Intercultural Roots

Walther Dreher

Intercultural Roots

Part I:

Dr. Chikuro Hiroike. Personal Reflections on Hidden Traces, Spiritual Relatedness and Future-Path-Seraching Efforts

Part II:

'Living and dying in the whole, in integrity' (Jean Gebser)

 

Introduction

Dear participants in the Dialogue-Meeting on April 4th 2023, I want to thank you once more deeply for the coming together and the open-minded exchange of thoughts and experiences – though in retrospect I feel I was talking too much myself, taking you the chance to get a word in edgewise. Maybe I was on the one side a bit excited and on the other side I couldn’t tune adequately into a free spoken short and dense summery. But these days I’m not used to meet people in this way. I’m sorry for this behaviour .and I hope I can ‘repair’ it through ‘continuing the Draft’ and through our continuous exchange and communication.

 

The following passages – as ‘Part II’ – are again using Paul Klee’s picture of ‘Main path and byways’ as a symbol for combining different levels of information: Literature, scientific statements, imaginations and intuitions, cultural engraved experiences, pictures and foto-collages and other ‘strange’ perceptions – because ‘old man’ are allowed ‘moving into another intensity. For a further union, a deeper communion…” (T.S. Eliot). The different accentuations are done by myself!<

 

‘Listening back’ into the group I hear the following comments or contributions: Theory U was touched, especially its practicability; Goethe was mentioned in the context of Kairos and Chronos ("To the moment I'd like to say: 'Stay awhile, you are so beautiful'"); there came a hint about the symbol of the Labyrinth and the role it can play for life; Asahide Gakuen was questioned (http://www.asahide.ac.jp/english/) My ‘good, old friend’ Professor Bantock asked - looking at the end of the Paper and responding the request ‘Let’s start’-:

 

“What can I do?”

 

A legitimate question. ‘Ironically’ I’ll respond to it in a quite ‘theoretical manor’, following a remark of Joseph Beuys - the late German avant-garde sculptor and performance artist -: “Before I ask ‘what do I have to do’ I have to ask ‘how do I have to think’?”

 

So, doing and thinking will be treated in the following remarks in the way as the double helix movement does: Unifying ‘doing and thinking’ while polar moving and unifying.

 

And there is another question of Mr. Kinoshita, Jyoko around the phenomenon of

“Burnout”.

 

Because I couldn’t spontaneously answer in a proper way, I try to deal with this challenging situation here from my point of views. It will be not easy to find a way to this phenomenon, similar what may happen in your real life. There is perhaps the roof in your house or its fundament where water penetrates, more or less strong. You should stop it. But where might be found the source of the leak? Do you have to pitch of many places? How much of the roof you have to dig?

 

The questions coming up in our meeting may be treated 2023 not similar as 1971/72, when the ‘Kenkyubu-meeting’ started with exchanging ideas which have been important for us, reading texts we thought might be interesting and helpful to understand the daily study problems and experiencing all personally through the life at university and generally in the Gakuen.

 

As in the first Paper - Part I -I don’t want to miss the hint that I am looking very one-sided from outside. I am not anyhow involved in the ‘reality’ of the institutions, the economic, social and cultural policy of running them and the experiences of so many people being dedicated to the Idea and Daily Practice of Morality! Considering these limitations, I want to beg you for accepting my trials as my humble approach to questions which don’t only move you in the Hiroike Gakuen but which are global – not to say universal – and which contribute to the situation that this world won’t be destroyed.

 

In my figurative language or pictographic way of ‘thinking’. there is the ‘Tatsu’ and the ‘Mirror View’.

 

 

 

Hiroike Campus 2023’

 

Utterly the Tatsu-View becomes aware of this green Oasis in midst of an ocean of houses. But the Oasis seems to be much more cut through a Road and separated in two parts as ever before. The side with the Faculty of Economy and the place under construction seems more vivid than the other one with the main gate to the buildings of The Institute of Moralogy, the big Lecture Hall, the Place for Adult Education, the sports and high school facilities and last but not least the Campus Plaza.

 

This time ‘Guardsmen’ – but not like those at the entrances of temples – ‘give the impression’ of control and close off of free and uncomplicated approach.
The central locality for meeting, resting and staying, the Campus Plaza, seems to be closed and not any more the ‘Plaza or Piazza’ where public life happens. Are these ‘only the traces of the Covid-Pandemic?’

