Today the ‘SEKEM Vision and Mission 2057’ refers explicitly to the work of Jean Gebser while looking at its Vision and Mission from an ‘Integral Perspective’

I dare to say, Ibrahim Abouleish was in advance of his time through an attitude which Gebser calls “ freedom from the ‘I’ (as) the characteristic of the integral consciousness” (EPO, 532); (compare ‘Questions to Ibrahim Abouleish, Which role play religion in SEKEM and your own life?).
• ‘Economy of Love’
• Best example for restructuration of reality. The Ever-Present Origin
‘…the work on ourselves’
→ Jean Gebsers The Ever-Present Origin. Obligation as s set books at Helios University!


SEKEM is well ‘escorted’ by good companionship. I want to call the attention to a person and group of Gebserians around Jeremy Johnson.
While writing these remarks – July 2023 -, Jeremy Johnson announces a new course "Fragments of an Integral Future: A Philosophical and Embodied Exploration of our Time Between Worlds" (https://www.nuralearning.com/fragments-course-2023)
‘Time Between Worlds’ - a real challenge! (See below)


→ The Mission 2057


Could be the Vision 2057 identified somehow with Gebsers Vision of Origin and Presence
Waring the World.
(Die Welt wahren)
“In truth we ware the whole, and the whole wares us.” (EPO, 543)

 

Ibrahim Abouleish’ ‘sensitive talking’ about ‘Allahs Qualities’ and his spiritual roots in Islam are impulse to add here, how Gebser refers to Christianity: At the end of EPO he speaks about Christ and “a more intensified Christianity”:
“The immense processes of transformation like those taking place today, and the far- and deep reaching mutations that have been occurring for generations and extend into the present, are neither accidental, nor explicable in ontological, existential or sociological terms. They are latent in origin; they are always back-leaps, so to speak, into the already (ever)present future. This is the way in which origin, budding and unfolding in space and time, emerges on earth and in our daily lives. The divine spiritual source and future of that which appears to us as an event ought never be forgotten when attempts are made at mere explanation. And origin, from which every moment of our lives draws its substance, is by nature divine and spiritual. Anyone who denies this denies himself, and there is today a considerable number who do.
Those who do not deny but rather affirm it in their open-mindedness and simplicity are already the co-creators of aperspectivity, of the integral consciousness structure. This is founded on the emergent consciousness and on the transparency of the whole. Once only did the disciples of Christ perceive his transfiguration. This singular diaphaneity of the world on earth, this unique manifestation of spiritual power, is not a past event. The annual celebration of Pentecost, among other events, evidence this. Regarded historically, humanity is perhaps living in the three-day period of descendent into hell. Have we passed through this descendent in the events of the first have of our century? However, this may be, in those days only Christ’s followers could see his transfiguration, but one day it will be the larger community. It is not accidental that the sense for transparency is irrupting everywhere…” (EPO, 530 f.)

 

Jean Gebsers approach to Integrality, to an Apersepctival World, without opposite, Ego-, Space- and Time-Freedom, Arationality and the Spiritual, postulating a deep changed ‘integral attitude’ may open an understanding how “religio, the bond with the past… is becoming a bond, an obligation to the present, praeligio.” (EPO, 529) (and compare: Divinized Future).

 

All this may foreshadow: “This new, self-constituting consciousness structure discovers and surpasses the ultimate and most profound antithesis of rationalism between faith and knowledge, religion and science… antithesis of this kind are not reconcilable with the new consciousness structure. It is the transparency of faith and knowledge, and not with their aid, that the sphere of Being becomes perceptible in its entire diaphaneity (EPO, 529).”

 

Currently gathered are the following passages about ‘The Spiritual, Das Geistige’.

 

The Spiritual – das Geistige – in Jean Gebsers
‘Transformation of the West’ and
‘The Ever-Present Origin’.

 

(I follow here the term ‘das Geistige’ in the Register for the Complete Edition of Novalis Verlag and partly the Register of EPO).

 

 

Generally, and manifolded too our time is characterized as a time of transition The old dies, something new wants to be born, one can read. Who or what is the ‘centre of this process’? Which role plays man in this situation?

 

On my PATH OF LIFE, I was alluded to Jean Gebser’s Work in the 1970th and since that time about forty-five years have gone, reading, questioning and trying to live what I got from his message.
My search for clues began fainthearted but nevertheless passionate. During my University Activities I experienced that Gebsers questions are written in ‘very strange language’ as Rilke says. There have been students integrating Gebser in their Doctor thesis, but without ‘echo’ in the scientific community.
At the end of the 2010th I discovered the US American Gebser Community around Jeremy Johnson and a completely new approach took place for me.

 

But still, I am trying to be patient with all unsolved in my heart and I am fond of the emerging questions. And I am eager to search for answers but at the same time I feel Rilkes ‘reminder’ that the answers can’t be given now because I am unable to ‘live’ them – ‘but the question is, Rilke says: all to live’.

 

Following Rilke I try to live the questions, it means to follow just the given traces of Gebser, to understand his contribution and to try to transform my behaviour – or ‘integral attitude’ (EPO, 306) -as a kind of giving answer or ‘living into the answer’ and avoid ‘a complete loss of what is human’.

 

The quotation out of letters from Rilke to a younger poet - Franz Xaver Kappus, 1903, 16. July - reads as follows:

 

Be patient
With all unsolved in your
Heart
And try,
To live the questions themselves,
Like closed parlours and like
Books,
Written in a very strange language.
Don’t search for answers,
Which can’t be given you
Because you couldn’t live them.
It’s a question of
Living all.

Live the questions!
Perhaps you may live little by little
Without noticing,
Some far day
Into the answers.

 

(Habe Geduld
gegen alles Ungelöste in deinem
Herzen
und versuche,
die Fragen selbst liebzuhaben,
wie verschlossene Stuben und wie
Bücher,
die in einer sehr fremden Sprache
geschrieben sind.
Forsche jetzt nicht nach den
Antworten,
die dir nicht gegeben werden können,
weil du sie nicht leben könntest.
Und es handelt sich darum:
alles zu leben.
Lebe jetzt die Fragen!
Vielleicht lebst du dann allmählich,
ohne es zu merken,
eines fernen Tages
in die Antwort hinein.

Rainer Maria Rilke)

 

To live means living our questions, not only to try to find answers by ourselves through our own abilities, in our days reduced to our intellect and mind. And then while trying to embody these questions, while cathartically transforming your being and ‘following’ – to make it exemplary through ‘temporal component’ – “…a continuous transformation throughout the various mutations – a transformation that is necessarily a predisposition in us from origin as an actuality in order that it can manifest itself each time in a different form” (EPO, 298).

 

The following statements should be expressed clearly in advance if Gebsers wants to play a role in one’s Life. Gebsers – following his ‘Vision’ around 1932 and taking seriously what he worked out elaborately through his Lifework – especially in The Ever-Present Origin – driving force articulates in a figure which I learned as a student when studying about one of the “German initiators of ‘Psychosomatic Medicine’”, Viktor von Weizsäcker. (Dreher, Das pathosophische Denken Viktor von Weizsäckers, Dissertation 1971, published Frankfurt 1974): Der Gestaltkreis (Circle of Figure).
Gebsers Circle of ‚Origin‘ and ‘Consciousness’ can be brought in such an Analogy helping to understand this ‘Circle of Awakening Consciousness and Concreting the Spiritual’. For Gebser there such ‘Circles’ without creating ‘Spirals’ (as Kren Wilber and others do).
But when von Weizsäcker speaks about a ‘Ground which cannot become ‘object of our consciousness’, Gebser says:


• Origin
There is Origin and the Spiritual.
“Man is originally determined by origin, by the spiritual.”
(EPO, XXVii)

• It is
‘Origin’
which unfolds through man’s
structures of consciousness, mutations; i.e., man’s consciousness can ‘grow’.


“From mutation to mutation man has accrued new dimensions of consciousness in addition to those already present in a given instance…
The respective mutations came about whenever the previous awakening of consciousness was completed, and the conscious attitude was satisfied with what it had achieved…man had to turn to new tasks. He had to do this since mere persistence or inertia leads to decline and deterioration…
…man is the bearer as well as the objectified manifestation of …events – but not exclusively, and in each instance, he is a changed man. This is the reason why everything on earth seems to repeat itself and why nothing actually new take place. But this merely a superficial judgment; new or at least novel events do occur. Man reacts in novel ways to the given reality in the various ‘epochs’, that is, a result of the specific consciousness structures, because his respective consciousness structure changes from mutation to mutation (EPO, 302 f.).

 

“…with each mutation of consciousness, origin acquires an intensified consciousness character of present-ness; origin, which bears the imprint of the whole and of the spiritual and ‘is’ before time and space, becomes time-free ‘present.’

Being freed from time thus free for the spiritual (299)
Contra Spiritualization (299)

 

It is the aperspectival world that acquires this ever-present origin and thereby supersedes the perspectival world (EPO, 280).

 

In Part one of EPO Gebser spreads his research work to underpin to what he has designated as this ‘aperspectival’ world’.
The Spiritual… can only become evident if we are successful in superseding the three-dimensional coordinate system in which only visible things are valid and relevant.

 

We must attempt to perceive the dominant theme four-dimensional integrality which is space-and-time-free: only this space-time freedom, only ‘in’ it, is the transparency of the spiritual – the diaphainon – perceptible, for it cannot be manifest in any visible form (a.a.o.)

 

Part two starts with remarks to the ‘Climate, Themes and new forms of Statements of the new Mutation’. One can feel how differently views and positions of the integral attitude must be ‘seen’ and ‘grasped’.
The centric topic of the Mutation is ‘Time’ in ‘addition’ to the ‘spatial-material phenomena’:

 

“Time represents an aspect of the element of intensity which constitutes the world. We are contrasting this in-tensive element dualistically with the ex-tensive spatial-material phenomena without any qualms since this will help rationalists to understand it…
Even when we regard time in this reduced meaning it will be apparent that time as intensity must be the dominant theme to the new mutation. It is the sole theme which we have not encountered in the previous mutations and, as we will clearly demonstrate, is the principal concern of our epoch.” (EPO, 304).

 

To reach this ‘goal’ Gebser attempts in Part two what he calls ‘Up-setting or Dis-placement or perhaps De-posing (Ent-setzen)’:

 

The new perception of reality presupposes that the fixations, rigidifications, systems, and materializations which made up the deplorable state of the last century must be first upset. Much of what has been rationalistically posited, in other words, particularly the rationalistic and stereotyped thought forms and systems, must be de-rigidified and de-posed in order to open up an arena for the power and intensity that are pressing toward manifestation….
Our new situation requires new means of description and statement… (EPO, 306)”

 

Here follows approaches to such a ‘new statement’like

 

Eteology


“What is necessary today Eteology must replace philosophy just as philosophy once replaced the myths. In the eteologemes the eteon or being-in-truth comes to veracity or statement of truth, and this ‘wares’ or guards verity and conveys the ‘verition’ which arises from the a-waring and imparting of truth…
Every eteologeme is a ‘verition’, and such is valid only when it allows 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 fee of object; only then does it sustain the verity of the whole. …for the integral perception of truth, the world is pure statement” (EPO, 309)

 

Systase

 

“The means for making this statement possible is systasis. We are using the term ‘systasis’ to circumscribe the efficacy of all acategorial elements, that is, all types of manifestation and aspects of ‘time’ which, because of their non-spatial character, cannot be the object of categorial systematization as they are not ‘givens’ or data but in a certain sense ‘givings’ or impartations. Systasis is the conjoining or fitting together of parts into integrality…. Systasis has an effective character (Wirkcharakter) within every system.” (EPO, 310)

 

Synairese


“By recognizing the effectuality of what we have defined as acategorial systasis within every system, we are able to replace mere mental synthesis by integral synairesis…” (EPO,
310)

 

Diaphaneity


“We know ever since Einstein that energy and mass/matter are equivalent, indeed identical. Their difference is merely one of their transient forms of manifestation. Acategorical systasis therefore ‘comprehends’ the ever-latent presence of the incalculable time-energy component in the measurable space-matter state; it is the expression of our recognition of the mutability of all phenomena to which no systemization can do justice. The synaeresis which systasis makes possible integrates phenomena, freeing us in the diaphany of ‘a-waring’ or perceiving truth (diaphanierenden Wahrnehmung).

 

Space and time are, after all, merely conditional realities and as such realities with a double relation. They are in the first place ‘objective’ as the transitory structure of the universe, and in the second, ‘subjective’ as the transitory structure and mirroring of our consciousness. This transitory character refers us to origin which, with respect to consciousness, becomes space-and-time-free when we fulfill and complete synaeresis, the aperspectival imparting-of-truth (Wahrgebung). In this are consolidated the clarity and transparency of man and universe in which origin becomes present, inasmuch as origin, which ‘lies’ before spacelessness and timelessness, manifests itself in consciousness as space-time-free present.” (EPO, 311 f.)

 

In other words, to approach and read Gebser means to fundamental individual decisions:
1. To ‘accept’ his basic presupposition: “Man is originally determined by origin, by the spiritual.”
Jeremy Johnson (2019, 20) accentuates: “Forever is Gebser pointing out in his work the non-conceptual, or should we say a-rational, waring of origin (Wahr-geben des Ursprungs): “We partake every moment of our lives in the originary powers of an ultimately spiritual nature… The strengths of origin, and our own strength in bringing this origin to effectivity are the factors that will decide our fate.” (EPO, 278)
2. There is a ‘Gestaltkreis’ ‘between’ Origin and Man. Man has to enter this Circle and this cannot be ‘fulfilled’ “from an observer of distant mental categories” it needs “a participant in lived realities,” as Jeremy Johnson underlines. The Ever-Present Origin’ “exemplifies a form of catalytic literature, or a literary psychoactive par-excellence: a reading that provokes an intensified state of awareness in the reader.”

 

Transformation of the West
(Abendländische Wandlung)

 

A Collection of descriptions about Gebsers ‘use’ of the ‘Spiritual’ in Abendländische Wandlung.

 

“A poetic phrase is never a lie, - already because besides the natural also the ‘Spiritual’ reveals in it.” (Der grammatische Spiegel, >The grammatic mirror<, Volume I, 1975, 157 – The volumes refer to the Complete Edition in German, Novalis Verlag 1975-1980).

 

In ‘Abendländische Wandlung’ das ‘Geistige‘, the spiritual, is cautiously approached
“…we may to look at the ‘Gestalt’ (gestalt; figure) as the visible became expression of the Spiritual’.” (Abendländische Wandlung, I, 1975, 260).
It is the Biologist Adolf Portmann who in a sense ‘introduced’ the Spiritual into the science, when Gebser quotes him as follows:
“The clear Gestalten, who live around us, they are testimonies of Gestaltungen (formations; configurations), which are bigger than what is visible on earth” (Abendländische Wandlung, I, 1975, 263).

