Conscious Force and The New Spirituality

©John Kadela, Ph.D.

Jean Gebser (1986) presaged the quest of an entire generation when he wrote The Ever-Present Origin. With its publication in 1948 Gebser, in a single master stroke, upended the western tradition with his now famous phenomenology of cultures and consciousness. His depiction of the essential structures of human consciousness evolution would go on to have profound and lasting impact in both the sciences and the humanities, but this is only because his multi-dimensional unfolding of the spectrum of consciousness already respected the individual and collective breakthroughs in the arts, literature, science, law, medicine, psychology and sociology. Just as Gadamer (1989), Merleau-Ponty (2002) and Heidegger (1962) traced out the possibility for a new understanding of consciousness and being, Gebser raises the question of the concretion of the spiritual as the fundamental consideration of the coming decades. “Instead, we can do something that each of us does or should do with regard to his own life, except that we shall focus our inquiry upon something supra-personal, something encompassing the lives of several generations, rather than upon the personal existence of one individual. Just as now and again in the course of his own life one might ask: Who am I really? Just as one might say in retrospect: I was thus and so I became who I am today; and just as in so doing one realizes, on the one hand that there are constants which to a certain extent compose his/inner structure and, on the other, that certain events took place which were able to change the consequences of this structure.” (Gebser, p. 4)
This is no mere question seeking a psychological resolution of personal individuation, it is the awakening of a new consciousness whose essential action is the concretion of the spiritual. To an older generation, Gebser (1985) says, this may appear as a kind of historical destiny, but Gebser makes clear that the characteristics of the new consciousness, one that has been unfolding for nearly two hundred years, is not a destiny at all, but supercession of all previous consciousness structures. In order to make clear what we are referring the following tables will give the reader a comparative map of what Gebser has accomplished. Tracing out the essential structures, Gebser identifies 5 types of consciousness structure based on their typical features. These include the archaic, magical, mythical, mental-rational and integral structures. Phenomenologically speaking, one of the key ways of understanding these structures is through their space-time characteristics. The fundamental characteristics follow then on the basis of the areas of emphasis related to human evolution. Frequently Gebser (1985) refers to the impact such a transformation of consciousness will have on the mental-rational structure as it collapses.
Structure
1. Space and Time Relationship
a) Dimensioning
b) Perspectivity
c) Emphasis
Archaic
Zero-dimensional
None
Prespatial / Pretemporal
Magic
One-dimensional
Pre-perspectival
Spaceless / Timeless
Mythical
Two-dimensional
Unperspectival
Spaceless / Natural temporicity
Mental
Three-dimensional
Perspectival
Spatial / Abstractly temporal
Integral
Four-dimensional
Aperspectival
Space-free / Time-free

Structure
1. Space and Time Relationship
a) Dimensioning
b) Perspectivity
c) Emphasis
Archaic
Zero-dimensional
None
Prespatial / Pretemporal
Magic
One-dimensional
Pre-perspectival
Spaceless / Timeless
Mythical
Two-dimensional
Unperspectival
Spaceless / Natural temporicity
Mental
Three-dimensional
Perspectival
Spatial / Abstractly temporal
Integral
Four-dimensional
Aperspectival
Space-free / Time-free


Structure
2. Sign
3. Essence
4. Properties
Archaic
None
Identity (Integrality)
Integral
Magic
Point
Unity (Oneness)
Non-directional unitary interwovenness or fusion
Mythical
Circle
Polarity (Ambivalence)
Circular and polar complementarity
Mental
Triangle
Duality (Opposition)
Directed dual oppositionality
Integral
Sphere
Diaphaneity (Transparency)
Presentiating, diaphanous “rendering whole”

Structure
5. Potentiality
6. Emphasis
a) Objective (external) (Aspect of the World)
b) Subjective (internal) (Energy of Initiator)
Archaic
integrality
unconscious spirit
none or latency
Magic
unity by unification and hearing / hearkening
nature
emotion
Mythical
unification by complementarity and correspondence
soul / psyche
imagination
Mental
unification by synthesis and reconciliation
space - world
abstraction
Integral
integrality by integration and presentiation
(conscious spirit)
(concretion)

Structure
7. Consciouness-
a) -degree
b) -relation
Archaic
deep sleep
universe-related: breathing spell
Magic
sleep
outer-related (nature): exhaling
Mythical
dream
inner-related (psyche): inhaling
Mental
wakefulness
outer-related (spatial world): exhaling
Integral
(transparency)
(inware-related: inhaling? or breathing-spell?)