 

But there is also the ‘Self- and Mirror View’ which asks for looking closely and creating actively Path-Segments for an ‘Emerging Future’ – sometimes using a Lens to become aware of man and things in an enlarged viewing.

 

Paul Klee’s

‘Main path and byways’

 

 

‘Main path and byways’ differently symbolize life in its wholeness, human activities, ways of dealing with a theme and so forth. Therefore, I will ‘step in’ in this painting again creating different ‘Path Segments’.

 

But also here again: Everybody’s free turn to negotiate one’s own way with it – or not.

 

The questions coming up in our meeting may be treated 2023 not similar as 1971/72 when the ‘Kenkyubu-meeting’ started for me with exchanging ideas which have been important for us at that time, in our age – around end of 20th beginning of 3oth, reading texts we thought might be interesting and helpful to understand the daily study problems, and experiencing all personally through the life at university and generally in the Gakuen.

 

How is the situation today, what could I discern when – supposed - in 2023 I’d like to engage in the same compassionate way as 1971, but now Elliot’s call to be ‘explorer’ and to ‘intensify, unite bring in communion what appeared in half a century’ carrying with me the influence of many different path-segments and now becoming aware of different website-messages.

 

Looking to the Websites of Presentations of Reitaku University and the Moralogy Foundation one is giving a manifold insight in the status at present of these institutions and how they are going to develop. What one becomes aware are dynamic movements and changes.

 

Reitaku University

 

About the Reitaku University one can read:

 

“…in today’s world of various problems and challenges… (Reitaku University) will be reborn as a comprehensive university that can respond to the era of ‘becoming an evolving university without fear of change’.”
(https://page.line.me/875cylfx/signboard/579439101639960).

 

President Tokunaga articulates the importance of Reitaku University in yet more passionate terms when he writes:

 

“Through educating students and producing young men and women of promise who embody ‘the idea of unity of knowledge and virtue,’ Reitaku University, which ‘sticks to its small-size,’ and ‘sticks to internationality,’aspires in the years to come to emerge as an institution for which the world and its regions have been waiting.” (https://www.reitaku-u.ac.jp/en/about/presidents-message/).

 

Koshio, Atsushi – Tokunaga, Suminori - Watanabe, Shin

(https://www.reitaku-u.ac.jp/news/news/1776170/

 

In March 2022 the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) announced “the outline and future prospects of the ‘Comprehensive University Concept that integrates humanities and sciences’ through the establishment of the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Business Administration to respond to the development of human resources required by society.
(https://www.reitaku-u.ac.jp/en/about/presidents-message/)

 

But there is mentioned – just incidentally on this website - the aim which makes one sit up and take notice:

 

“Transformation into a new normal university”

 

How does these two directions fit together:
An Institution ‘for which the world is waiting’ and the aim of ‘a new normal university’?

 

Moralogy Foundation

The Institute of Moralogy transformed to Moralogy Foundation. The Website (https://eng.moralogy.jp/research/moralogy-research/) offers a detailed insight into a wide research and practical working field.

 

The new named ‘Moralogy Foundation’ mentions the following ‘Aims of the Research Center for Moral Science’:

 

• To inherit the will of Chikuro Hiroike

 

• conduct research activities with the aim of constructing a universal morality or a common morality that can be shared by all human beings, transcending religions and ideologies

 

• study of the principles of the human spirit and social structure from a comprehensive standpoint

 

• emphasize the values that human beings, society, and nations should have

 

• build an international research network in ethics and morals by deepening exchanges with researchers and research institutions both inside and outside Japan.” (https://eng.moralogy.jp/research/ ).

 

 

 

An Imagination comes up:

 

I ‘see’ a Bright Torch

in Chikuro Hiroikes Right-Hands-Fist

 

 

And I ‘hear’ Chikuro Hiroike saying:

 

‘Follow the Torch’

 

But I hear him also saying – not least in consideration of Mr. Kinoshita’s question about Burnout -

 

‘Spark the Inner Fire always anew!’