 

In context with C. G. Jung Gebser writes:
“Leap to the new shore…We must have the courage to risk the leap to another, a new shore to get the richness of it, unlike we will collapse/perish. A new insight, a new situation, but also each scientific hypothesis is a Aufgabe (task and abandonment). It’s in the term double meaning Aufgabe (as something to be to divest) of traditional ideas and Aufgabe (as something to be developed) of a new reality…
…The new position could be defined as being an overcoming of the primacy of intellect. This wouldn’t be a relapse in the Magic nor Mythic, it wouldn’t also be a standing still in the Philosophical – three terms which can describe the human development until now. The new position would correspond to a ‘growing up’ (Hinaufwachsen) in that ‘Spiritual’ (Geistige) which isn’t a contradiction to the ‘mental/emotional’ (seelisch) or ‘bodily’ (körperlich), but which could indicate that structure of consciousness, which humankind is going to reach. This Spiritual, as far as it might be more than an awake (über wach) mental sphere, could demonstrate surprisingly an approximation to the ‘ground of being’ (Seingrund) and Origin, when we recall the modern scientific research. The ‘derivation’ (Herkunft) out of the Immaterial
relates the Spiritual to a sphere, which we call Space-Time-lessness” (Abendländische Wandlung, I, 1975, 297).
Continuing with Jungs dangers of the ‘Complex psychology’ Gebser states:
“They (the dangers) result from the same root: The overemphasis of the Psyche. On the one side this overemphasis misleads that die Spiritual (das Geistige) is completely neglected or possibly becomes psychologized, and this is synonymous with the loss of the wholeness; on the other side it inveigles that the Psyche is puffed out. A consciousness-amplification happens instead of consciousness-intensification which equals a psychic inflation. An excessive number of pictures and references because of their nonbinding and inexorable character cause an Atomization of the Psyche. Each ignorant utilisation of the ‘Amplification’ holds the danger of the final loss not only the Human Wholeness, but the Human Being itself.” (Abendländische Wandlung, I, 1975, 303).
Gebser speaks of an “silent, inner power (Kraft)” and man must become able “to rely it to one’s own life,” and he continues: “…that power, due to – looking back to single decades of our own life – we can recognize, how we overleapt ourself, the more we approached the agedness, to behold of sometimes lower, sometimes higher, or poorer or richer levels.” Then he sums up:

 

“The Basic Insights, reduced of four decisive, complementary views:
1. Overcoming of the old concept of time
2. Relativity
3. Dissolving of contradictions respective dualism
4. Erratic development and consequently a-causality
have four consequences respective equivalences: ttI
1. Formation of a higher (or deeper) unity, which may lead to a Space-Time-Freedom
2. Emotional Realisation (Bewusstwerdung) of the ‘Unconsciousness’
3. Dematerialisation and turn to conditions (Gegebenheiten) of the Spiritual
4. Inner acknowledgment of the necessity of a possibly still religious, but probably spiritual (not only psychic) addition of the mental recognition, which – though it could overcome later – could transform in a new capacity (Vermögen), through which a new consciousness can get reality…

 

…who stagnates declines. But also, who starts running declines. That we are able to change/transform is our biggest wealth…
The fundamental condition for the life of each of us is and remains, that he tries to transform himself…That he is able to learn from the deeper secrets of the world and of his heart, how little the material counts, how much more to learn the awe of the Spiritual, that is above force (Macht) and violence (Gewalt) and thanks to we live. The material safety needs…are nothing more than a crutch of the psychic unstable and inwardly weak. The life of each human being is a task, which grows in responsibility as the single person becomes able to look through contexts and to get aware of new recognitions” (Abendländische Wandlung, I, 1975, 315 ff.).

 

In ‘Transformation of the West’ Gebser follows the transformations of the three sciences: Physics, Biology and Psychology. The book – forerunner of EPO – underline what’s later is going to be elaborated there: Gebser is aware that knowledge about the new recognitions on physics isn’t sufficient when there is no relationship (In-Beziehung-Setzen) to our personal life. In EPO we will hear about the necessity of a catalytic reading which needs the reader for being understood (Johnson, 2019, 19). While asking Physics ‘What is matter (Materie)’, Biology ‘What is life’ and Psychology ‘What is soul (Seele)’ Gebser gives sensitive signs that ‘we learn to give reverence of the Spiritual, which is above force and violence and thanks to this we live’ (Abendländische Wandlung I, 1975, 320).

 

Gebser got the ‚Inspiration‘1932, what seventeen years later crystallized in his Treatise ‘The Ever-Present Origin’. In ‘Transformation of the West’ he approached first the ideas in a very sensitive way. What was this Inspiration? From my slowly approaching Gebser I understand that his answer to the questions ‘Where do we come from? Who are we? Where do we go to?’ includes the recognition, the powerful insight that there is the or a ‘primordial Spiritual (das Geistige)’ as the ‘Origin of all’. Quite ‘self-conscious’ Gebser writes in the Preface of The Ever-Present Origin in 1949:
“Origin is ever-present. It is not a beginning, since all beginning is linked with time. And the present is not just the ‘now’, today, and the moment. It is not a unit of time, but an integral achievement (ganzheitliche Leistung) and therefore also always primordial. Anyone able to ‘concretize,’ i.e., to realize and effect the reality of origin and the present in their entirety, supersedes ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ and the mere here and now.” (EPO, xxvii).
Reading the Preface of EPO from Whitsuntide 1949 one finds a world shaking ‘energy’ which con-fronts man with heaven, earth and (its) mankind

 

Heaven: Origin is…
Earth: … ever present,
it is ever-originating as an integral achievement and always primordial.
Man: “Anyone able to …supersedes ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ …as far as he has “overcome himself” (EPO, xxvii).

 

Secondly: It is this Spiritual ‘which’ unfolds in or through the ‘Awakening of Consciousness’ via different structures. Gebser writes 1953, when the second part of EPO was published, in the Preface: “The second part of my ‘Ever-Present Origin’ is the attempt to answer the question: What is to come?...If…we have an approximate notion of how the events of today came about (if we know their basis (which I attempted to present in the first part) – there is perhaps the possibility that we can discern in the movements of our present minute in time and ion the world those of the next as well.”
Gebser emphasizes not to make an analysis, diagnosis or even a prognosis but it is a matter of “discerning in the manifestations of our age in what respects they differ from those of earlier epoch…
In order to discern the novel nature of these manifestations it has been necessary to examine the largest possible number of the various areas of inquiry and creativity…” (EPO, 277).

This is the background for approaching the Spiritual in EPO.

 

The Ever-Present Origin
(Ursprung und Gegenwart)

 

Preface from Whitsuntide 1949:
“Origin is ever-present. It is not a beginning, since all beginning is linked with time. And the present is not just the ‘now,’ today, the moment or a unit of time. It is ever-originating, an achievement of full integration and continuous renewal. Anyone able to ‘concretize,’ i.e., to realize and effect the reality of origin and the present in their entirety, supersedes ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ and the mere here and now.
…Either time is fulfilled in us – and that would mean the end and death for our present earth and (its) mankind – or we succeed in fulfilling time: and this means integrality and the present, the realization and the reality of origin and presence. And it means, consequently, a transformed continuity where man kind and not man, the spiritual and not the spirit, origin and not the beginning, the present and not time, the whole and not the part become awareness and reality. It is the whole that is present in origin and originatively in the present” (EPO, xxvii f.).

 

 

As already mentioned, it is needed a ‘catalytic reading’ to ‘digest’ this Opus Magnus! Jeremy Johnson writes: “…The Ever-Present Origin is intended to produce a direct encounter in the reader. As I have discussed with other Gebserian scholars, it is the kind of book that exemplifies a form of catalytic literature, or a literary psychoactive par-excellence: a reading that provokes an intensified state of awareness in the reader.
The key, I think, is a reading that provokes; a move from an observer of distant mental categories to participant in lived realities. This vulnerability to the text provides an opening, a space, to concretize the structures within us. ‘To be sure,’ Gebser writes, ‘this requires co-operation; for this reason, the book itself has been written in such a way as to require a certain participation of the reader.’ Gebser’s structures, like Jung’s ‘reality of psyche’, ‘should stir something in you. You find something there, already present, and yet last recognized.
In his treatise ‘Decline and Participation’ – published in 1973 with a Preface written just shortly before his death – Gebser speaks about this as follows:


“SEARCHING FOR THE NEW CONSCIOUSNESS. Nobody, who searches, doesn’t search for nothing. Everybody, who searches, searches for what he in secret already knows, what in secret he had already found. The one search for a golden treasure, for which they have tips; the other look for the wealth, which from the darkness of their Inside urges to Light. The process, which lifts something lifts itself to Light or is lifted to it, means always a becoming conscious… This Light isn’t that of a candle or lamp; it is – using an old, but inaccurate circumscription, influenced through an antiquated, dualistic-rational way of thinking – ‘otherworldly light’, which illuminates a for the first time a perceived spiritual landscape.” (VI, 1977, 55)

It is remarkable that for Gebser this consciousness is already given and this directs us to the catalytic reading which - to man who urges the inner light from his ‘inner darkness’ and this light at the same ‘time’ -, illuminates a spiritual landscape yet not ‘seen’. In other words: The catalytic reading draws us into this Opus Magnus – similarly as Bastian Bathasar Bux in Michael Endes’ book ‘The Neverending Story’ was drawn into the writing – and, though everybody is free to do this, to follow the path ‘in this not yet seen spiritual landscape’ and realize or concretize the ‘Spiritual’.

Hugo Kükelhaus – one of my ‘spiritual leaders’ – tells us: “In the free plain of any Chinese Landscape a Gate is erected.
It doesn’t mark any border of property or material line. In fact, the meaning shows the walker while passing and looking through to be cognizant of his own transformation and catharsis. The earthly path may be way of purification. Abandon your I like going through a Gate. Enter your higher Self like through a Portal. It’s the testimony of this meaning given in all what is portal, door, passage, pass, front gate…” (Kükelhaus, H., Dennoch heute, 1983, 19)
But how long the walker (Wanderer) has to go, how many portals he has to pass? After such a life-long walk Jean Gebser confessed:


“Lastly all is simple,”
just one month before he died – smilingly.

 

But until this moment it was and still is our ‘Cage thinking’ (Käfigdenken) which gives us a Cage-security (Käfigsicherheit) – instead of our ‘inner security’:” The simple is in us. It is Participation. Participation in the Unknown, but Evident. A tiny seed in us, which includes all Transparency: the world as shining through (durchleuchtete Welt) the all-austere blessedness.” (V/II, 12).

Gebser tells us in the ‘Fundamental Considerations’ in EPO an impressive example how the Cage Thinking guides man into the disaster:

 

“The magic-mythical world of the Mexicans ‘could not prevail against the Spaniards’; it collapsed the moment it encountered the rational-technological mentality…. In actual fact it was the vigor of the Spanish consciousness vis-à-vis the weakness of the Mexican that was decisive… The Spaniards’ superiority, which compelled the Mexicans to surrender almost without a struggle, resulted primarily from their consciousness of individuality, not from their superior weaponry… What is of interest to us within the present context is…the supersession of the magic group-consciousness and its most potent weapon, spellcasting, by rational, ego-consciousness.

 

Today the rational consciousness, with nuclear fission its strongest weapon, is confronted by a similar catastrophic situation of failure; consequently, it could be vanquished by a new consciousness structure. We are convinced that there are powers arising from within ourselves that are already at work overcoming the deficiency and dubious nature of our rational ego-consciousness via the new aperspectival awareness whose manifestations are surging forth every.


here. The aperspective consciousness structure is a consciousness of the whole, an integral consciousness encompassing all time and embracing both man’s distant past and his approaching future as a living present. The new spiritual attitude can take root only through an insightful process of intensive awareness. This attitude must emerge from its present concealment and latency of the world and become effective, and thereby prepare the transparency of the world and man in which spirituality can manifest itself” (EPO, 5 f.; my accentuations).

 

Just while I’m writing these passages the following news are brought in the social media and – for me – make evident this ‘catastrophic situation of failure of our rational consciousness:

 

The USA proofs to dim out the Sun with Aerosole.

 

When the ‘nuclear fission’ brought the ‘Sun-Activity’ on Earth, this new Activity tries somehow to eliminate this Sun, i.e., symbolic for cutting off partly our Cosmic or Universal relationship. Isn’t it stupid as the experiment of a man who tried to escape his own shadow?
What would happen,
“If an integral man were to encounter a deficient mental man, would not deficient material power fail in the face of integral strength? Would not the individual ego-consciousness falter in the face of the itself-consciousness of mankind (dem menschheitlichen Sich-Bewußtsein)? The mental-rational in the face of the spiritual? fragmentation in the face of integrality?” (EPO,273)?

 

To repeat once more:
The aperspective consciousness structure is a consciousness of the whole, an integral consciousness encompassing all time and embracing both man’s distant past and his approaching future as a living present. The new spiritual attitude can take root only through an insightful process of intensive awareness. This attitude must emerge from its present concealment and latency of the world and become effective, and thereby prepare the transparency of the world and man in which spirituality can manifest itself” (EPO, 5 f.; my accentuations).

 

Be aware:
1. “Latency – what is concealed – is the demonstrable presence of the future…
Concretion of time and the spiritual dimension are preconditions of the aperspectibal world”.
The increasing spiritual reality is neither a mere psychic state nor an intellectual-rational form of representation!)


2. “Transparency (diaphaneity) is the form of manifestation (epiphany) of the spiritual”. … to render transparent our own origin, our entire human past, as well as the present, which already contains the future. We are shaped and determined not only by today and yesterday, but by tomorrow as well. The author is not interested in outlining discrete segments, steps or levels of man, but in disclosing the transparency of man as a whole and the interplay of the various consciousness structures which constitute him…” (EPO, 6 f.).

 

Most important is:
“The new subject-object- relationship… But not (as) a new image of the world, nor with a new Weltanschauung, nor with a new conception of the world. A new image would be no more than the creation of a myth, since all imaginary has a predominantly mythical nature. A new Weltanschauung would be nothing else than a new mysticism and irrationality, as mythical characteristics are inherent in all contemplation to the extent that it is merely visionary; and a new conception of the world would be nothing else than yet another standard rationalistic construction of the present, for conceptualization has an essentially rational and abstract nature.

 

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 man and of all that transluces both”.

 

At the end of Part I EPO, we read about this ‘new reality’:
“If we succeed in regarding events from the vantage point of mutation, it will be evident that (it) is not a question of repetition, but of a ‘new’ event. From the earliest times until the present,
the structures have increased, and it is our task to achieve the latest incrementation for the time being by integration” (EPO, 273).

 

A special hint may be given to the part where Gebser talks about ‘The Symbolims of the Spirit’ and how Theology and Philosophy are treating it (EPO, 229 ff.).
It’s delightful to read, how Gebser – quite shortly expressed – talks about “The difficulties posed for philosophy by the problem of spirit” (EPO, 235): Spirit was singularized, rationalized, isolated and lastly negated. Gebser doesn’t deny Philosophy “major and incontrovertible achievement”, but “The ultimate attempt to transcend its own limitations …was doomed to fail and the ‘pure act of thought’, the ‘pure thought’ is death oriented… (EPO, 235 f.).

 

“If spirit were a manifestation form of the spiritual, spirit is at best its refined or clarified manifestation… …the mental structure, now in its deficient phase, has attained the limits of its own possibilities. This opens up the possibility of a mutation and the spiritual … can be truly perceived as the energy which effects itself transparently and diaphanously throughout the whole” (EPO, 236).