Structure
9. Basic attitude and agency of energy
10. Organ emphasis
Archaic
Origin:
Wisdom
—
Magic
Vital:
InstinctDriveEmotion
Viscera — Ear
Mythical
Psychic:
ImaginationSensibilityDisposition
Heart — Mouth
Mental
Cerebral:
ReflectionAbstractionWill / volition
Brain — Eye
Integral
(Integral):
(Concretion)(Rendering diaphanous)(“Verition”)
(Vertex)

Structure
11. Forms of Realization and Thought
a) Basis
b) Mode
Archaic
—
Originary
Magic
empathy and identificationhearing
Pre-rational, pre-causal, analogical
Mythical
imagination and utterancecontemplation and voicing
Irrational: non-causal, polar
Mental
conceptualization and reflectionseeing and measuring
Rational: causal, directed
Integral
(concretion and integration “verition” and transparency)
(Arational: acausal, integral)

Structure
12. Forms of Expression
13. Forms of Assertion
Archaic
—
—
Magic
Magic:
GravenImagesIdolRitual
Petition (Prayer): being heard
Mythical
Mythologeme:
GodsSymbolMysteries
Wishes (Ideals: Fulfillment “wish(pipe-
dreams”)
Mental
Philosopheme:
GodDogma (Allegory, Creed)Method
Volition: attainment
Integral
(Eteologeme):
(Divinity)(Synairesis)(Diaphany)
(Verition: Present)
These tables represent a mere summarization of the essential features of consciousness evolution. The integral structure is what Gebser identifies as unfolding during this age and suggests that not all people have begun the process of manifesting these characteristics. For Gebser (1986) it is important to remember that this summary, then may have served to illustrate that:
1) All structures constitute us;
2) All structures must be lived commensurate with their constitutive values if we are live a whole or integral life;3) No structure may therefore be negated; negation enters when one structure or the other is overemphasized, whereby this accentuation is transferred to its deficient manifestations, which are always quantitative; 4) Certain designations, ascriptions; and characteristic concepts attributed to the individual structures render their effectuality evident.
We have to ask what implications this transformation of consciousness has for human beings in general, and religious experience in particular. How does an integral human experience the world? One need only compare the difference between the once dominating mental-rational worlds to grasp it. Where mental-rational man treated the world as a perspectival three-dimensional grid to be explored and mapped, and later to be conquered and exploited, integral consciousness experiences the world as “open,” i.e., not reducible to spatial coordinates mapped with dualistic and oppositional systems of thought and matter. Where ideologies and systems once held sway, integral experience seeks to “render whole.” The manners of expression are significantly different as well, integral consciousness expressing awareness, not merely sectored perception. Indeed we may say that perception in integral consciousness is free of perspective and space-time coordinates. Inasmuch as the basic mode of realization and thought is concretion and transparency, we can ask how this differs from the experience of belief, perhaps even religious belief. If belief can be seen to express the previous structures of mythical and mental thought, then the integral may well express the intensification of the magical insofar as it expresses the transparency of the open world that once left magical man mute and in awe. The emphasis here is what was once a source of belief that could be represented and symbolized as projections of belief, now becomes a living testimony to the integrity of one’s experience of spirituality at the core of one’s awareness. This is not to discount belief per se, but to highlight the expansion and change of belief over many millennia. What integral religion will look like is hard to say. Wilbur (2006) suggests that it involves the realization of the transcendent core of all world religions as in essence expressing the elements of the new consciousness. While we do not completely hold to Wilbur’s expression, we acknowledge the importance of highlighting the difference between the mental and integral worlds.
In the mental world, the world is a duality of subjects against objects to be understood, represented, mapped and measured. With integral world all opposites dissolve and what emerges is a conscious participation with the whole marked by the skills of comparing, contrasting, coordinating and integrating experience. Such a human being, says Gebser, should they master the new consciousness, will manifest the values of transparency, openness, a truthful rendering of the whole (verition) and a focus on the divinity at the core of the lived present. In recent years we have witnessed the proliferation of many works whose nod to spirituality focus on being here now and the power of “now.” We would hasten to add that in terms of Gebser’s schema, the power of the now is the power of rendering whole which is an expression of the spiritual whole already having been concretized in the person expressing it. There is also the attendant danger of a deficient understanding of the “Now” as something to be “seized” upon in terms of seizing material wealth or personal power. We find such expressions as a misstatement of the new consciousness and an unfit misuse of the new consciousness. Only those expressions which render the whole transparently (diaphanously) may the spiritual be efficiently expressed as a living dimension in human beings. In terms of religion, then, God is no longer experienced as a mysterious and distant “other,” but is to be found at the core of existence itself. This “distance” is resolved by the experience of oneself as transparent co-present to the spiritual foundations of oneself and the world.
Wilbur (2001) acknowledges the weight of Gebser’s contribution, along with many others, in giving us a holoarchy by way of which we may understand the language of consciousness evolution. Expanding on Gebser’s structures, Wilbur (1996, 1997) creates a quadrant that integrates in the manner of a mandala the all quadrant-all level way of verition as it expresses the depth of the fields mastered in consciousness evolution. These structures and fields once treated as objective regions are seen as tacit to life itself that irrespective of one’s belief system or cosmology are virtually undeniable. Here science seems to meet spirituality, psychology and religion right in the neighborhoods they live and symbolizes the background horizon of their very existence.