 

 

(Just published newly under https://medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/protect-the-flame-but-where-the-danger-is-the-saving-power-also-grows-ef6077ddef89)

 

The background of combining the ‘Torch’ and the ‘Inner Fire’ may be inspired by Otto Scharmer – but I feel also remembered to Inamori, Kazuo. In Scharmers ideas coming up in September 2022 while participating in the ‘World Ethic Forum (WEF)’ in Davos he takes up an experience of his student days related to Joseph Beuys. Scharmer explains:

 

“Joseph Beuys ‘Protect the Flame’

…So back to the big question: Are we sinking or are we going to rise? In my view, the answer depends on whether or not we try to, and succeed in, creating new types of social learning infrastructures for transformation – infrastructures that connect to and activate this human capacity for individual and collective transformation.

 

At the World Ethic Forum, the first two days started with a small holding circle of about 50 people, who were referred to as firekeepers. When it was my turn to share, I talked about a moving moment from my student days. I had watched Joseph Beuys accept the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize for sculpture in 1986. It probably was the last public was the last public speech Beuys gave, shortly before his passing. He spoke about the flame of inspiration Lehmbruck had provided for Beuy’s entire artistic body of work. He closed his speech with the words, ‘Protect the Flame!’ – Schütze die Flamme! These words struck a deep chord.

 

In that moment I felt as if that small flame, that represents the essence of human spirit, completely depends on people like us who receive it, protect it, and then pass it on to the next generation. When Beuys ended his speech with that line – Protect the Flame! – I felt as if I too had just received the flame, perhaps in a similar way as he did many years earlier… What I saw with my inner eye looked more like a candle: you hold the candle in one hand, and you protect the flame with the other – by holding it very close to your heart.”

 

‘…by holding it very close to the heart.’

 

Otto Scharmer: https://www.clubofrome.org/blog-post/scharmer-protect-the-flame/) (This week ‘Awakin Call’ from April 15th with the topic ‘Politics and Heart’- https://www.awakin.org/v2/talks/661/ - is showing into a similar direction.

 

Doesn’t Inamori, Kazuo’s ‘Compass to Life’ deal with such a Flame too? (Iwao, Taka -Learning Inamori Philosophy –
(https://www.reitaku u.ac.jp/news/images2/2020/06/LearningInamoriPhilosophyJapansMostInfluentialSocialPhilosophy.pdf)

 

Inamori: “The right way to live" and "how we should behave as human beings." It expresses the universal truth of life necessary for each of us to live in a better way. (https://global.kyocera.com/inamori/philosophy/main03.html)

Iwao Taka, Business Ethics, A Japanese View

 

A summery says: Although “fairness” and “social responsibilities” form part of the business ethics agenda of Japanese corporations, the meaning of these terms must be understood in the context of the distinctive Japanese approach to ethics. In Japan, ethics is inextricably bound up with religious dimension and social dimension. The normative environments, influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism, and other traditional and modern Japanese religions, emphasize that not only individuals but also groups have their own spirit which is connected to the ultimate reality. The framework of concentric circles lets moral agents apply different ethical rules to the respective circles. The dynamics of these religious and social dimensions lead to a different view of both individuals and corporations from that dominant in the West. (https://philpapers.org/rec/TAKBEA).

 

What might happen if Taka, Iwao would read with his students and lecture to them for example in the same way as about Inamori the ‘Ever-Present Origin’ of Gebser? Could this become another answer to Bantocks question ‘What can I do?’

 

Wouldn’t it be also a great chance – with the support of Taka Iwao – to read in a smaller circle of Reitaku and Moralogy Foundation scholars, staff and students together such a Treatise? - How about to create such a Circle of Firekeepers in the Hiroike Gakuen?

 

Are these not answers on the question: What can I do?

 

These remarks may consequently induce a Path-Segments fixed in the following way:

 

Path-Segment of Reitaku University and Moralogy Foundation

 

Wouldn’t it be also a great chance – with the support of Taka Iwao – to read in a smaller circle of Reitaku and Moralogy Foundation scholars together such a Treatise? Would there be a field of commitment for the elder generation in translating the German and English version of Gebsers ‘Ursprung und Gegenwart’, ‘The Ever-Present Origin’ beginning with selected chapters? - Another answer of the question: What can I do?

 

What could the symbols of the ‘Torch’ and the ‘Flame’ want to express?

 

The Figure of the Statue with the imagined ‘Torch’ and the inspiration of ‘Holding and protecting the Flame’ stand somehow ‘polar’ to each other. Are both pols – similar to the double helix – unified in Chikuro Hiroike Personality and Opus Magnus? And if not, shouldn’t they be seen in this unity?