 

Connecting this notification with the beginning of Part II of EPO makes clear in what crucial situation we are, nearly on the edge of a precipice:
“The Climate of the New Mutation
Mutations have always appeared when the prevailing consciousness structure proved to be no longer adequate for mastering the world. This was the case in the last historically accessible mutation which occurred around 500 B.C. and led from the mythical to the mental structure. The psychistic, deficient mythical climate of that time presented a threat, and the sudden onset of the mental structure brought about a decisive transformation. In our day the rationalistic, deficient mental structure presents an equal threat, and the breakthrough into the integral will also bring about a new and decisive mutation” (EPO, 294).
But ‘mutational periods are times of disturbance and even destruction…the resultant disorder, if it is not mastered on the strength of insight into the occurring mutation brings on chaos rather than a restructuration and novel constellation of reality” (EPO, 295).

 

And being aware of the chaotic situations, there are two important hints according to man and his task:

 

1. “Just as the supersession of mythical temporicity by mental time was an end of the world – of the mythical world that had become deficient – it is today a question of the end of the mental world which has become deficient” (EPO, 297).


But the question will be, if man is aware of this supersession and if he accepts that his role will be “at the very most that of participants”. But:
• “But one thing must be said: the coming decades will decide whether the fundamental transformation will occur during the next two generations, or not for the next two millennia. Since the decisive role in this event will be played by the spiritual…since the spiritual may well precipitate the mutations, it is of signal importance whether or not the strength achieved by our consciousness will comprehend the originary presence of the spiritul.
Above and beyond this, it ought not to be forgotten that, in rational terms, what occurs ‘here’ has its correspondence ‘there’. The earth is not just a star among stars, but a star with other stars. Any sweeping changes on earth are not only changes on the earth; they not only occur ‘here’ (on earth) but also ‘there’. Whether the changes taking place here initiate similar ones ‘yonder,’ or whether the changes in the ‘yonder’ initiate the changes ‘here’, is an idle question for anyone aware of the undeniable interconnection of materialized phenomena of which the earth, like every other star, is a part.


It depends on mankind how in the coming decades how it will be possible for mankind to endure and sustain the strength that is acute in the occurring mutation – and how the ‘law of the earth’ will be fulfilled!

 

• “If mankind can endure the new tensions that are becoming acute as a result of the irruption of new heavens and the earth’s migration through ne regions of the universe – tensions which are becoming acute on earth and thus in man as well – then the impending collapse will only mean the end of the exclusive validity of the hitherto dominant mental structure. But if man and the earth are unable to endure these tensions, they will be torn apart by them. Both, in other words, will perish in their present form, and after the great intervening breathing-spell a new earth and a new man will arise. The destiny of man and the earth will depend on the consciousness intensity which man is intended to attain, and which we would attain if he would succeed in living the new mutation.” (EPO, 297 f.).

 

Be aware, that therefore:
2. “Only by realizing the new mutation as an integral bearing or attitude and not as a quantifiable ‘enrichment’ can man preserve himself from a complete loss of what is human” (EPO, 306).


To understand the seriousness of this statement in must be underlined in other words:
• “…man is the bearer as well as the objectified manifestation of …events… Man reacts in novel ways to the given reality in the various ‘epochs’, that is, as a result of the specific consciousness structures, because his respective consciousness structure changes from mutation to mutation…
… man is originally determined by origin, by the spiritual.”

 

And therefore, it is fundamentally to realize:
• “…posing for us the urgent need to work on a new achievement of consciousness. A single generation, even ten generations are not sufficient to fulfil this demand of origin; but preparations could have been made during these generations, which is, in fact, what has happened.”

And quoting Novalis: “…’The world can return to (the) free life’ of origin at any time
Our task is:
• The “understanding of the broader interconnections that, from origin, constellate terrestrial events.” (EPO, 303 f.)

 

One can feel, that these intentions want to be connected with what Gebser quotes “The half-born must come to full birth” (EPO, 307). Can Hufelands statement help us for an insight:
• “Only a new strength of spirit kindled from a primordial divine source can create a new well-spring of life in the lifeless multitude which will surely engender a new life, purity, freshness, and a strength inn physical nature. The half-born must come to full birth.” EPO, 307).

For Gebser “The half-born is irrupting ‘time’, the ‘new strength of spirit’ which must be born completely, that is, come into full awareness and find its expressive possibilities. That is what is at stake” (EPO, 308).

 

The Symbol of the ‘half-born’ touches softly the symbol and reality of Incarnation. How might the ‘Embodied Exploration’ look like?
Gebser tells us: “… The fact that during previous genuine mutational eras powers or energies took shape in human form with visibly embodied and effected the respective mutational principle throughout long periods. The appearance of such figures as Zarathustra, Confucius, Chuan-tsu, Lao-tzu, Buddha, Mahavira, Socrates, Plato, and particularly Jesus Christ precisely at the moment of a mutation is not merely fortuitous. All prognostication, not to mention prophecy, aside, it will seem plausible that at the moment of the mutation now occuring, the mutation will also have its incarnation. But it will be implicit from our subsequent discussion that this incarnation will differ in kind and essence since it must manifest itself not ‘in time’ but in time freedom, and will be transparent.”

 

1952 Jean Gebser writes in a Postscript to EPO about his endeavour:

“We have attempted to point toward clarification of a complex situation whose resolution will occur tomorrow, if not today. The manner in which this resolution will occur, its time and extent, its effectuality for us or for non-European mankind or even for a mankind that has undergone and survived peril-averting destruction, will depend on the extent of our consciousness participation in the construction of a new reality. Anyone who resides in origin and the present is protected and sustained by life and the spirit” (EPO, 547).

Let us listen to this call and become open to answer actively to it:
A-waring and Imparting oft he truth.
(Wahrnehmen ist Wahrgeben)
(EPO, 309).

 

Between the ‘Eteological Lighthouse of Jean Gebsers Ever-Present Origin’ and the Lighthouse of the ‘SEKEM Initiative’ we need unfatiguing efforts to deepen and transform our consciousness and to metamorphose our attitude. And it took a long time for me to understand that I need others to listen to and to share changes and possible activities. It was a ‘giving’ to discover Jeremy Johnsons ‘Gebser Community’, to join, to become acquainted with wonderful people and taking part in intensive exchanges.

 

A new course of Jeremy Johnson in 2023 tries to bridge new worlds.

 

“Fragments of an Integral Future
A Philosophical and Embodied Exploration of our Time Between Worlds
A seven-week online course | 29 August - 10 October | Hosted by Jeremy Johnson & Astrid Montuclard

 

What if we could re-imagine our relationship with time, and in doing so, open our shared futures to new possibilities? How can we learn to sense into emerging planetary futures—all of which exist in the locus of the living present—and learn to embody them?

 

In this course we trace the path of the rhizome into new narratives that reclaim the future from stories of Western progress, re-imagine our relationship with the-more-than-human world and help us embody ecological wisdom and planetary homecoming.
In order to arrive here, in this transformational present, we will have to come to know the intimate relationship between meaning and matter, the fluctuating dance of shifting worldviews, new ways of embodying our relationship with time, becoming, and human ‘development,’ and attune not merely our ‘sensemaking’ but our ‘mythmaking’ capacities towards new ecological and planetary possibilities.

 

We stand on a new-and-ancient ground which, like gravity, has re-directed modernity’s hapless attempts to run for the exits, turning the globe of overculture around for a reckoning–and reunion–with planet, place, and presence.

 

It is here, in the locus of the transformational present, where we can learn how to reclaim time from the relentless pace of techno-utopianism, find corridors towards habitable futures, and enact fragments of regenerative tomorrows in our here and now.

 

In order to empower new stories about habitable futures, we will need to tell different stories about where we are and where we’re going, gather up temporal toolkits and medicine bundles that help ecological wayfinding and healing on the path between worlds, and take lessons from our more-than-human kin, like the nautilus, or the still more ancient mycorrhizae, on how we can re-imagine time, transformation, and human co-flourishing in a more-than-human world.

 

Fragments of an Integral Future draws its material from the forthcoming book (Fragments of an Integral Future, Integral Imprint 2023). No pre-requisite reading materials will be required, and additional reading materials will be provided during the course.”
(Fragments of an Integral Future — Nura Learning).

 

 

Lighthouses

 

Lighthouses

The column ‘Commentary from the Field’ of the Inaugural Issue of JABSC, written by Vanesa Weyrauch starts in a figurative language: ‘Questions as a Lighthouse’. Jayce Pei Yu Lees shows us a picture – namely in the context with the Corona-World – which gives some feeling in what kind of atmosphere a journey might be going on for which. Lighthouses become crucial to avoid not being shipwrecked in stormy seas or being lost like the person in Jayse drawing..

 

Lee
Jayce Pei Yu Lee

life in lockdown,
making sense of what's unfolding
around us, through us, within us,
feeling vulnerable and courageous,
stay strong, one step further,
gently and quietly,
navigating through the unknown.


(https://www.facebook.com/julie.arts/posts/10160924015040744)
(https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=lee.jayce&set=a.10159382082979497)


What we meet here is nothing what happens only situationally, the picture signifies a general symbol of man’s situation in the world, of his conditio humana.. The pictured Japanese story of ‘The Ox and his shepherd’ illuminates this condition with impressive ink paintings.

 

Lost
Lost


(https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ochse_und_sein_Hirte)

 

Searching for the Ox
Why to search? Since time immemorial the ox hasn’t been lost
But it happened that the shepherd turned away from himself:
Then his innate ox became strange for him
And lastly got lost in dusty vastness.

 

Both pictures and stories tell from ‘navigating out of the unknown’. While Jayce Pei Yu Lee lets Light falling in some chaotic scenery, the Zen-Master makes clear, since all along the ox is always here, giving sense what Jean Gebser puts as follows: ‘You wouldn’t search me if you wouldn’t have already found me’ (EPO, 259 ff.).

 

The Holy Grail


What may sound a bit cryptically one can interpret similarly in those moments of giving ‘Birth of the Theory-U’ as Joseph Jaworski illustrates. It was Brian Arthurs deep conviction “what counts is where you’re coming from inside yourself’ (Scharmer, 2007, 32) which let Jaworski - after an extraordinary meeting with him -, and sitting with Otto Scharmer and Gary Jusela in the car in a parking lot of Xerox PARC -, not hesitate to put in words his fascinating and tremendous experience: ‘This is the Holy Grail’. There ‘Theory U’ got its ‘shape’ or was ‘modeled’ by Otto Scharmers drawing “along a ‘U’”. It became visible a core process “by which transformational breakthroughs in any field occur, the creation of knowledge that changes the world as we know it.” (Source, 19. F.).



Starting in the 1999th to experience what the U-process might open, Jaworski was going to search for what he calls the “understanding of the enigma lying at the bottom of the U”. Finding a relationship to Eleonor Rosch and what she calls ‘primary knowing’ Jaworski states: “… I was consumed with a passion to explore what I began to call ‘the bottom of the U’ while Otto began his development of what he called ‘Theory U’” (Source, 26 f.).
It wouldn’t be correct to argue that ‘the bottom of the U’, ‘this place of deeper knowing’ is easily skipped in Theory U and that Jaworski in ‘Source’ makes it better, because it is the actual theme through the whole book. Nevertheless, for the situation now it is crucial for all those individuals, groups and organizations stepping in and participating in this Decade of Transformation to dive in – U-process like – what’s called ‘enigma’. In this moment of pause – reflecting the need of transformation – there is a pressing impulse to amplify those these questions of a hidden, mysterious coherence. When Jaworski is convinced, that the world as we know will change, one may ask for help at Jean Gebser who expresses this need as follows: „We must, to use a metaphorical expression, become acquainted with the well-springs from which we draw our sustenance“, literally ‘from which we are drinking our water’, somehow a clearer, crystalline ‘picture’ (EPO, 355), (‘Man soll die Quelle kennen, deren Wasser man trinkt“ (Gebser, GA, III, 481) or: “This also means that we perceive the world in its foundations and are not exclusively bound to its vital, experiential, and conceptional forms” (EPO, 356) (‘Damit ist zugleich zugegeben, dass wir die Welt in ihren Grundlagen wahrnehmen und nicht mehr ausschließlich an die Erlebnis-, Erfahrungs- und Vorstellungsformen der Welt gebunden sind.- Gebser, GA, III, 482).

 

The World in its Foundation


Is it too snotnosed to put all the tremendous disruptions, abyss, eyes of the needles in relation to the world in its foundation?


Navigating through the ‘Oceans of Life’ at least ‘of our Time’ forces us to rely on Lighthouses which may direct our Odyssey our GAIA Journeys. This is the sense of the following remarks about what kind of ‘Questions as Lighthouses’ might be important to ask for people in the Presencing Community - and others too -, particularly those which are longing on ‘well-springs’ from which we are nourishing our lives. Unconsciously or consciously, we (all) are driven from those questions coming up which tangent the “depths of our being” (Source, 24).
The way how these following ‘Questions will be ‘shaped’ and ‘offered’ is not in the way to summarize or comment the basic contents or foundations of the ‘Lighthouse architects’: Scharmer, Jaworski, Gebser, Zen, Lievegoed and Tudge. The intention is to extract a few of their main thoughts as a kind of seeds for creating a new space for breathing and to point to the direction of an emergent integral milieu. Of course, ‘Questions’ also contain the appeal to ‘Answers’. “If the integral milieu – which promises a new tomorrow – is to bear any weight, to speak to this age of transition, it must do this with us” (Johnson, STW, 12): Questioning and Answering is an undertaking to redeem.

 

To continue with Weyrauchs’ pictural language of Lighthouses one can say, Lighthouses are sighted at different places of mankind’s journey over the oceans of life. They help navigating through risky and precarious passages in nearly unknown fields. always underlining about what we travelers have especially be aware of or how we find through the entrances of harbors where we are at home.

 

The first two Lighthouses I’m going to locate at the entrance of Utopia. But this ‘Utopos’ isn’t the ‘no-place’ of Thomas Mores ‘Utopia’. ‘U-topia’ is a Place which is going to emerge while following the U-movement and thus creating a ‘ topos’. Its creation is possible everywhere and at any time. One may smile about this kind of playing with words. But it’s indeed much more, it’s crucial as Otto Scharmers doesn’t get tired to emphasize and it has something to do with our and mankind’s fate as Jean Gebser will tell us later.

Lighthouse 1: Theory U

Emerging Futures

 

The Lighthouse ‘Theory U’ goes back to the collaborative work of Otto Scharmer and Joseph Jaworski coming out of a situation which still is given in these days. In a paper titled ‘Leadership in in the New Economy: Sensing and Actualizing Emerging Futures” (Synchronicity, 210) they wrote: “We live in a time of profound change. Leaders across the globe are wrestling with similar challenges in a world that is becoming increasingly unfamiliar. In order to succeed in such an environment, leaders have to develop a new cognitive capability – the capacity to sense and actualize emerging futures…” (Source, 24).
There are a variety of Lighthouses marking the scenery of ‘Theory U’ and todays ‘GAIA Journey’ and there are worldwide individuals, groups, institutions and international organizations participating in projects actualizing forms of transformations and trying to give answers on what Scharmers says above: “How do we learn to turn towards others, and act from a place of compassion and grounded action confidence?”