In this mandala we see the “grammar” of the new consciousness at work. In order to grasp the mode of givenness of each of the four areas of the quadrant, we need to recognize their mediating consciousness. In other words, each of the four regions of consciousness evolution is based on subjective-objective and right-hand left-hand symmetries. This play on words and on the brain hemispheres is no accident and serves as reminder of the “up from origin” view of consciousness evolution. Seen holarchically then, joining all the 1’s to the 1’s, the 2’s to the 2’s, etc, gives us the depth and span of each level of consciousness evolution. These are easily situated in Gebser’s tables and perhaps add a more comprehensive understanding that as complexity grows there is less span and more depth acquired as we integrate previous layers and levels of the holoarchy of consciousness evolution. By viewing it in terms of individual subjective (I and We) interior phenomena and exterior objective It realities, we may get a better grasp of how they fold into one another. The following table illustrates it:
INDIVIDUAL
INTERIORLeft Hand Paths
SUBJECTIVE
truthfulnesssincerityintegritytrustworthiness
I
EXTERIORRight Hand Paths
OBJECTIVE
truthcorrespondencerepresentationpropositional
it
COLLECTIVE
we
justnesscultural fitmutual understandingrightness
INTERSUBJECTIVE
it
functional fitsystems theory webstructural-functionalismsocial systems mesh
INTEROBJECTIVE

In order to fully understand the functional fit of this expansion of Gebser, we need to grasp the tenets of its operation. What follows is a summary of Wilbur’s (1996) tenets regarding holarchies so that we may fold the mandala up into it proper layers and levels.
· (1) Reality as a whole is not composed of things, or processes, but of holons.
· Holons display four fundamental capacities:
· (2a) self-preservation,
· (2b) self-adaptation,
· (2c) self-transcendence.
· (2d) self-dissolution.
· (3) Holons emerge.
· (4) Holons emerge holarchically.
· (5) Each emergent holon transcends but includes its predecessor.
· (6) The lower sets the possibilities of the higher; the higher sets the probabilities of the lower.
· (7) "The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises determines whether it is 'shallow' or 'deep'; and the number of holons on any given level we shall call its 'span'" (A. Koestler).
· (8) Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span.
· (9) Destroy any type of holon, and you will destroy all of the holons above it and none of the holons below it.
· (10) Holarchies coevolve.
· (11) The micro is in relational exchange with the macro at all levels of its depth.
· Evolution has directionality:
· (12a) Increasing complexity.
· (12b) Increasing differentiation/integration.
· (12c) Increasing organization/structure
· (12d) Increasing relative autonomy.
· (12e) Increasing telos.
Key to perceiving the interrelationships of Wilbur’s mandala are the first six tenets. Aside from the fact that they have received repeated mathematical and scientific validation in quantum physics (Laszlo, 2005), these tenets are keys to unlocking our own identities in terms of understanding and mastering time-freedom (Gebser, 1985). “What the Bleep Do We Know?” the famous film of 2005 established the place of such thinking in terms of describing ordinary day to day life in terms of complexity lived in simple terms.