 

Hiroikes Work is based on the fundaments of religious leaders of this world and he struggled to build up on these ‘platforms’ a Science based on the mental condition of man. The outcomes are realized through the theoretical frame of Moralogy, especially what is called ‘Supreme Morality’.

 

The ‘Torch’ symbolizes the aim of inheriting the will of Chikuro Hiroike.

 

In other words:

 

How would the will of Chikuro Hiroike looks like today in 2023?

giving the expressed demands the possibilities

 

• for Constructing a universal morality or a common morality

 

• for the study of the principles of the human spirit and social structure from a comprehensive standpoint

 

• for to emphasize the values that human beings, society, and nations should have

 

• build an international research network in ethics and morals by deepening exchanges with researchers and research institutions both inside and outside Japan.”

 

 

The question arises:

How to become open to these approaches to ‘morality’, ‘human spirit’, ‘values and the chance of ‘deepening exchanges…inside and outside Japan”!

 

Reading about Scharmers experience with the Flame - ‘holding it very close to the heart’ - guide to the question of the Relatedness of Chikuro Hiroike to one of those initial points I discovered in Otto Scharmers Theory U.

 

Theory U as I understand it isn’t a mistakeable understood ‘theory’ – but a ‘Way of Living!’ This WAY is characterized through an open mind and an open heart as swelling force of human’s open will. And before finding the strength of the will, man has to pass the eye of the needle, experience – similar as in Hiroikes view – as Martin Buber makes the distinction between two types of will: “…the small will, or one’s instincts, and the Grand Will, which is the future that needs us to come into reality. There is something deeply magical about tapping. Into our deeper creative force…” (Scharmer, 2007, 412)

 

I feel that the hint “to inherit the will of Chikuro Hiroike” shows in a similar direction. To ‘inherit’ surely doesn’t mean to ‘follow blindly’. Hiroikes call ‘Everyone has to be born daily anew’ shows which challenge for each Individuum Supreme Morality contains.

 

In Scharmers U-Movement passing the ‘eye of the needle’ includes an analogue ‘procedure’. Expressed with the last verse from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his poem ‘Selige Sehnsucht’:

 

 

For if this you do not grasp:

Perish and become!

The dark earth you shall walk

As a sullen one.

 

 

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_U)

 

I don’t want to enter now in a profound discussion of Theory U – understood as a ‘holographic theory’. It would need much space and a detailed configuration. An attempt for which is now not enough space and time.

 

But, could the phenomena open mind, open heart and open will and their provoking dynamic be an interesting approach ‘to study of the principles of the human spirit and social structure from a comprehensive standpoint as, as Tokunaga, Suminori underlines?’

 

The Hiroike Gakuen is an exceptional Space and Place for Reitaku Lecturers and Moralogy Foundation’s Research Circles to use these advantages:

 

• “Places and infrastructures that facilitates shared seeing and sense-making of what is actually going on in the larger surrounding ecosystem (co-sensing),

 

• Places and cocoons of deep reflection and silence that facilitate deep listening and connection to the source of authentic presence and creativity, both individually and collectively (co-presencing),

 

• Places and infrastructures for hands-on prototyping of new forms of operating in order to explore the future by doing
(co-creating).
(Theory U, 2007, p. 44).

 

When Tokunaga, Suminori finishes his Message as follows: “Reitaku University, which “sticks to its small-size,” and “sticks to internationality,” aspires in the years to come to emerge as an institution for which the world and its regions have been waiting”, in the first moment one has to draw a deep breath: The world and the region have been waiting?!

 

Regionally viewed Tokunaga is right because the ‘Places’ are given at the: University, the Moralogy Foundation and its Branches all over Japan and region-connections near the Campus. Infrastructures – if not yet given – should and could be developed.

 

Scharmers article: Education Is the Kindling of a Flame: How to Reinvent the 21st-Century University” might contain helpful hints (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327288052_Education_Is_the_Kindling_of_a_Flame_How_to_Reinvent_the_21st-Century_University

 

But how about Professor Tokunaga’s vision: ‘The world is waiting’?

 

Isn’t Tokunaka’s statement completely ‘hyped up’? Or does he sense – perhaps unconsciously - something to come if you don’t look only from the ‘Mirror view’ on ‘actual given ‘trends’ but from the flying Tatsu heights which allow to overview time and space.

 

What happens respective what – perhaps surprising - ‘outcomes’ develop when looking to the two new planed Faculties at Reitaku University from these two views?