 

Bird
(Kelvy Bird: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fc/ca/c5/fccac545febce3863df159532885cd69.jpg)

 

From redirecting the beam of our intention to the awareness that ‘we are all points of light’ we participate in a process ‘escorted’ by Lighthouse-Rays of different intensity. There are Rays which don’t give such strong signals as they ought to do.

 

A Frozen World and Points of Light

 

Those signals are connected with

The inner place of ‘self’ and ‘Self’,

 

  • Articulating ‘Source’ and viewing ‘out of it’,
  • Being in Dialogue with the Universe (2007, 39), and
  • Following the ‘Grand will’ which is ‘in need of us.

These Rays are of course not neglected but isn’t it necessary to let them be more in a foreground for making clearer the essence of such ‘views’ and how through them our ‘being in the world’ gains a deeper purpose than – perhaps misunderstood - ‘only’ to serve as ‘Social Technology of Presencing’?

I experienced personally through all these years how revolving ‘Theory U’ and all the activities of the Presencing Institute appear. Nevertheless, it was striking to experience during the Global Forum 2021 on the one side a richness of projects, personal ‘direct exchanges’ - via an impressive digital technology -, illuminating contributions through speakers and others, making visible what Kelvy is framing in the ‘Sphere of Points of Light’. But on the other side there were also those frozen elements Melanie Goodwill, Thomas Hübl and Angel Acosta spoke about. Olaf Baldinis ‘result’ in his ‘generative scribing’ about the Global Forum Process offers a ‘knowing insight’ in this moment of our time.

 

Baldini
Olaf Baldini

 

This final drawing of Olaf Baldini created during the Global Forum 2021 and mirroring all the energy of thoughts and actions from the participants all over the world, let us painfully feel the disruptions of our time – though connected to ‘Source’ – and at the same time alluding the possibility of ‘Waking up’ and turning towards new Spheres. Winds of emerging futures are blowing such ‘Spheres’ towards us –though the darkness seems impermeable even if a ‘misty yellow’ veil like shows up. At the same time there are human beings on this Sphere, shadowy, drawn out of fine ‘Points of Light’, asking ‘what dreams want to be included’, waiting as a ‘We’? Waiting for Godot?

Surely not! Rilke speaks about ‘wishes’ as follows: “Wishes are the remembrances, which are coming out of our Future”. And Gebser quotes in this context Stéphane Mallarmé: “The Star matures out of the Tomorrow” (L’astre murit des lendemains), (Gebser, Structural change of the European Spirit, GA, V/I, 226). Could be the same said of the dreams?

 

Is Olaf with his drawing letting us be at a loss? At least it includes a ‘Me and We’ with ‘Janus-faced’ features. The talking about an ‘emerging future’, ‘something to come’ which is already ‘present’ is clearly stated – but are we ‘conscious’ enough about this ‘time’ which we call ‘emerging future’. This is a ‘Questions-Lighthouse’ which in its architecture and its functioning has to be deeper inquired.

Lighthouse 2: Source

‘Advanced’ U-Process


The interest in Joseph Jaworski goes back as mentioned to my personal coming in contact with Theory U through the relationship to Otto Scharmer around 2000. Drawing Weyrauchs’ picture along: These two Lighthouses are like two signals at the entrance of the ‘Harbor U-topos’: Scharmers’ The ‘U-process’ and Jaworskis’ ‘Advanced U-process’ It would be worth to cite some ‘rays’ sent out by the ‘Lighthouse Source’ as:

• “When the mountain lion shows up, there is a choice to be made” (41).
• “…be open and allow yourself to be used ‘as a force of nature’” (43), “look deeply in to the ‘mystery’ that occurs at the bottom of the U” (51) and listen to what is emerging from yourself, as Martin Buber says, “to the course of being in the world; not in order to be supported by it, but in order to bring it to reality as it desires” (140).
• “We are partners in the evolution of the universe” (96).
• “… everyone is born with a destiny or a purpose and the journey is, to find it” (Presence, 227).
And perhaps the driving force is
• “There exists an eternally creative Source (the field of active information) that lies beyond the orders of time… Human beings are exquisitely designed to sense the future, shape it, and bring it into reality… as it desires.” (131)

 

In a dialogue with John Milton about ‘God’ or ‘Source’ or…? Milton’s answers were:
• “…there’s a thin line between the two…” (Synchronicity, 223) and
• “Source existed before God; God, the Buddha, Krishna…all emanated from Source” (Source, 198).

 

Reading Jaworski, imagining his path to Pari and other sacred places, his encounter with David Bohm, his ‘meeting the mountain lion’ and other pioneering steps may give the impression of a completely exceptional personality – far away from ‘daily life people’. But Jaworski also underlines: “I believe that everyone is born with a destiny or a purpose, and the journey is to find it” (Presence, 227).

 

Kairos


What helps me also courageously to look on my own life in a similar way and to start anytime and everywhere to my U-topia, or to another ‘Odyssey’ and to venture passages of the ‘open sea’ that is the support which I find in Jean Gebser and the Lighthouse ‘The Ever-Present Origin’ which he positioned in the middle of the 20th Century and which is now spreading strong guiding-rays for 21st Century Journey(s). Somehow there is a moment where other thoughts and views might supplement and nourish with a specific light the work of Lighthouse 1 and 2.

 

Looking to the Global Forum 2021 I deeply feel that this moment “to take a pause, gather our breath, and turn inwards – together” ‘reveals’ the ‘kairos’ not only to turn the beam back to ourselves, not only to start ‘The Great Re-Think’ or be aware of ‘The Battle of the Soul’ but to become aware of this “present minute” (Weltminute) to supersede transformation into mutation of an ‘Integral Consciousness’ grounded in the ‘Ever-Present Origin’, being forced to learn a new language to express its ‘Presence’, to participate in ‘presentiating it through us’ and to discern in the movements of our present minute in time and in the world those of the next as well’ (EPO, 277).

 

Noticing the lightning of Lighthouses, the few moments the ray is turning isn’t enough to grasp its ‘quality’ or to ‘view’ it at all, - because you also need ‘organs’ to perceive and attitudes to respond in a ‘proper’ way – and on this way ‘catch the source of it’. But here isn’t the place to extend Gebsers’ work in this direction and to go into details. These fragmental remarks may be justified while seeing that a cooperated work from different directions has to be started to approach and to tune in this ‘consciousness mutation process’. The work of Jeremy Johnson is such an impulse to actualize cooperatively

Lighthouse 3: ‘An a-perspectival World’

Awakening the Dreaming Beauty


In the middle of the last century a ‘quantum leap’ happened – unnoticed from experts and the public – through Jean Gebser and his work ‘The Ever-Present Origin’. Based on ‘The History of the Awakening of Consciousness’ and through ‘An Attempt at the Concretion of the Spiritual’ Gebser shows the Foundations and Manifestations of what he calls the ‘Aperspectival World’. When I met Gebsers work at the beginning of the 1980th it was – also just a few years after his death in 1973 -, as if his impulse stayed in a status like the life in the castle illustrated in the Dreaming Beauty. There was and is a very active Jean Gebser Society for the German speaking countries. His opus magnus ‘The Ever-Present Origin’ was already translated into English 1984 but not so much people paid attention to this ‘ground-breaking’ approach in a very deep dimension or ‘a-mansion’ as Gebser would like to say.

Just in the last decade of this 21st century something is breaking in this thorn hedge – what ‘prince’ was or is it cutting with his sword through the thorns remains to be seen – which grew up during the time, hiding the leap which was prepared to occur. And now these days the ‘Beauty’ is going to awake and to find herself in an environment where the hedge is beginning to blossom out and a new life starts – though the cook in the Fairy Tale just continuous his habitual gesture slapping his ‘trainee’ because of the mistake he made - to show up.

 

What have been Gebsers questions as a Lighthouse? What messages was he and still is he sending out, immersing our world in a new light and color? What does an ‘extended GAIA perception’ translated as ‘Grounded Awakening of an Integral -Consciousness and Attitude’ contribute to our world?

 

Discerning ‘What is to come’?

 

Gebsers ‘big lines’ of what happened and happens in our world have to be expressed as an elucidation of what kind of metamorphoses or ‘mutations’ occur today towards the emergence of an ‘a-perspectival world’. It is provoking in a literally meaning of invoking, appealing to us today while looking from the History how human consciousness developed through different mutations, and that today there is a moment where a new leap or mutation occurs. What Gebser intends “is not a question of analysis or diagnosis, nor even a prognosis, but rather a matter of discerning in the manifestations of our age in what respects they differ from those of earlier epochs…

In order to discern (EPO, 277) the novel nature of these manifestations it has been necessary to examine the largest possible number of the various areas of inquiry and creativity. This examination has extended over nearly twenty years and has included the forms, the statements, and expressions of the natural sciences, the humanities, and the arts.

Thus, the attempt had to be made to examine not only contemporary physics and biology, but also present-day jurisprudence and sociology, even interdisciplinary and dual sciences such as quantum biology, psychosomatic medicine, and parapsychology, and of course the principal arts – architecture, music, the pictorial arts, and literature” (EPO, 277).

 

Gebsers main question in EPO is – analog to the statement in the subtitle of Theory U about “The Future as it emerges”: “What is to come?”

 

The Spiritual

 

Gebser concludes: “As in any crisis there are two possible answers: demise or transition.” The transition acquires participation. Such co-operation finds its sense not only because it is a matter of the heart but because we “partake every moment of our lives in the originary powers of an ultimate spiritual power”. Gebsers position is distinct: The Spiritual (Geistige).
Already in his treatise ‘Occidental Metamorphosis’ (Abendländische Wandlung, Zürich, 1943) he spoke about this changing view but not yet in such clear terms as later in EPO:

“This new position can be defined as overcoming of the primate of intellect, not understood as regression into the Magic nor in the Mythic, what would mean to remain in Philosophy and in the way to describe the hitherto existing transcription of mankind’s development. The new position would correspond to a growing up in to this ‘Spiritual’ (Geistige), which isn’t opposite to ‘psychic’ or ‘bodily’, but with which we want to indicate the consciousness-structure, perhaps which we are going to achieve. This ‘Spiritual’, as far as it could be an over wake mental sphere, could be surprisingly an approach to the Ground of Being (Seinsgrund) and Origin (Ursprung), if we remember, how we today, based on scientific researches, may consider it. It’s origin in the immaterial relate it to that realm, which we can term as Space-Time-Lessness” (GA, Occidental Metamorphosis, I, 297).

 

The Ever-Present Origin

 

It might be interpreted as an excuse for not offering now more details of the Gebserian approach to ‘Origin’ and ‘Presence’. But the Gebserian Lighthouse as I notice it has to be looked at by single and by conjointly pioneering humans in co-operative processes. Here is the place where ‘Seekers’ ‘For the Future as It Emerges’ as manifested in ‘Theory U’ and those of the’ Ever-Present Origin’ might join their journeys.

When Gebser speaks, as the title of his opus magnum shows, from ‘Ursprung und Gegenwart’ from The Ever-Present Origin. It is this Origin, who manifested and manifests itself through The Awakening of Consciousness - as History indicates - as the Archaic, Magic, Mythical and Mental Structures. “All mutations are phenomenologically co-present in human consciousness” (EPO, 42).

A few highlights delineated may touch, how difficult it is, to ‘free’ – not by neglecting! - ourselves from our being ‘frozen’ in a mental-rational-intellectual mindset. Restructuration is the bridge for our time:

 

  • The History of the Awakening of Consciousness let us participate in the process of “man in transition”. The opus magnum is “the account of the nascence of a new world and a new consciousness. (EPO, 1).
  • From the perspectival to the ‘a-perspectival’ worldview; space-free, time-free;
  • Superseding Dualism;
  • A world without opposite and thus a world of connectedness, ‘togetherness’; integrat;
  • A-perspectival, a-rational, diaphanous, integrating, integral.

 

To shift a system, you have to change the structures which created it. But from where do the changing structures come? We need – because we are already accompanied when looking to the integral manifestations in our world – a new ‘consciousness structure’! Just one dense extract of the final statements in EPO:

“It is this arational sense also that the designation ‘integral consciousness structure’ – of which today’s man, in mutation, is the bearer – should be understood…

The extrication from the mental-rational, which man is today accomplishing; his increasing capability, not just of viewing the world as a representation but also of perceiving it as transparency; the supersession of the once necessary duality which enabled the detachment requisite for consciousness-intensification: all these processes restructuration point to a fundamentally new mode of realization, overdetermining and mutating from the previous realization” (EPO, 543).

 

Enlightened Points

 

Gebsers view transforms Kelvys ‘Points of Light’ into ‘Emerging Enlightened Points’ already implied in Olafs ‘Figures’ but coming into Being – now.

Here opens the possibility of a generative dialogue about topics with Melanie Goodwill including those roots she is talking about. Thomas Hübl and the Traumata fixed in a frozen world could be connected with the deficient mental-rational consciousness which prevents an efficient integration of former structures and also giving space to the possibility of Recovery from colonization of thoughts and deeds and challenging for a de-colonization, as Angel Acosta remarks, in a world without opposites.

 

Involution

Jayse Pei Yu Lee
Involution and Evolution

 

Olaf let us ‘waking up’ into the direction and into feathery shapes of a new Sphere. If we succeed in ‘seeing through the world’ - illustrated in the lightful drawing of Jayse Pei Yu Lee, witnessing what could be interpreted as ‘Faith-bound Re-ligio’ -there opens a view on the whole as ‘Prae-ligio’, insight and presentiation with the Ever-Present Origin (EPO, 529; note 1, 533 and EPO, 543).

 

Homo integer

 

Gebser describes the ‘qualities’ of the homo integer of tomorrow:

 

“Haste is replaced by silence and the capacity for silence;
Goal oriented, purposive thought is replaced by unintentionalness;
The pursuit of power is replaced by the genuine capacity of love;
Quantitative idle motion (Leerlauf) is replaced by the qualitative spiritual process;
Manipulation is replaced by the patient acceptance;
Mechanistic classification and organization is replaced by the ‘being-in-order’ (In-der-Ordnung-sein);
Prejudice is replaced by the renunciation of value judgements, that is to say, the emotional short-circuit (Kurzschluss) is replaced by unsentimental tolerance;
Action is replaced by attitude (Haltung);
Homo faber is replaced by homo integer;
The divided human being is replaced by the whole human being;
The emptiness of the limited world is replaced by the open expanse of the open world.”
(Gebser, GA, V/I, 62 f.; quoted in Johnson, 2019, 170)

 

Many from all of these can be found in an analogue way in ‘Theory U’. What has to be emphasized may be expressed this way: „Everyone is free to achieve this. Whoever gambles away this freedom has gambled and lost his life and death” (EPO, 532). These fields –
Gebsers complex historical examinations and illuminating manifestations of an aperspectival world also the Theory U’s manifolded ecological manifestations and the communicative-dynamic processes have to be continued and widened in the time to come.
From Gebsers view this requires a GAIA Journey on the base of mutated new Attitudes:

 

GAIA - Grounded Awakening of Integral Attitudes.

 

And: Why not sharing this GAIA-Journey with those who are following the stream as the is indicating


GAIA - Global Activity of Intention and Action?