 

Two stories are going to illustrate these views. One Jean Gebser mentions about Dschuan Dsi illuminates from the Mirror-view (but somehow also from the Tasu-view). Otto Scharmers remarks about AI could be seen as from the Tatsu-view (but also as from the Mirror view).

 

2024 two New Faculties are going to be opened

 

Path-Segment: Faculty of Engineering

Motto: Love (of) Technology, Technology with love

 

 

Symbolizing how the heart – organ of Love – is safely protected and carried from a ‘technologic weave through open hand

 

Illustration: Reitaku University Faculty of Engineering building planned
(https://www.reitaku-u.ac.jp/lp/engineering/)

 

 

A Story of Dschuang Dsi

 

Dschuang Dsi: “The drawing well”

 

”Dschi gung.was roaming in the State Tschu and afterwards returning to the State Dschin. While passing the region north of the river Han, he noticed an old man, being busy in his vegetable garden. He cut a roadside ditch for irrigating. He stepped down by himself to the well and carried up with his arms a pot full of water which he poured out. He struggled extremely but achieved little. Dsi Gung spoke to him: ‘There is a mechanism, with which you can water hundred trains in one day. With less arduousness much can be won. Won’t you like to use it?’

 

The gardener straightened up, looked to him and replied: ‘And what would that be?’ Dsi Gung answered: ‘You take a wooden lever arm, which is backside weighted and in front light. In this way you can ladle water so that it sputters. One calls this a ‘Drawing well’. The old man got a face like thunder and he answered laughing: ‘I heard my teacher saying: If somebody uses machines, all his business he does becomes mechanical; who does his business mechanical, he gets a Machine-Heart. But, if somebody wares a Machine-Heart in his chest, he loses the innocence of the heart. Who lost the pure innocence, he becomes ambiguous in the impulse of his mind (Geist). Insecurity in the Spirit doesn’t get along with the true Tao (the all-pervading divine World-Spirit). Not that I don’t know those things: I am ashamed to adopt them.’

 

Dsi Gung turned pink and became embarrassed. He looked down to the earth and didn’t respond.”
(Gebser, Verfall und Teilhabe (Decline and Participation), 1977, Collected Works Volume V/II, 19 ff.)

 

The Statement of Otto Scharmer in this context:

 

“…When you are talking to people in East Asia, in Silicon Valley, or elsewhere, AI of course is the topic of the moment. Does the deeper human capacity that I am describing here — the flame of our awakening planetary awareness and humanity — relate to the questions sparked by AI and ChatGPT? Yes, in every way.

 

AI and related language prediction machines like ChatGPT are brilliant at synthesizing (and mirroring back to us) the knowledge that we have accumulated thus far–in other words, the knowledge of the past. But what is it that these machines can’t do? They can’t do radical deep sensing. They can do sensing. But they can’t let go of predictions based on existing patterns in order to let come what wants to emerge from our deepest Source. In other words: They can’t do deep sensing. They can’t sense from the Source, from the future that wants to emerge. They can’t create from nothing, ‘no-thing’. That’s the ‘blind spot’ of AI.

 

And that’s what should be the single most important focus of our educational systems going forward: building the deep capacity to co-sense and co-create the future as it emerges. That’s what in Theory U we call presencing — the capacity to sense and act from the highest future in the now, in the present moment.”

 

Does the following graphic correspond to what Scharmer describes or is there a quite different idea in it?

 

 

“The word robot is derived from the Czech word "labor" and was conceived as a substitute for human labor.

 

However, even if we take "Doraemon" as an example, the definition of the word "robot" is no longer as applicable.

 

Let's learn, think, and create the "loving robots" of the future together!”

(https://www.reitaku-u.ac.jp/lp/engineering/)

 

Is this the meaning/sense of ‘Love Technology’, of creating ‘loving robots?

 

This would be a sad ‘one-sided spiral’ navigating this New Faculty in a ‘normal University’ which offers only more of the same but not of what ‘the world is waiting’!?

 

How might the double spiral provoke to ‘explore’ – as old men do – the Complementary Polarity of ‘Technic of the Inner World’ and ‘Technic of the outer World’? The first Treatise Jean Gebser published is titled ‘Abendländische Wandlung’ (Transformation of the West) where he speaks about a Complementarity of Occidental and Asiatic Technical Views.

 

How could the other pol look like? It is:

‘Technology of Love’ or ‘Technology with Love’

 

An Analogy may help to approach this question: ‘Technology of Love ‘comes in my mind through the experience of SEKEM (https://sekem.com/en/index/).

 

SEKEM’s ‘Economy of Love’ - based on an Islamic Background - is a New Label for Holistic Sustainable Production– understood as a holistic frame which includes that mind, heart and will are guided from an “‘Ego-free, Ecological’ Humanity”.

 

 

Wouldn’t it be worth to discuss this analogy from ‘Economy of Love’
https://www.economyoflove.net/, to approach a ‘Technology of Love ’or ‘Engineering of Love’?

 

Does SEKEM and the creation of the Label ‘Economy of Love’ and the Transfer to a ‘Label Technology of Love’ include hints for students, which Tokunaga means when talking about ‘to nurture the authentic ability of students and to provide them with a wider range of assets through offering specific programs across the three faculties’ and soon now five?
(https://www.reitaku-u.ac.jp/en/about/presidents-message/).

 

Is it conceivable that Reitaku University creates a New Label for Holistic Sustainable Studies:

 

Technology of Love?

 

Combined in the movement of the double spiral:

 

TECHNOLOGY WITH LOVE AND TECHNOLOGY OF LOVE

 

Technology of Love is not the same as Technology with Love or Love Technology. But they should not be seen ‘dualistic’ but ‘polar’.

 

Once more repeated: Reading about the “Slogan: ‘Transformation into a New Normal University’ - via the ‘Reitaku Standards’ in a Comprehensive university that integrates the humanities and sciences - ‘Love Technology/Engineering’ fits quite well. Expanding the field of Educational-Technology (EdTech) it is understandable to use ‘digital technology, including AI and robots, to change the way education works’, to use ‘data to quantify how much an individual has grown from university entrance to graduation.’ These are ‘belongings’ to a “new ‘normal’ university”. But are they essentially something else as ‘more of the same as given in other normal universities?

 

But how about a university ‘for which the world and its regions have been waiting? ‘Technology of Love’ seen through the lens of The Wheel of Balance between Culture, Society, Environment and Economy might become a Lable of Studies which follows an open mind and open heart and strengthens an open will crucial for one’s own life, society, the world and the universe.

 

 

‘Love’ – speaking out this word let be hesitant just to ‘use’ intellectually. Modifying the verdict of Chikuro Hiroike ‘Its’s easy to say, easy to do, but hard to be truly sincere’ it similar with Love: “It’s easy to say, easy to do but hard to live truly ‘out of Love’.” ‘Out of Love’ includes dimensions transcending bigger Self. It has to do also with the ‘Grand Will’ Buber mentions.

 

At least ‘out of Love’ encompasses the four dimensions and vice versa at least these dimensions are the soil to let think and act ‘out of Love’.

 

 

Wouldn’t it be worse to start a Research work about these polarities:‘with’ and ‘of’? It could be done in close connection with the fifth Faculty, the main task ‘Designing the Future’ and the Impulse of a Transformation/Mutation of Human’s Consciousness. – A further answer to the question: What can I do?

 

Path-Segment: The Faculty of Business Administration - Practical Science to Design the Future

Looking from the ‘Tatsu-View’ there is a phenomenon just emerging at the time when Chikuro Hiroike published his Opus Magnum the ‘Treatise on Moral Science’. 1927 Martin Heidegger published the book ‘Being and Time ‘(‚Sein und Zeit’) and 1916 Albert Einstein made his ‘General-Relativity-Theory’ public speaking about the unity of Time and Space. The Quantum Theory was revealed. Psychoanalysis and Psychosomatic found attention and in practical fields arose researches and efforts of ‘theoretical translation’.

 

It was in 1931 that Jean Gebser got his Inspiration about what he later worked out in his oeuvre ‘The Ever-Present Origin’, which “…’an emergent integral milieu’ coming out of the midst-twentieth century” (Johnson, 2019, 8)

 

May it be allowed that see Hiroike, Chikuro’s work in the context of such ‘an emergent integral milieu’? The phenomena of ‘Selflessness’ and the ‘Supreme Morality’ – just to mention these two – are they seeds out of this milieu?

 

Jeremy Johnson mentions: “Gebser’s time, I believe, has come yet: to help us in this age of existential and ecological crisis to think towards a planetary future.