 

To find a ‘joint language’:


In ‘Presenece’ we read about “becoming servant of the whole”, finding a space of “non action, (where) nothing is left undone”, arising the capacity for true freedom “when we ‘sacrifice’ our ‘unfree will’ to our ‘grand will’ and grasp, what Martin Buber spells out this way: “The free man is he who wills without arbitrary self-will. … He believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him… He intervenes no more, but at the same time, he does not let things merely happen. He listens to what is emerging from himself, to the course of being in the world; not in order to be supported by it, but in order to bring it to reality as it desires” (Presence, 148 f.). Man ‘answers’ this ‘Grand will’ as ‘it desires’. But he also ‘knows’ that ‘it is in need of him’.

With our deficient mental-rational capacity we might easily be entrapped to make a ‘deal’ out of it: I feel your desire and I make it true. But for what I’m doing am I really open for the blessing given to me? As far as I notice Communities of Transformation are struggling with it.

Jeremy Johnson with his clear view and distinguished language helps us to deepen our understanding and ‘non-doing’: “The efficient mental structure is perhaps harbinger for tomorrow’s integral human mutation; a human species that has effectually become not the self-serving ego of a narrowed materialism but a diaphanous spiritual being in a participatory relationship with origin’s creative and mutational process. Since all structures are present in us, we can individually decide to orient ourselves towards such a future, as Gebser gently and repeatedly instructs throughout his body of work this is not only a mental action but an integral allowing…” (Johnson, STTW, 114). So, doesn’t then our GAIA-Journey is entering another Sphere, deeper level:

 

GAIA – Global Activity of Intention and Allowing or

GAIA as - Grounded Awakening of Integral Allowing?

 

This ‘allowing’ may be ‘filled’ in different ways. But should not people of ‘GAIA-Communities’ talk about this ‘quality of being’, share their experiences, communicate such a future oriented understanding of a becoming ‘Integrat’?

To understand what is in need of us we have to make a ‘leap’, illustrated by Kelvy Bird ‘CROSSING the THRESHOLD’ (Theory U, 2016, XVII).

Gebser calls this ‘mutational leap’. From the perspectival to the a-perspectival world, from rational to a-rational, to a diaphanous world.

Let us understand Olaf Baldinis drawing as an invitation: Navigating together – Gebserians, U-followers and others – towards, yet being enfolded in a crepuscular enigma, the dawn of reconciling matter and mind in ‘Seeing through the World’.

 

 

Some more aspects

 

Quantification is not a good way to underline thoughts or insights. Nevertheless, I want to add four more Lighthouses animating some more diverse sights. Multifold insights may encourage the Presencing Community in its diversity - and others too - to express the plurality of approaches and to develop comprehensive dialogues.

In his letter from July 27th 2021 Otto Scharmer encourages by himself to become active in this way, when he writes:
“Being alive at such a profound planetary threshold moment poses a critical question to each and every one of us:
What is my response to all of this, what is our response to this condition, how am I -- and how are we -- going to show up in this moment?

Never before in the history of the planet has there been a generation of people whose action or inaction came with such a massive irreversible impact than us.

It's on us.

Now is our time to stop, to see, to sense, to go into stillness, and to put ourselves into the service of what is wanting to emerge.”

 

Therefore, I continue with...

 

Lighthouse 4: Zen

This Lighthouse is sending the Question in the world: ‘Why to search’?

 

The Ox has never been lost.

 

The Lighthouse doesn’t say that everybody has to be or become a follower of Zen. There are people who are going this WAY. To be with them in dialogue and to exchange
It is not my own fragmentary practical experience with Zen but there is a deep spiritual desire which comes up in my heart when meditating the story of The Ox and his Shepherd’which speaks about the ‘ox’ allegorically our ‘primordial Self’ and which reminds me the ‘two’ self in Theory U. The story begins with a somehow ‘shocking question’in the text to the first picture: “Why to search for? Since time immemorial the ox never has been missed. But it happened…”

The way how the shepherd finds, domesticates, ‘forgets’ and transforms his ‘self’ is the ZEN-WAY. The consciousness melted on this way calls Willgis Jäger as ‘arational’ and it is out of this that the shepherd returns in the daily life to the marketplace. The ‘marketplace’ is also a metaphor of the evolutionary process in which man is involved – a process of the divine creativity – one may say source or origin. And Jäger draws it with two other pictures: The first one is: “The timeless consciousness manifests as the Unknown, Unmanifested, Absolute and Divine, which rest in pure Potence, Emptiness, Freedom. It possesses no Structure, no Form, no Movement it is a pure, immediate awareness. It is timeless, omnipresent and doesn’t know separation. The Unknown and Absolute appears also as individual Life, as a specific, complete concrete form, it manifests as our quite personal Life… Unique, distinctive, nonrecurring I am the musical note in the symphony of God and I am at the same time the music which sounds timelessly and doesn’t no beginning and end.” The other one reads: “I am one figure of the infinite player on this chessboard evolution. This player plays himself as this figure. I am the Played. To understand myself also as Player, this is the aim of all Mystic.”

And Jäger as a christian Zen-Master – without ‘false respect’ of the Institution Church – densifies these pictures: “The Awakening of man is an Awakening of God. The Awakening of Society is an Awakening of God in Society. And the Awaking of the Cosmos is an Awakening of God in Evolution.” (Westöstlich, pages 105- 107).

 

Praeligio


What does it mean, to be aware of this circle of illumination in man and waring it in the present daily life? Is this what Gebser means: Perceive how ‘Origin’ unfolded in man’s becoming conscious and ask how this consciousness mutates in man? These questions should ray for man in the Decade of Transformation or of ‘Transfiguration allowing him to enfold in ‘prae-ligio’ as being present of origin and presentiate it at the same ‘time’ as an obligation to the present (EPO, 529).It may sound as iteration but it also may help to understand: We are ‘approaching’ a ‘state of consciousness’ which might be called ‘integral’ and/or ‘cosmic’. Other terms are ‘Emptiness, Deity, Sunyata, Ground (Grund)’. “Man experience the pure Being, Origin (Ursprung), out of which everything ‘derives’. It is a stage, which precedes all what can come into existence. At the same time, one experiences, that Being is nothing else then what comes into existence: ‘Emptiness is Form, Form is ‘Emptiness’. Nature and Super-Nature (Übernatur) are Not-Two (Nicht-Zwei). In Zen it is the stage where the Enlightened enters the Marketplace. All Things are One and at the same time separated.” (Jäger, Wiederkehr, 28).

It’s not to compare but to combine these processes with the ‘openness’ in Theory U and the roots – analogue to the story of the Ox and his Shepherd – are deep-seated, because, as Peter Senge remarks, “…our culture’s dominant story is a kind of prison. It’s a story of separation – from one another, from nature, and ultimately even from ourselves. In extraordinary moments – like Otto’s fire story or Joseph’s experience in Baja - we break out of the story. We encounter a world of being one with ourselves, others, nature, and life in a very direct way. It’s beautiful and awe-inspiring. It shifts our awareness of our world and ourselves in radical ways…” (Presence, 222). And Joseph Jaworski concludes on the base of David Bohm’s insight: There is “separation without separateness” (Presence, 195).

 

Here again is the moment to underline the intention of this paper/text: We are arrived in a world which allows us these experiences and which obliges us to perceive it and to impart it. And Questions as Lighthouses are sending out their rays to illuminate and to elevate into light ‘What happens in this decade of Transformation’! While going on we are allowed to supersede, to become translucent, to perceive and impart diaphaneity while walking over the Marketplace: ‘How it suits he enters the wine tavern and fish stands, to let the drunken people awake to themselves.’ (49)

 

The Presencing Community ‘embraces’ a Global Community somehow ‘one-minded’ and at the same time ‘diverse and colourful’ oriented. Therefore, Lighthouses may create a ‘kaleidoscope of colorful paradigm’ and a ‘symphony of singing-rays’ – as Goethe expresses in Faust’s Prologue ‘The Sun sings out, in ancient mode’ -, to tune into the world. From here I conclude that’s sufficient to mention only two more Lighthouses though radical in their powers of rays and in the variegation of their lights they are. These Lighthouses and others more may support to navigate consciously.

Lighthouse 5: ‘The Battle of the Soul’

(Literal translation of the Dutch title ‘Concerning the Salvation of the Human Soul’; German: Über die Rettung der Seele). Time has come for a dialogue between Rudolf Steiner and Jean Gebser (Dreher, Kolumne Inklusion, 2021, 40).

 

Anthroposophy

 

For me, Bernard Lievegoed appears as a witness – analogue to Gebser and Zen-Buddhism too - for the question of the ‘development of humanity as a whole’. Following Rudolf Steiners ‘Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts’. Lievegoed’s work incorporates what Steiner expressed as the purpose of Anthroposophy: “Anthroposophy is a path of insight which leads the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual of the cosmos” (‘Anthroposophie ist ein Erkenntnisweg, der das Geistige im Menschenwesen zum Geistigen im Weltall führen möchte’). Anthroposophy, therefore, is a path of insight, an ‘Erkenntnisweg’. Properly speaking, the word ‘Erkenntnis’ is hard to translate. Knowledge is not sufficient because it refers too much to something outer. The word ‘insight’ is more fitting, although that too does not fully cover it…” (Lievegoed, 34 f.).

 

Leaders of Humanity

 

I am conscious that with Lievegoed will be offered a genuine, but not for everyone accepting approach. My intention is to encourage and provoke not to neglect those Lighthouses which seem to send rays in completely different frequencies. Lievegoed is a witness for this standing at an abyss, illuminating the background which led to this situation and to talk openly about “lofty hierarchical beings” (21), about “opposing powers” (101) and how “leaders of humanity …bring the most important impulses in our time” (23). Lievegoed also talks explicitly how people all over the world are finding together to put themselves “in the service of the difficulties” (95) of others. And not this only is a link to the hint of the Global Forum ‘towards others’. For Lievegoed this service is rooted in “a new morality, a heart-warming morality, that is not given from above in the form of the Ten Commandments, or one that is dreamed up by philosophers and moralists. It will be a morality that comes out of direct life experience, and that will be universally human. This morality will lead people to willing deeds of sacrifice.(98). This reminds to the ‘open heart’ in Theory U and those ‘Places of Compassion’ to be created. “ For Lievegoed it was clear: “In the anthroposophical movement we will have to learn to work together with each other in groups in order to cope with this future. It does not matter what kinds of groups: study groups, life sharing groups, working groups…Join together to run a school, a business, or a farm in a deeply human way. We have to be ready for the things that are coming towards us” (113) related to the ‘Grounded Actions’ of the Global Forum.

 

Opposing Powers

 

‘Those things that are coming’ are strongly connected “the opposing powers” which let the Earth freezing and one must know their strategies (101 ff.). Analogue to Melanie Goodwill who spoke about prophecies of her elders, Lievegoed mentions that the nadir of the Battle of the Soul will be between 2020 and 2040. “Millions of people will perish. But millions will also resist” (113). A vision - far from our situation?

Lighthouse 6: The Great Re-Think

Re-Think everything


A 21st Century Renaissance (Colin Tudge) doesn’t want to be omitted. Not only because of his newly published work and my personal participation these days in an exciting presentation and workshop of the Pari Centre, but because of the results of his studies and his intention – “…transformation; metamorphosis and metanoia; nothing less than a Renaissance – re-birth…” (16) and his intention “to re-think everything” (16) without the ‘thinking itself’! So, not only what kind of Renaissance individually and collectively we must bring about, but ‘where’ is this Renaissance ‘rooted in’?

 

To touch a possible answer beforehand:
“The vision of this book is utopian” states Colin Tudge at the end of his work, but remarks: “Ideas qua ideas, including those of science, philosophy, the arts, and religion, must be given free rein to go where they will. But insofar as we act on those ideas – translate science into high tech, or moral philosophizing into politics and economics – we need to direct them towards vision of abundant and diverse life and universal harmony” (Tudge, 2021, 362).

 

Again, it is not the place here to go into details of Colin Tudges work. I like the rays his Lighthouse is sending out when he bases his Agenda for Renaissance on a wide field of science, religion, arts and practicalities of living.

lI feel it venturously but somehow conspiring to reverse this old utopian world of Thomas More in our actual time: Utopia as -opia. It is a ‘topos’ being experienced everywhere, everytime and from anybody by passing the rocess – as I mentioned already above. So, what could it help when creating topoi and including Tudge’s Goal including ‘Convivial Societies’, Actions for example with ‘enlightened agriculture’, democratic infrastructures and mindset related to metaphysics and to ‘Perennial wisdom’ in everyday life? Not in contrary to Gebser but Gebsers approach might provoke Tudge and vice versa.

 

These examples may underline the exceptional approach of Gebser. They also want to mark explicitly that there are different routes to reach, as Japanese people say, the peak of Mt. Fujii. This variety is encouraging to trust in one’s own way and at the same time to be open for others and for co-creating out of what’s emerging from the future. For this way of co-operating the ‘mutation of consciousness’ seems to become a ‘key’ to open the gate into the ‘Integral A-Perspectival World’ in the same ‘moment’ initiating us to participate, impart in the ‘lucidity of origin’ (Johnson, 136) – may be a kind of ‘initiation’.

Lighthouse 7: Education 4.0.

Gebser was conscious of the fact that sequences of knowledge are not sufficient when there is no possibility to convert them into life supporting awareness. One example may be given in the field of Education the last Lighthouse in this scenery.

 

Not to change the world – but the view of the world


Why? For what? Out of what? Can be asked the Questions of this Lighthouse.
Consciousness as the actual world process (eigentliche Weltprozess), which doesn’t eliminate anything. This experience doesn’t change or trans-form the world, but the view of the world. And this new sight of the world changes, transform the personality, thus metamorphizing lastly the world.
Here Education comes to play its exceptional role. An Education towards ‘integral attitudes’ contributing its part to GAIA.

This last Lighthouse sends its messages directly in the Community as one could read after the Global Forum ended. Via Facebook the note was sent:

 

‘Join a Global Community of Conscious Educators! We support educators to take their place as active co-creators in the planetary shift in consciousness by evolving how we facilitate learning and how we support children, families, and life-long learners.

You are invited!
Are you a parent, educator, facilitator, counselor, visionary leader committed to the emotional well-being, creativity, and lifelong learning of your learners and yourself, in service of a vision for a flourishing humanity and thriving planet?

You are invited to join a conversation to share your vision and your questions, to talk about your challenges and needs, and to weave new connections to create a global community.

This conversation is hosted by ecl. We are systemic practitioners passionate about enhancing the lives of children and families through systemic constellation in education.

Creating a Global Community of Conscious Educators

Join Us!’

(https://www.facebook.com/events/322144112869572/?ref=newsfeed)

 

A direct connection to the field of Education gives Georges Pfaffenschneider in his article ‘En route to Gebserville’ (‘Unterwegs nach Gebserville’), a not yet translated and impressive text from 2003.

In Germany Silke Weiß is upfront with the Pioneers of Education (https://www.lernkulturzeit.de/).

 

 

GENIUS-for-all

 

I suggest, establishing ‘GENIUS for all’ as an interwoven net: GENIUS - Global Educational Network for an Integral Universal Society. Beyond GENIUS includes quite more fields: ‘E’ as Ecological, Ethical, ‘I’ as ‘Inclusive’ or ‘Integral’, and ‘U’ also as ‘Universal’.

Thus, Genius minded people connected through a GENIUS-web may be grounded in new ‘Attitudes in Fields of Human Praxis and Action Research’ too, - in which ‘Evidence-based results’ will be extended and superseded through ‘Transparence (diaphanic)-based knowledge and experience’ – to co-create the world of tomorrow - today! Georg Pfaffenschneider already gives us a first answer.

 

Homo integer

 

And ‘Theory U’, ‘Presencing’ and ‘The Ever-Present Origin’? ‘Their’ coming together shall be understood as navigating as homo integer towards a planetary culture (Johnson, 2019, 153). Will there be built a co-operative Lighthouse not as a Question but stating and sending in each other:

“We come from the future, and pull the present into a new potentiality. Let us make it, then, a spiritual present” (Johnson, 2019, 173)"

 

“It’s on us!”

References

Dreher, Walther. ‘Integral menschlich‘ en route. Kolumne Inklusion. Erziehungskunst. Waldorfpädagogik heute, 85. Jhgg., 04/2021, page 40. Editor Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen, Stuttgart
Gebser, Jean. The Ever-Present Origin, trans. Noel Barstad with Algis Mickunas. Athens, OH: University of Ohio Press, 1997
Gebser, Jean. Gesamtausgabe (GA) in eight volume. Schaffhausen: Novalis Verlag, 1975-1980
Jaworski, Joseph. Source. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012
Johnson, Jeremy: Seeing Through the World. Jean Gebser and Ontegral Consciousness.Seattle, WA: Revelore Press, 2019
Lievegoed, Bernard. The Battle for the Soul. English Edition. Stroud, UK: Hawthorn Press 1994
Müller, Frank J. (2018): Blick zurück nach vorn – WegbereiterInnen der Inklusion. Band 1: Alfred Sander, Hans Eberwein, Helmut Reiser, Jutta Schöler, Rainer Maikowski, Reimer Kornmann, Ulf Preuss-Lausitz, Ulrike Schildmann und Wolfgang Jantzen. Gießen: Psychosozial Verlag
Blick zurück nach vorn – WegbereiterInnen der Inklusion. Band 2: Annedore Prengel, Georg Feuser, Hans Wocken, Helga Deppe-Wolfinger, Irmtraud Schnell, Nina Hömberg, Volker Schönwiese, Walther Dreher und Wolfgang Podlesch. Gießen: Psychosozial Verlag
Scharmer, C. Otto: Theory U. Cambridge, MA: Published by SoL, 2007
Senge, Peter. Scharmer, C. Otto. Jaworski, Josoph. Flowers, Betty Sue (Editor). Presence. Cambridge, MA: Published by SoL, 2004
Tudge, Colin. The Great Re-think. A 21st Century Renaissance. Pari, Italy: Pari Publishing, 2021
Wehr, Gerhard. Jean Gebser. Individuelle Transformation vor dem Horizont eines neuen Bewusstseins. Petersberg: Verlag Via Nova, 1996
Zen Geschichte. Der Ochs und sein Hirte. 3rd edition. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1976

 

References via Internet:


Dreher, Walther. „Mit Jean Gebser ‚online unterwegs‘. Eine persönliche Erfahrung.“. Integrales Forum (https://www.integralesforum.org/integrale-perspektiven/2021/204-ip-01-)2021-durch-die-welt-sehen-sonderausgabe-in-zusammenarbeit-mit-der-gebser-gesellschaft-bern/5349-mit-jean-gebser-online-unterwegs-eine-persoenliche-erfahrung-von-dr-walther-dreher
Pfaffenschneider, Georges. Unterwegs nach Gebserville. (With Jean Gebser on tour) (http://www.j200ean-gebser-gesellschaft.ch/TransDok/Gebserville.pdf)
Weiß, Silke. https://www.lernkulturzeit.de/people/lehrerfortbildung-silke-weiss/

 

 

 

Children_with_cancer

"One thing I'll never do: To give up!"

In 2007 I tried during a Conference in Japan to call the participants attention to the approach of Otto Scharmers Theory U and Jean Gebsers time-free a-perspectival integral ontology.

 

But as all the years before I felt that such seeds couldn’t find yet any ground to sprout. What I notice is, that today this ground is more prepared, but still there is work to do to transform the mental-rational to an integral becoming conscious. So the text is a hint of my own search and of my more or less consciously breathing in the atmosphere of the integral.

 

But today I become step by step more aware of what Jeremy Johnson expresses this way: „The efficient mental structure is perhaps a harbringer for tomorrow’s integral human mutation; a human species that has effectually become not the self-serving ego of a narrowed materialism but a diaphanous spiritual being in a participatory relationship with oringin’s creative and mutational process…“ (Johnson, STTW, 114). In this context the former lecture has to be read.

 

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I want to thank Professor Takeda for the invitation to this international congress and I wish the Forum an outstanding result for the scientifically and practically research in this sensitive and existential field.

 

Cologne is situated in the heart of Europe. It’s famous for its Cathedral ‘Koelner Dom’, but for its University and with the biggest Department of Heilpaedagogik (Remedial Education/Special Education) in Europe too. I have just finished a more then thirty year work at the University in the field of ‘Heilpaedagogik’ (Remedial Education/Special Education). From this background I’d like to approach the theme of the Forum in my presentation. It will frame in a sense the specified contribution from the national and international experts in the field of medicine, education and care.

 

For making this condensed presentation possible I need your open mind, open heart and open will of understanding.

 

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“One thing I’ll never do: To give up!” is written on the rainbow coloured bracelet of the German Children Cancer Foundation (PP Armband) and Sven-Hendrik, a boy who became only 11 years old, presented in 1996 to the housewarming of the Parents-House on the University Hospital Campus in Cologne a picture saying “Only bats let themselves go” (“Nur Feldermäuse lassen sich hängen.”) i.e. “let themselves hang down” i.e. in German ‘don’t fight’.

 

Children make clear what life means for them. How does the network around these children respond to their needs?

 

The presentation consists of three parts:

I. A holistic view on the local situation of children with cancer in the city of Cologne

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On the clinic campus you find a school which is called ‘School for ill students’ (Schule fuer Kranke) or ‘Hospital school’ (Krankenhausschule). Formally it is one of ten special school types in the school system of the Federal Republic of Germany.

 

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The name of the Hospital school is ‘Johann-Christoph-Winters’. The school – situated in different parts of the city – it is also called a ‘Special school in the university clinic’. The law says: If a child will be ill for more then four weeks it has the right and the duty to visit the school for ill students. May be from here derives the motto of the ‘Johann-Christoph-Winters’ school:

 

„The ill child needs therapy, because it is ill. And it needs education, because it is a child.“ 

 

Two groups of students:
1. Students with mental and psychological problems.
2. Students with physical problems (i.e. cancer, other diseases).

Two groups of children and youth going to this school are focused:

The first and the bigger one are students with ‘mental and psychological’ problems, about one hundred pupils in a year, trained in a special school building or in special places in different clinics.

 

The other group are students with ‘physical’ problems like those with cancer, dialysis and mucoviscidosis patients or those with cardiologic problems, except transplantations.

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The children oncology ward, day clinic and ambulance are admitting about sixty to eighty patients every year.
Forty of them are visiting during the year the school. About twenty are taught every week.

 

There are supporting measures around the school:
The children, their parents as well as the teachers are supported in the hospital by a psychologist and a social worker. All persons engaged with the children are forming a network of cooperation, also with the mother schools or when the children need support at home during specific rehabilitation. Located on the campus is the so called ‘Parents home’.

Not only as a place to stay for parents in 15 apartments but also with a variety of activities it has a very specific function on the campus for parents, children and the clinical staff too.

It can also be mentioned, that just now the department for cardiologic treatments of children starts cooperation with the children oncology, because they discovered mutual problems about they could share opinions and experiences. The same concerns with the Mildred Scheel house, hospice home for adult persons, situated near the departments for oncology and the Ambulant Children Hospice Work in the city of Cologne.

 

Coming back to the school:

 

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For the children with cancer the ‘Johann-Christoph-Winters’ HOSPITAL SCHOOL offers for the twenty students every week reduced lessons from primary school until junior high school age with the support of three teachers, one of a special school and two of normal schools.

Classes are given as bedside teaching, or in one therapeutic room or in the classroom on the basement floor. Mrs. Breidenbach – one of the three teachers - is teaching there already more then sixteen years.

 

As she told me the contents of the subjects follows the curriculum of regular school classes. The main subjects are math, reading, writing and foreign languages. One lady as an art therapist works specifically with the children in this field. - Children under the age of 6 are cared by a Kindergarten teacher in the oncology ward.

 

The background why I speak of a holistic view is the strong network of cooperation between the different groups.

 

The school for ill students is an ‚educational-ecologic-niche‘

(Director Oelsner)

 

But somehow the school for ill children is an ‘educational-ecologic niche’, as Mr. Oelsner, the director of the Johann-Christoph-Winters-School puts it in a conversation. The school belongs to the special school system. Beside besides utter barriers like the distance to the mother school, the lack of friends or bodily consequences after the medical treatment which make it difficult for the children to return to their former classes – it is also not easy because of the formal character of the school as a special one.

 

Here I should make a critical comment to the school system in Germany which interpret children as exceptional and which developed for them ‘special schools’. This is not the right way. Though the child needs therapy and care because it is ill, the school for ill students could and should be more included in the general school system and especially in the general consciousness of the society.

 

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In Cologne the classroom in the hospital signalizes and symbolizes that the students belong to the general school life.

 

Let’s take once more a short and specific view on teaching these children. It might be typical, that the main subjects taught to them are those with more objective contents: Math, reading and writing or foreign languages. The importance of these subjects in normal school education and therefore also in the school for the ill students is without doubt. But the given moment, the here and the now of the diagnosis cancer produces an inevitable tension. Though art therapy, close connections between teachers and students allow a deep understanding and empathic relationship, the question what education in life threatening situations means is difficult to answer.

 

For children who are hit with the diagnosis of cancer isn’t it paradox to learn abilities for tomorrow and for teachers to teach them and to talk with them about the future not knowing if there is an evening of today?

 

Might this be one reason that the fluctuation of teachers, teaching these children in Japan, is high as the research of Takeda shows: 77% of the teachers finish their work before the end of the three years period? Could one say that the problem of teaching children with cancer is a problem of teachers – too, so that children and teachers –and all other experts - are connected in an exceptional situation? And if it is a problem of the teachers, what might be the reason for it?

 

There are reasons which could explain this:

• the tabu in public awareness

• the lack of the theme in teacher training programs at Universities and Colleges and conceptual vagueness in school structures

and last but not least

• the existential situation

 

Are these real or the only reasons for explaining the above fact? Or might be hidden behind this experience a deeper source which makes it difficult to deal with the different problems? And could this deeper source guide us to a new approach to existential situations?

This is my hypothesis which I want to follow in part II, which tries to transcend the given situation and asks how to develop new views.

 

Part II connects our world-experience with the existential situation of the children:

II. An unknown dimension of our ‘world-experience’

The crucial point in the situation for children with cancer and their parents, doctors, nurses, teachers and people of social services is:

With the diagnosis cancer one aspect inundates absolutely life – it’s time: The unknown dimension of time and the possibility of an inescapable limitation of the child’s ‘life time’. Looking with the ‘chronometry’ i.e. with the ‘watch’ at the life situation of children with cancer there only can follow helplessness or desperation. Very often called: ‘Fighting against the time’.

 

When we hear ‘time’ we connect it mostly with the so called ‘watch-time’ which is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and years and so on. But can we discover another dimension to deal with this situation?

 

Listening to the cultural philosopher Jean Gebser ‘time is the sign of the 20th and 21st century’ but not in its ‘spatial quality’ as measurable size like the watch-time but ‘time as intensity’. For Gebser time is intensity, it is a quality – not only a measurable quantity:

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“Time is (of course also) time of the watch, but beyond this time is time of nature, cosmic time or time of stars; its biological period, rhythm, metric; mutation, discontinuity, relativity; vital dynamic, psychic energy, mental dividing; time expresses itself as a conscious unit of past, presence and future; time is creativity, imagination, work, also motor activity.”
(Gebser III, 382; V/I, 168)

 

Being involved to work and live with ill children means to realize this quality of time. When time is vital, biologic, psychic, social or cosmic intensity – which means to be not bound to the ‘chronos’ but liberated from chronos, a-chronos – then time for children with cancer can be translated as:

 

‚Time‘ for ill children

 

‘Time of losing hairs because of medical treatment; time as the body condition after chemical or radiotherapy and being touched by warm hands; its dreaming and anxiety in the night; its joking and laughing, its being connected and being treated as a partner through participating in the transparency of knowledge of the experts about the child daily changing situation; its flying to the sky and touching the earth – as the swallow and the girl’ on the Congress Poster do.

 

We as teachers are confronted with this ‘time’, which means we have to try to understand this intensity of life, to include it in our teaching and education. Doing this means to realize the unit of past, presence and future. Understanding this shift opens us a not yet experienced aspect of our human existence and the future tasks.

 

I must omit to introduce to you detailed Jean Gebser (1905-1973). He is not yet known in Japan. I found only two researchers - Mrs. Professor Ikeda Richiko (International Christian University Tokyo) and Mrs. Professor Isa Masako (Okinawa Christian University) who studied his work and who mention him in some articles.

 

Only these remarks: In his elaborated evolutionary model Gebser identifies four major configurations of consciousness in our collective past through which whole cultures and epochs have their distinct style of thought and life. He named the following four structures of world-experience:

 

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• the archaic structure
• the magical structure
• the mythical structure and
• the mental structure

 

In his monumental work The Ever-Present Origin he illustrates, “that we are currently witnesses to, and participants in, a fifth major organization of our cognitive field” which he calls

 

• the a-rational or integral structure of consciousness.

For Gebser modern consciousness is an inter play of all five structures. What does it mean when we connect the integral structure of consciousness to education?

 

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Education

 

Gebser wasn’t an educator. Therefore we don’t find a ‘direct translation’ of his ‘archaeology of consciousness.’

 

Georges Pfeiffenschneider (http://www.integraleweltsicht.de/Transparente-Welt/indextransparente-Welt.htm) offers such a translation into the field of education. I follow his description how he demonstrates the influence of a new integral world view to education in general and what this could mean especially for ill children.

 

The following aspects are quite shortcut and they can’t be more then impulses in which everybody has to put new life in by himself. Selected aspects are:

 

Processes

The integral consciousness allows students and teachers to be included in the process of life and work. All doing, growth and fade, has to become transparent or ‘diaphan’ as Gebser says.

For ill students it could mean just not to cut them off of daily life, also not of the daily life in the hospital. The child should know about everything what happens with and around him. This means to keep contact with the whole team in the hospital and with the mother-school too.

 

Every day has a beginning and an ending. Every encounter starts and finishes consciously with the beginning and the end. In all subjects should be included the aspect, that our world is not only an object outside of ourselves but depends on us – i.e.: the world is our creation and what we find in the world is a construction of man.