 

Or, we might better say: to help us recognize how the future is already thinking us” (Johnson, 2019, STW, 12).

 

So,
designing the future and to recognize how the future is thinking us,

is that the question?

…superseding the sorrow of ‘merely surviving’?

 

We are also here confronted with the choice: Design or let emerge. The future is present and can inform us (STW, 172) - Homo faber is replaced by homo integer (STW, 171), Vita active by vita contemplative (Byung-Chul Han).

 

 

 

 

Does the consequence read:

 

“A Widened or mutated Consciousness for a Faculty of Business Administration.”

 

Creating the Future as it Emerges?

 

To get into this act would – similarly to the act ‘Thory U – needs a wide range of extending the main Thoughts and Roots of Jean Gebsers work, especially ‘The Ever-Present Origin’. ‘Pictured summarized’ one can express the ‘History of Awakening the Consciuosness’ – the main theme of Gebser – with the ‘Tatsu-View’ - as follows:

 

 

The integral consciousness supersedes all others, but doesn’t destroy them! It is named: a-perspective, a-rational, time-free. Characteristics not easy to understand, concretize and share. Man, and his relation to the world mutates or transforms to the ‘task’

 

Waring the world.

Waring the Integral World.

Connect and relate to the earth/universe in a new WAY.

 

Can this be understood as a Motto for a Global Cooperation and Exchange?

The Hiroike Gakuen a Place for ‘Waring the World’?

How to combine it with the Torch of Hiroike and the Flame of the Ever-Present Origin?

Only a few keywords without detailed interpretations

 

Evolution and Involution?

 

Moral-Integrity – Integral-Morality

The Torch gets another intensity of its flame.

 

It lights towards Planetary:

Jeremy Johnson interpret it using the film ‘Neo-Tokyo by Otomo, Katsuhiro, 1988’

(Johnson, 2019, STW, 149).

 

Is there Emergence of what one could call Moral-Integrity and Integral-Morality?

How about GENIUS: Global Ethical Network for an Integral Universal Society?

Characterized by an Ethos of geniality, cordiality, friendliness.

Characterized through

Intensity, Union, Communion.

Experiencing the Ever-Present Origin

Prae-ligio beyond re-ligio.

(Compare: Divinized Future, https://www.genius-for-all.de/florilegium.php)

 

For the Reitaku University and the Moralogy Foundation – being waited globally and regionally – this might be the task, the challenge and the destiny – under the guidance of its President Hiroike, Mototaka – to contribute in the future to come answers to this transformation.

 

We are not lost.

Waring the World.

Reitaku University and Moralogy Foundation giving Space for a

Integral Morality

for a

Lived Ethic in Presence!

Creating “…Institutions for which the world and its regions have been waiting…

in the years to come!

 

(https://educativ.net/universities/japan/reitaku-university)

 

Last views to the Hiroike Campus 2023 once more from the altitude where the Tatsu is flying and from the Mirror experience while entering through the main Campus Gates.

 

 

Looking from far in the first moment one doesn’t become aware, that the Hiroike Campus – geographically viewed – is ‘split’. There is a road which ‘cuts’ the campus in two parts. One may say an east and west part. Only a small overhead crossing – besides the zebra-crossing on the dividing street – links the two areas. One also could risk the analogy of the brain, which is a holistic organ of two parts: Separated without separateness.

 

Coming from the direction of the ‘Campus living area Hokobu’, the ‘left side’ of the University ‘with the new Faculty Buildings under construction – ‘seems’ to be more ‘vivid or busy’ as the right big ground.
Looking near, the modern Guardsmen at the Gates or Building entry (for example building 03 of the map) – not similar to those niō (benevolent kings) at the entrance of Buddhistic Temples - appear as if the ‘inflow’ should be controlled and regulated because of…?

 

 

Primal Trust

 

Quoting Jeremy Johnson:

 

“In a talk hosted in 1972, ‘Primal Fear and Prima Trust,’ Gebser considers this inquiry of origin (‘Where do I come from?,’ ‘Who am I?,’ and ‘Whither do I go?’) ads a singularly important set of questions concerning the integral human being:

 

So long as we do not find an answer to those questions, primal fear reigns. From it springs, to the degree that we become aware of those questions, the diverse creaturely, psychic, and intellectual anxieties. It is also in the last analysis the trigger for aggression and depression…which can lead to destruction of others or of oneself. Only he who finds an answer to these questions awakens primal trust and thus is freed from primal fear. What is most incomprehensible is that in tis case he will have overcome the primal fear forever and is therefore not threatened by any relapse into it.” (Johnson, 2019, STW, 167 ff).