 

Beyond this experience it is also important to let the children participate in:

 

Primeval Experiences

It means to dive in aspects of our magic consciousness through which we realize through all our life the unity with the world. These experiences doesn’t mean to go (only) to leisure parks like Disneyland. These modern places of diversion may allow superficially the same physiological reactions but they don’t offer the deep cosmic connection which might be given through the experience of the

 

night, sea, caves, grass or rain,
music and dancing to drums,
fire or
other adventures.

 

You may perhaps say out of your experiences just this is not possible for these ill children.

 

Horse riding; Die Piraten; Filmproject Mr. ISE Shinichi (Asahi Shimbun March 2007)

But activities from parents in the Cologne ‘Parents home’ or the project ‘Die Piraten’ or the film project of Mr. Ise Shinichi about a leisure time - initiated by medical doctors - make sure, how important such ‘primeval experiences’ are in those – and of course in all - children lives!

 

World-Experience

This means the connection to the physical and social world around us. Every teacher knows the wide range of such connections. For ill children this experience seems quite limited. The ‘world’ in the hospital shrinks to a ‘small space’. Therefore teachers have to make the world in other ways wide and vivid: ‘World’ is for ill children everything around them in the hospital:

 

When the breakfast is given at the bedside it’s the chance to connect through it the children to the field of the world by remembering from where the single parts of the meal origins. The classroom should be a field of welcoming the child in the world of learning and culture. There could be organized online teaching and learning too.

 

Mobile classroom furniture might make it easier to link the child at least utterly to the world ‘outside’.

 

World-Sanctification

‘Sanctification’ is the translation of the German term ‘Heiligung’. Pfeiffenschneider speaks here from ‘Weltheiligung’ which is translated with ‘world-sanctification’. It may sound quite pathetic for those who are used to think more secular.

 

In the expression ‘world-sanctification’ are included terms like whole, healing and holy. These terms can be understood as guidelines for man to experience a ‘world-unity’ and help man that he consciously adapts himself to this unification.

 

World-sanctification points to all educational activities. It helps to re-entry in this primeval unity with the world, followed by the feeling of respect and responsibility. This knowledge and attitude on teacher’s side may help to include the ill child in the experience of this wholeness of the world. The world is healing man and has to be healed by man. The world is whole in the meaning of holy and has to be sanctified by our doing. Meditation, un-conditioned love to the earth, natural rituals, rhythms and the flow of energy in the nature opens the world through our senses.

 

One point may be specially underlined:
The ‘school performance’ of ill children in the integral-diaphan context cannot be judged (only) by measurable achievements but has to be looked at through individual abilities and genuine personal history.

 

My study work in Heilpaedagogik and now the topic of this Forum lead me to the epistemological conviction that in the 21st century education has to be understood out of an existential core and has to be realized on the base of the essence of an integral consciousness.

 

In the 21st century education has to be understood out of an existential core and has to be realized on the base of the essence of an integral consciousness. This consciousness is the fundament for developing education in the frame of Inclusive Education.

 

This kind of integral world view and the relevance to educational processes might be strange for many – or perhaps all - of us. We have been not been educated under such a view and with these qualities.

 

Therefore you may quite legitimately ask the question what has this to do with the “’real’ reality” of children with cancer and their ‘end-of-life care’?

 

One answer may be: To go this way demands deep changes of us.

 

And part III offers a model which may help to deepen our understanding of this existential situation:

III. ‘Theory U’– a way of exploring profound change

In my academic work of the last years a research model from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston (USA) influenced my research and teaching.
Just a few months ago Otto Scharmer published ‘Theory U’.

 

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Theory U: Universal social grammar for bringing forth new worlds.

 

Already the subtitle indicates a proximity to Jean Gebsers dimension of Time: ‘Leading from the Future as It Emerges’ and the dynamic of a social renewal through what Scharmer calls ‘The Social Technology of Presencing’.
Presencing – a neologism of ‘Sensing’ and ‘Presence’.

 

When Jean Gebser was a thinker who opens us a view on human existence on the base of the archaeology of consciousness, then C. Otto Scharmer is an outstanding thinker and scientist too who directs our attention on the WAY of ‘Exploring profound change in people, organizations and society’ as it can be inferred from the subtitle of ‘Presencing’. WAY means much more than a ‘scientific method’ – WAY could be best translated with the Japanese DO.

 

Before we begin to follow in short steps the ‘Process U’ it’s allowed to ask, why should we take the task and may be the risk to dive in such a dynamic? A possible answer is connected with the planned outcome of the research project. The Japanese research group hopes to develop a practical model for cooperation of different groups of experts – especially between medical doctors and teachers - and a model for teaching children in the final stage by discussing contents and methods.

 

Here we can bridge to the situation which Scharmer describes, when he speaks about ‘a profound blind spot in leadership and in everyday life’. He points that “we can look at leader’s work – when I use the word leader, I refer to all people who engage in creating change or shaping their future, regardless of their formal positions in institutional structures – from three different angles.

 

First we could look at what leaders do…

Second, we could look at the how, the processes leaders use…

And yet, we have never systematically looked at the leader’s work from the third… perspective.

 

The question we have left unasked is: what sources are leaders actually operating from?” This he calls the blind spot “… the place within or around us where our attention and intention originates.”

 

I dare to claim, that in science there is no custom to ask ‘what inner sources are leaders actually operating from’. I also dare to claim, that the fact of 75% of teachers giving up the teaching work before three years has to do with this blind spot. To approach this inner source means to extend our learned understanding. It means to rely not only on our ‘rational scientific tool.’ For Scharmer it is obvious: “Science needs to be performed with the mind of wisdom”.

 

Assuming that groups of experts in and around the hospital school would take the risk to dive into this U, I could imagine the following steps and activities:

 

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RESEARCH.
Synthesis between science, social change, and the evolution of self and consciousness.

 

  • From Downloading of patterns of the past in isolated groups
  • Initiating an interdisciplinary group
  • Suspending: Seeing with fresh eyes
  • Deep dive: Sensing from the field
  • Letting go…
  • PRESENCING
  • Letting come…
  • Enacting: Crystallizing vision and action
  • Embodying: Prototyping
  • Institutionalizing

 

Passing the eye of the needle requires a commitment: “a commitment of letting go everything that isn’t essential and of living according to the ‘letting go/letting come’ principle that Goethe described as the essence of the human journey.

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

‚And if you don‘t know this dying and birth, you are merely a dreary guest on earth.‘

 

Here closes the circle of our thoughts which started with the existential situation of children with cancer, their parents and all the other persons around them. We could recognize how today we are confronted with the emergence of an integral consciousness which allows us to understand the ever present origin and therefore a paradigmatic new quality of life – not only for education but for our cultures and the global connectedness. And last but not least we became aware of the need of a transformation of ourselves, of organizations and of societies.

 

Children with cancer make clear what life means for them: “One thing I’ll never do: To give up!” and “Only bats let themselves go.”

Are we ready for the commitment to accompany them – and all other children who are educated by teachers or met by experts in different educational fields - by passing ourselves – parents, doctors, nurses, social worker, psychologists, educators and others - through the eye of the needle? Are we willing ‘to know this dying and birth’?

 

What I presented might be looked at as hazardous enterprise. I experienced with a group of 20 educational experts from 2005-2007 in Cologne the Process-U. Our project was titled “Teacher-Education-Culture. MOVEment PRO INCLUSION”. We got quite unexpected results.

 

In preparing this congress I personally have become enriched by different new aspects during the last months. At the same time I felt how difficult it is only to talk about this topic. Still I feel myself having not passed the eye of the needle.

The depth of the phenomena of ‘dying and birth’ I felt expressed in an essay of Asada Jiro ‘Hiroshi’s death’ which I warmly recommend you to read.

 

Thank you very much for your attention, your open mind and your open heart!

 

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I wish all of us the open will to start again and again the scientific, practical and personal journey on the Route U - also together with children with cancer though confronted with them in the final stage of their lives.

 

Literature

 

Gebser, Jean, Gesamtausgabe, Schaffhausen 1975
Pfeiffenschneider, Georges, Unterwegs nach Gebserville,
(http://www.integraleweltsicht.de/Transparente-Welt/index-transparente-Welt.htm)
Scharmer, C. Otto, Theory U, Cambridge Mass. 2007
Scharmer, C. Otto, Theorie U, Heidelberg 2009
Übersetzung ins Japanische: http://www.eijipress.co.jp/sp/theoryu/index.html

 

 

Ever-present Origin – Ursprung und Gegenwart

 

Ever-present Origin – Ursprung und Gegenwart

…questionless condoning or painful returning?

 

The phenomenon ‘Origin’ forms the basis of Jean Gebsers work ‘The Ever-Present Origin’. As he mentions in his Preface 1949, “the conception of this work dates from 1932” (EPO, XXVIII). To widen such a “personal view whose evidential character is valid only for the individual”, during seventeen years of studies and research Gebser “intended to lend a generally valid evidential character to the personal validity of the original conception”.

 

In a time with such tremendous turbulences and self-abandon it might be risky to talk about ‘Origin’ but at the same time nothing seems more important than to question for this fundament of our world and ourselves. For me personally it is crucial to recognize that through Gebsers density to deal with ‘Origin’ and the ‘Spiritual’ I may easily overlook, that it is the “‘spiritual’ (das Geistige) and not the spirit” from which he ‘starts’ and which should “become awareness and reality”. To whom the term for the phenomenon ‘spiritual’ may be dubiously he may hardly be able to deal with Gebsers concept. It is the spiritual which ‘ante-dates’ spirit, intellect, ratio and mind. (CE, 1978, II, 12).


I underline in these few lines here, that such a view is crucial for all of us. Looking to all these world focal points and the Corona-Pandemic only materialistic thoughts and actions come in the fore. As long as this happens, we are entangling ourselves in the hedge like in the fairy-tale of the Sleeping Beauty and we are consecrated to death – until the right moment comes and the girl is freed from the curse.
According to the awareness of the Spiritual this moment has to be come now too. While in the fairy-tale the hedge opens by itself and starts blooming in the case of the new way of thinking we are asked to participate actively.

The German Biologist Joachim Illies wrote in 1978 a remarkable preface to ‘Ursprung und Gegenwart’.
“At all times man is moved by the question according to Origin (Ursprung), always he feels the fateful maelstrom in the stream of changing temporal, religious and scientific structures. So, it remains for him – today as through all the time – the questionless condoning, the not knowing drifting or the painful returning to Origin, the feeling of the structures in mind, the searching and struggling for insight, the search for the sense and goal of a possible transformation.

 

And then it happens – always newly in each epoch, in a different language for each generation, but with the interpretation of the same pre-eternal (ur-ewig) – that the questioner and searcher find answer, because single outstanding persons become pathfinder, because those single persons, overtaking the tremendous burden to master the whole, teach us to integrate sense fully parts and to lift the dark, to make the path straightforward, to manifest Origin and to construe the change.”

 

And Illies continues: “Jean Gebser was such a pathbreaker and sense giver…His message of Origin, from the changing of consciousness and thereby at the same time of the spiritual existence of mankind and individuals has to be grasped newly and to be carried on” (Ibid II, 1978, p. 2).

 

Speric Shell

https://www.pinterest.de/pin/420171840217815072/

 

The Babylonian Universe – I owe the hint Danie Hulett, Mutations, Mighty Network (Jeremy Johnson) - might illustrate analogously the five spheres of Jean Gebsers five levels of reality increasing and configuring layers of the human-spiritual Existence and world handling ( Ibid II, 1978, p. 9).

The awakening of consciousness let us gain a deep insight in the layer sequence of our own life and experience. The five levels of consciousness – archaic, magic, mythic, mental-rational and integral – must be traversed by each human being. We find here an inherent order principle of reality (Wirklichkeit) and History, Art, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Myth and Natural Science are the fields out of them we may perceive these five existential levels of the spiritual reality or in which Origin manifests at a time in its genuine visibleness.

 

Once more:
Without accepting this view of Origin (Ursprung) as a Spiritual one to start or continue reading Gebser might be in vain and wasted time.

Accepting it as a genuine insight man moves again in the centre of a system of spheric balls (confer The Babylonian Universe).

 

Joachim Illies view puts it as follows:
“Because what are the five levels of consciousness other than layers, which growing place around each other like circles around a stone thrown in the water. And Gebser leaves no doubt who has thrown the stone into the water: Man didn’t create himself, also he (as subject) doesn’t create the (objective) world, but from the beginning he is ‘in it’, he is ‘Ever-Present Origin’ as created, in whom through the integral consciousness the Creation becomes diaphanous and who in its ground recognizes how Origin lights up” (Ibid II, 1978, p. 12).

According to Illies the goal is “the integral assumption/view of the pure spirit which we call God” – a term which Gebser attributes the overcoming mental level-, integrally spoken “deity or divinity”. Illies remembers what he calls a kind of commitment of Gebser who ones said: “What means lastly personhood, when not the attempt, being humble collaborator of God” (13). This is a message in the dawn of a new ‘mind set’ of our epoch that tells us "But where the danger is, also grows the saving power” (Hölderlin). ‘Danger’ and ‘saving power’ – a polarity which we should take earnestly, understand deeper and find to new attitudes to respond?

 

It sounds as it is written today what Gebser expressed seven decades ago: “The crisis we are experiencing today is not just a European crisis, nor a crisis of morals, economics, ideologies, politics or religion. It is not only prevalent in Europe and America but in Russia and the Far East as well. It is a crisis of the world and mankind such as has occurred previously only during pivotal junctures – junctures of decisive finality for life on earth and for the humanity subjected to them. The crisis of our times and our world is in a process – at the moment autonomously – of complete transformation, and appears headed toward an event which, in our view, can only be described as a ‘global catastrophe’. This event, understood in any but anthropocentric terms, will necessarily com about as a new constellation of planetary extent” (EPO, xxvii).

 

We are moving toward an event which has to be superseded – what a tremendous challenge! But a challenge which is not based on the arbitrariness of man.
In Gebsers words: “We must soberly face the fact that only a few decades separate us from that event. The span of time is determined by an increase in technological feasibility inversely proportional to man’s sense of responsibility – that is, unless a new factor were to emerge which would effectively overcome this menacing correlation.” (Ibid, EPO, xxvii).

The conception of these ideas’ dates 1932 thus seven decades ago. Is it exaggerated to bring this statement in the context with ‘Doomsday Clock 2022’ and that it ‘remains at 100 seconds to midnight’? (https://www.wionews.com/science/doomsday-clock-remains-at-100-seconds-to-midnight-know-what-does-it-mean-446540).

 

Surely not! And should we therefore not finally open our mind, our heart and our mind to become aware of this ‘new factor’?
Gebser underlines: “It is the task of the present work to point out and give an account of this new factor, this new possibility. For if we are not successful – if we should not or cannot successfully survive this crisis by our own insight and assure the continuity of our earth and mankind in the short or long run by a transformation (or a mutation) – the crisis will outlive us.

 

Stated differently, if we do not overcome the crisis, it will overcome us; and only someone who has overcome himself is truly able to overcome. Either we will be disintegrated and dispersed, or we must resolve and effect integrality. In other words, either time is fulfilled in us – and that would mean the end and death for our present earth and (its) mankind – or we succeed in fulfilling time: and this means integrality and the present, the realization and the reality of origin and presence. And it means, consequently, a transformed continuity where mankind and not man, the spiritual and not the spirit, orgin and not the beginning, the present and not time, the whole and not the part become awareness and reality. It is the whole that is present in origin and originatively in the present” (EPO, xxvii pp.).

Two possibilities: “time fulfilled in us” or “we succeed in fulfilling time” with the consequence of “a transformed continuity”? The approach to such a context comes quite late in my life. Today I call it (still) ‘an open secret’: Origin is the driving force for the Awakening of Consciousness and while getting ‘awake’ Consciousness becomes aware of its connectedness with Origin through the Concretion of the Spiritual. In this ‘process’ GAIA transforms into a world without opposite and GAIA finds itself as Grounded Awareness and Integral Attitude.

 

While I am reading and writing about this context I hear that Zen-Master Thich Nhat Hanh has passed from this world. In different memories to him one can read again how earnestly he talked about that ‘in the past Civilisations disappeared and also ours can vanish”. And the Zen-Master taught untiringly: “We have to change our way of thinking and talking. We have to learn the art of being present, of being connected with all living beings in every present moment”. Is this not spiritual brotherhood of the Master and Jean Gebser – and surely others too? One hundred minutes before midnight? How to change our ‘Way of thinking’ and our ‘Talking’?


I often underline how impressed I was – and still am -, when I met Otto Scharmer and his Theory U and that I felt the strong impulse and deep need to bridge ‘The Ever-Present Origin’ and the idea of ‘Presencing’ of Theory U. Just the Annual Report (https://www.presencing.org/files/PI-Annual-Report-2021-2022-web.pdf) of the PI shows that there are so many people globally involved in a wide range of activities. I think one should call their attention to this “new constellation of planetary extent” (EPO, xxvii) and they should be encouraged to take a stand from their situations and epistemological fundaments. I’m sure they could contribute from diverse angles deep insights and spheres how to respond to it.

 

I his New Year reflecting Message 2022 Scharmer underlines ‘Humility, Reflexivity and Action Confidence’ and connects all three ‘Attitudes’ with men’s “highest (future) Selves”, a turn originating “from within”. Doesn’t remain the move from ‘Ego’ to ‘Eco’ one on the level of what Gebser calls ‘mental-rational structure’. If so it wouldn’t be not ‘sufficient’ enough. From the mental-rational structure it might be difficult to spot the “new factor” and to overcome the menacing situation. The gap may be called: From “Ego to ‘Ego-free’-Eco”. That means that the Ego as well as the Eco have to be superseded through what Gebsers calls the’ Spiritual’.

 

With the second part of The Ever-Present Origin Gebser tries to answer the question “What is to come?” and he names it the ‘Concretion of the Spiritual’. This attempt, not always easy to follow, follows the methodology which Gebser describes as follows:
“The events of tomorrow are always latently present today. Tomorrow is nothing other than a today which is not yet acute, i.e., is still latent. Every manifestation of our lives inevitably contains the sum of what is past as well as what is to come. If, however, we have an approximate notion of how the events of today came about – if we know their basis (which I attempted to present in the first part) – there is perhaps the possibility that we can discern in the movements of our present minute in time and in the world (Weltminute) those of the next as well.
This is not a question of analysis or diagnosis, nor even of prognosis, but rather a matter of discerning in the manifestations of our age in what respects they differ from those of earlier epochs. I have called such new or novel manifestations ‘aperspectival’ manifestations because one of their characteristics is that they are neither unperspectival nor perspectival; rather, they are free of that form of thinking which, since the Renaissance, has characteristically been aimed at some goal or telos and bound to space.


What is to come? I believe that I have given some indication of the answer to this question. As in any crisis there are two possible answers to the question of its outcome: demise or transition. It is my hope that the examination and the supporting evidence which I have presented may clarify for the reader that we can solve such an alternative in a positive way. To be sure, this requires co-operation, for this reason the book itself has been written in such a way as to require a certain participation of the reader.”

 

Such participation has various facets. Being closely connected to a demeter-farm near my living place just before Christmas 2021 it happened that an old rusty and dirty screw came in my hands. From the first wink for me it was a meditating figure showing me that the ‘iron Materia’ is going to be ‘en-lightening’ itself and it was me who has to recognize it, to become aware how ‘light wants to shine through’, how the ‘screw’ wants to become diaphanous, transparent, thus closing the circle how it came into being – through ‘Light’. This might be seen with mythological eyes which are going to transform into an ‘integrating spectacular’.

 

Zen

Privat

 

The strengths of origin, and our own strength in bringing this origin to effectivity are the factors that will decide our fate. The Journey out of the Unknown is a Journey of Transition into the Integral. Following Jean Gebser people all over the globe should know that caring for GAIA needs ‘GAIA-minds and attitudes’ understood as ‘Grounded Awakening of Integral Attitudes’.

 

What a task but also healing perspectives? Perhaps through a ‘painful returning’.

 

 

Accentuations are made by myself. Translations from German text are made by myself too.

 

Reference

Gebser, Jean. Complete Edition (CE) in eight volumes. Schaffhausen: Novalis Verlag, 1975-1980

 

 

Divinized Future

 

Divinized Future - vergöttlichte Zukunft (Sri Aurobindo)
Understanding oneself as a Path-Finder of visible and invisible traces of Jean Gebser it is helpful to take consistently a bird’s eye view on these paths. In doing so it gets possible to separate single tracks and to understand how the way is going to be created. While trying this sometimes ‘strange’ experiences happens:
 
While waiting in the big Foyer of a well-known German Car Branch-Office until a small repair of my car is finished, I open Jeremy Johnsons Seeing Through the World which I took with me to bridge the idle time and suddenly two words catch my full attention ‘divinized future’ (STW, 114); or as I listened to the New Year Speech of Dr. Eugen Drewermann where he complains the neglect of the ‘Religious’ in these days; or when Silvina Barese put a notice in the Nura Learning group about ‘You are not alone. A Gathering on the Tribe’ by Charles Eisenstein and Jon Hopkins. At the end of the video both are sitting vis-à-vis, somehow dumfounded – being able only to remark: ‘Here we are’ - letting feel how something tied them to a presence from very far – far from the past and far from what is going to come. Suddenly all such small sparks transform as reliable companions on the way to what I want to name ‘GebserWorld’ analogue to George Pfeiffenschneider’s ‘Unterwegs nach Gebserville’ (En route to Gebserville): Gebserville.pdf (jean-gebser-gesellschaft.ch)
 

Praeligio. 

Being still ‘embossed’ by my ‘academic life’ I’m going to make a small ‘track-analysis’ just following the keywords in Gebsers opos magnum: Relegio, religio, religion and praeligio. 
 
To summarize Gebsers thoughts gives me always an insipid taste because it sounds so superficial and flat. Therefore, I like to quote him enjoying again and again his virtuous way of talking and grasping ideas and perceptions. I start – and it sounds as if Gebser just addresses himself directly to us in 2022:
 
“Whatever happens on the earth – man must share the responsibility. But the earth itself is not just something here and now (Hiesiges, Diesseitiges). What happens to earth – and the earth is nothing but an event which in materialization has become progressively slower – originates in more encompassing and spatio-temporally non-localizable interconnections.”
But how has this ‘responsibility’ to be understood? For Gebser it is connected with ‘consciousness’. What wasn’t possible for the archaic until the mental-rational consciousness, to ‘grasp’ the ‘whole, pregiven for man in Origin’, this ‘whole’ (now) “takes on for man its conscious character in the time-free present…The new mutation of consciousness …as a consequence of arationality, receives its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptual emergence of the spiritual.” (EPO, 541)
 
Here we need a moment to pause and to sense what it means to cooperate while reading Gebsers opus, what it means to be aware, “when we specifically speak of the spiritual and not simply of spirit” (ibid. p. 542). 
 

- Spiritual

When Gebser here refers to two apocryphal dicta he touches the need of our deep understanding: “This world is a bridge, cross it but do not make of it your dwelling”. ‘World’ is ‘unlasting’ and man should not live as if it’s an ‘eternal place’.
The other apocryphal dictum says: “I have chosen you before the earth began”. Gebser continues that both dicta “point to the spiritual origin prior to all spatio-temporal materialization”.  The ‘spatio-temporal materialization’ is the ‘arena of man’ since its archaic until the mental-rational structure, an arena for the awakening of human’s consciousness. And ‘now’ it seems the moment where we more and more under-stand that this spatio-temporal materialization is a bridge “that makes possible the merging or coalescence, the con-crescere of origin and present.” 
 
(When I was articulating in 2021 in the article ‘Lighthouses’ the approaches of an ‘Advanced U-process’ together with Jean Gebser, when I extended it to ‘Zen’, ‘The Battle of the Soul’ and the ‘Great Re-Think’ (https://www.genius-for-all.de/florilegium.php), this was and is my intention to join with people globally and to listen to them how they go along with this task from their own roots being on the way crossing the bridge while or through ‘concrescere origin and the present’).
 

- Spirit

Surely it is not correct to say ‘from here’ we have to recapitulate our understanding of ‘Spirit’, because ‘Spirit’ and ‘Spiritual’ are somehow ‘circularly linked’ – analogue to ‘involution’ and ‘evolution’ and other ‘polarities’. (EPO, p. 229 ff.).
In our daily life the abilities of our ‘spirit’ lead us to believe it is ‘its’ capability which let us grasp everything – of course also the Corona-Pandemia.. 
 

Spirit and Spiritual

The one-sidedness of our mental-rational consciousness – illustrated through what happens in this decade 2020 and 2030 – let us experience “the grand and painful path of consciousness emergence” (ibid., p. 542). It feels like breaking free, that at the same ‘time’ “the unfolding and intensification of consciousness manifests itself as an increasingly intense luminescence of the spiritual in man”. And therefore, Gebser can say: “The shining through (diaphaneity or transparency) is the form of appearance (epiphany) of the spiritual.”
 
Through my connection to Japan, I like very much the Art of Hiroshige, Ando – especially his woodcarving picture of ‘Bridges’. People walking on them seem mostly hasting from one side to the other. The Bridge is not the above-mentioned bridge on which it’s better not to build one’s home. Bridges here are secular vehicles to manage obstacles and to carry loads from one to the other side; mental-rationalistically handled.
 

Children_with_cancer

(https://spokenvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/De-brug-in-het-park-van-heiligdom-van-Kameido-Tenjin-770x1060.jpg)
 
But they could be passed in another manner on the base of a new ‘capacity’ (EPO, p. 543). This capacity must be developed and be realized as ‘integral attitudes’ based on ‘grounded awareness’. This means a new approach to GAIA – ego-free, arational, space- and timefree, aperspectival, world without opposite, concrescere origin and the present, the Spiritual becoming interlacing power making the whole translucent, diaphanously perceivable.
 
While writing I notice on the one side the freedom – freedom to not only freedom of (Freiheit ‘fuer’, nicht nur Freiheit ‘von’)- which given in such attitudes and at the same time, I get aware of the task given to us – but not yet ‘knowing’ the ‘instruments’ to start and ‘handle a diaphanous essence or being’. An ‘allowing’ appears and a ‘less-willingness’ – but not yet ‘clear’, more I a ‘foggy scene’.
 
 

- Prae-ligio

…will ‘replace’ re-ligio. 
Such short hints may be easily miss-understood. In describing ‘Cross-sections through the Structures’ (EPO, p. 116 ff.) Gebser outlines under ‘Forms of Expression’: Graven images, Gods, God and Divinity (ibid., p. 148). So, let’s listen to Gebser:
“Since we have ventured to make several partial attributions for the integral structure, we must hasten to add that the term ‘divinity’ appearing under the rubric of forms of expression. (p. 101) must not be taken to be a reference to the religious sphere. We will see later the degree to which ‘the divinitary’ is not a religious term in a strict sense but is rather based on what we described as the ‘preligious’. And we would also mention that praeligio represents neither a form of religious antipathy, nor a type of substitute religion. The preligious aperspectival world can no more dispense with the religious than the religious can do without relegio or its magic preform, proligio. The profound Christian truth with regard to transparency, the diaphaneity of the world, becomes perceptible. The genuine irruption of the other side (Jenseitigen) into this side (Diesseitige), the presence of the beyond (Jenseits) in the here and now (Diesseits), of death in life, of the transcendent in the immanent, of the divine in the human, becomes transparent. God’s incarnation was not in vain. Religion intensified to praeligio – and this is intended to circumscribe to profound Christianity of the integral consciousness structure without any theological claim – is presentiation of origin, the recognition of creation and creativity, and the integration of our lives as one of the numerous and meaningful forms revealing integrity of the whole.
 
This new, self-constituting consciousness structure discovers and surpasses ultimate and most profound antithesis of rationalism between faith and knowledge, religion and science…antithesis of this kind are not reconcilable with the new consciousness structure. It is in the transparency of faith and knowledge, and not with their aid, that the sphere of Being (Kugel des Seins) becomes perceptible in its entire diaphaneity.”
 
 
Isn’t it ‘remarkable’, that just these days we are confronted with the Corona-Pandemic and the irruption of our (natural)scientifically and willingly approach to grasp with statistics and helpless laboratory-results, denying or a least neglecting the question how to near to a ‘more deeply, spiritually understanding and healing of the whole situation’? 
 
Gebser says:
“Epochs of great confusion and general uncertainty in a given world contain the slumbering, not-yet-manifest seeds of clarity and certainty. The manifestations of the aperspectival world… show that these seeds are already pressing toward realization. This means that we are approaching the ‘zenith’ of confusion and are thus nearing the necessary breakthrough…it is up to us whether its final irruption, its final consolidation, will occur with our help, or despite our lack of insight. If it occurs with our assistance, then we shall avoid a universal catastrophe; if it occurs without our aid, then the valid completion of the present mutation will cost greater pain and torment than we have suffered during the past sixty years. All work, the genuine work which we must achieve, is that which is most difficult and painful: the work on ourselves. If we do not freely take upon ourselves this pre-acceptance of the pain and torment, they will be visited upon us in an otherwise necessary individual and universal collapse. Anyone disassociated from his origin and his spirituality sensed task acts against orgin. Anyone who acts against it has neither a today nor a tomorrow.
Each attempted and successful clarification of the confusion in our daily lives and actions, each interception of anxiety, each achieved grain of certainty, each distanciation from oneself – regardless of how slight – each discarded prejudice and resentment: these are necessary achievements in order to establish the new reality and to obtain for each and all a sense of meaningfulness. Every one is free to achieve this. Whoever gambles away this freedom has gambled and lost his life and death” (EPO, p. 531 f.).
 
- Restructuration of the entire reality (Wirk-lichkeit).
- Work on ourselves.
- With our assistance.
- Establishing the new reality, obtaining a sense of meaningfulness.
- Everyone is free to achieve this.
 
Its more then a plea to the Gebserian Community or to those joining the U-Community or to other Movements of deep Change and Metamorphosis not to gamble but to support each other to pave the way through ‘integral attitudes’ on a ‘grounded awareness’ of the Ever-Present Origin. These ‘attitudes’ don’t fall from sky. Men has to support themselves creating and sharing. And one ‘attitude’ is the most important: Ego-free!
 
Ego-free one may breath in the milieu of  ‘praeligiosity’ - of insight and presentiation.
(Compare note 1,  EPO, p. 533)
 
(Accentuations are made by myself).