 

Roots of Burnout?

 

Final thoughts

The gift of President Hiroike, Mototaka to come to the Reitaku University as a ‘Visiting Professor’ let come up many thoughts. The theme which guided me these last months couldn’t be responded sufficiently: How to combine Heaven and Earth. Is it because we are living in a time of transition? The following pictures or imaginations, coming out of the above mentioned ‘integral field’ will accompany me and I am thankful for their appearance.

 

 

 

 

Jean Gebser, the person who escorts and guides me on the ‘Main Path’ of my Life, closes the chapter about the ‘Foundation of the Aperspectival World’ in ‘The Ever-Present Origin’:

 

“If an integral man were to encounter a deficient mental man, would not deficient mental power fail in the face of integral strength? Would not the individual ego-consciousness falter in the face of Itself-consciousness of mankind? the mental-rational in the face of the spiritual? fragmentation in the face of integrality?...

 

…Man is in the world to sustain it as well as himself ‘in truth’, not for his or for its own sake, but for the sake of the spiritual present. It is this spiritual present which elevates wholeness to transparency and frees us from our transient age, for this age of ours is not the present but partiality and flight (Flucht), indeed, almost a conclusion (Ende). Only someone who knows of Origin has present (Gegenwart) – living and dying in the whole, in integrity.”

(Gebser, EPO, 1984, 273)

 

Publications

Selected Literature in English

 

Gebser, Jean: The Ever-Present Origin, 1984, Ohio University Press, Athens, Authorized Translation by Noel Bastard with Algis Mickunas

 

Hiroike, Chikuro: Towards Supreme Morality, 2002, The Institute of Moralogy, 3 Volumes, Kashiwa

 

Hiroike, Chikuro: The Characteristics of Moralogy and Supreme Morality, New Revised Edition 1966

 

Jaworski, Joseph: Synchronicity, The Inner Path of Leadership, 2011, Berrett-Koehler Publisher, San Francisco (CA)

 

Jaworski, Joseph: Source, The Inner Path of Knowledge Creation, 2012, Berrett-Koehler Publisher, San Francisco (CA)

 

Johnson, Jeremy: Seeing Through the World, Jean Gebser and Integral Conciousness, 2019, Revelore Press, Seattle (WA)

 

Kadowaki, Kakichi: Erleuchtung auf dem Weg. Zur Theologie des Weges, 1993, Kösel Verlag München. (Japanese Original: Michi no Keijijo-gaku, 1990, Iwanami Shoten, Tokio)

 

Scharmer, C. Otto: Theory U, Leading from the Future as It Emerges, 2007, Cambridge (MA)

 

(There is a translation in Japanese ‘U-Riron’, 2010, Eiji Press)

 

Scharmer, C. Otto: The Essentials of Theory U, Core Principles and Applications, 2018, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Oakland (CA)

 

Scharmer, C. Otto, Kaufer, Katrin: Leading From the Emergent Future, From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies, Applying Theory U to Transforming Business, Society, and Self, 2013, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco (CA)

 

Senge, Peter, Scharmer, C. Otto, Jaworski, Joseph, Flowers, Betty Sue: Presence, Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, 2004, Cambridge (MA)

 

The Institute of Moralogy: An Outline of Moralogy, A New Approach to Moral Science, 1987, Kashiwa

 

The Institute of Moralogy: Chikuro Hiroike, Father of Moralogy, 2005, Kashiwa

 

 

 

German Publication

 

Han, Byung-Chul, Vita Contemplativa, 2022, Ullstein, Berlin

 

(Translations in English from this Publication in German)

 

Klostermann, W.U., Ochiai, Ryoichi: Moralogie, Dotoku-do, Ein Japanischer Weg Praktizierter Moral Aufgrund der Lehren von Grossen Weisen, 1996, Fischer, Herausgegeben vom Moralogie Institut Kashiwa

 

 

Links

 

Jean Gebser Society USA: https://gebser.org/

 

Jeremy Johnson: jeremy@nuralearning.com

 

Otto C. Scharmer: https://www.u-school.org/; https://presencinginstitute.org/
YouTube Presentations in English.