Combs (2002) suggests that with increasing complexity comes an attendant chaos. The new consciousness, as Gebser (1985) says, is marked by an intensification of awareness, a demand for presentifying the whole. Truth is no mere correspondence of subject to object, but the surpassal of all dualities in favor of verition, an experience of transparently being present as the truth of experience. This suggests that events do not happen, they are already there and we meet them on our way. He asserts that the “formality” of “taking place” is merely an indication that the observer has passed beyond the event in question, and this formality is of no great importance. What is of importance is what this suggests about the individual experience of time: it is a new intensity to be mastered through verition, aperspectivity and atemporality. This is no longer a process of ego syntony, but one that dissolves the ego, and thereby its oppositional nature, in favor of the whole.
We are living in a world in which we witness horrific and violent collapse. It is a collapse not merely of cultures and countries in which depravation and physical and psychological oppression are witnessed, but the collapse of reason itself. Sloterdik (1988) delivers a devastating presentation of reason gone mad from the Enlightenment to contemporary times. Reason, he suggests, ultimately turned on itself becoming less reasonable and more like a paranoid patient. This collapse is based on what Gebser identifies as the sectorization and fragmentation of the world into spatial sectors of dominance and might. Governments, corporations and cultures turned against themselves in a frenzy of dissolution and despair. The so-called humanities can do no more than descry and describe a world whose collapse they helped engender. The sciences are used to promote profitable venture capitalism over an equitable benefit accessible to all. Acting like an abusive parent, many governments haunt their citizens with threats of evils that may not exist, but serve the ruling elite’s need for absolute might. Power, if it is exists at all, has been diminished to such a degree that individual’s in many countries find that ordinary life is driven by a maze of laws and ordinances. Life for many becomes a dark destiny of relinquished rights. Harry Stack Sullivan (1968) once diagnosed this loss of individual integration with respect to what he saw as the passivity and dependence of Americans on strong parental authority figures asserting that, in his view, that the American people were quite possibly the only people on earth who run the danger of democratically voting themselves into slavery. But these examples are only exemplars, the real point is that as the collapse of reason and systems proceeds two things become obvious: one, that people everywhere are challenged with a kind of internal collapse of the mental rational structure and that we are witnessing whole groups, nations, corporations, churches and cultures harping on the need to return to traditional values to stem the tide of chaos and evil reigning in the world. Two, the ever more manifest appearance of the integral consciousness being expressed in high contrast to the call to return to the past signals what Pargament (1997) calls the transformation of significance. We are living in a world where self-mastery no longer means the domination of the strong over the weak, of might over meekness, but one that demands an integration of the past, present and future.
What impact does this have on the psychology of religion? What bearing does it have on the experience of belief and faith? How will traditional religious organizations respond to a new and expanded cosmology based as much on science as it is on the experience of one’s own consciousness? Pargament (1997) iterates that religion is much an orienting system in terms of one’s experience of meaning and significance. Given that Spilka et al (2003) devote an entire text of validated research to the various developmental, organizational, behavioral and psychological views of religion, it will come as no surprise that the tension between the new consciousness structure and traditional churches and systems of belief are symptomatic of the question of how to manage chaos from within and whether or not individuals and churches will be able to assimilate it. It appears that this is not merely a sociological or psychological question, though there will be those who wish to “place” the new consciousness in a context that makes sense in terms of the previous structures. In some way this might be a comfort to those struggling with what Pargament (1997) identifies as the tension between conservation and transformation. What is essential for psychologists to recognize is that an integral religion will emerge from this tension and what it will look like in its expression remains difficult to gauge. Clearly an integral religion will be based on an integral spirituality devoid of absolutism or relativism because neither can sustain themselves in the process of verition. Additionally the individual mastery of the surpassal of time to time-freedom may, in some eyes, be seen as a kind of destiny. But this can be no mere passive encounter with spirituality for as Gebser (1986) in “The Transformation of the West” said “only he who chooses his own destiny is liberated from it because he has brought himself into harmony with the whole. In other words, when I genuinely resign myself to accepting my destiny, I change it. Instead of losing myself in nothingness, instead of radically alienating myself from the world, I gain the open world, the fullness of the conscious participation in the whole – this whole necessarily encompasses the future. My life becomes transmuted from a mere serial duration into authentic presence. All time becomes actual, as each of us is already what he will soon be. When I accept my destiny, I accept my own future: that is, I free myself from the blindness inherent to both. My existence, then, is not a being-toward-death, but a living and dying.” (Gebser, p. 10)
This statement defies traditional belief systems of churches and “serial” religions, i.e., religions that embrace teleological and eschatological foundations. To make the individual responsible for integrating the living present through himself/herself is precisely what Gebser (1985) had in mind when he said that for those who are not ready to embrace the new intensities, time will become a source of dread and foreboding, everything will be cast with a pall of doom, or the end of time will be descried as a source of great fear and negativity. “If we look at our contemporary world, regardless of the aspect we choose to emphasize, be it political, social, cultural or religious, what can indeed, what must we conclude? The world is shattering. In the last one hundred and fifty years the world has slowly but inexorably fallen to pieces, no matter which of its domains: religious bonds, traditionally stable social structures, craft security of workmen, political structures of whole nations, to be sure, of whole continents. But the world does not shatter, but certainly space does, namely, the spatial world and the illusory quality of oppositeness relative to us which we represented to ourselves, thinking that these constitute the real world.” (Gebser, p. 11)
How then can we as psychologists assist those facing this collapse and the emergence of a new consciousness with new modes of realization and expression, especially when they do not fit what Pargament (1997) describes as the “conservation of value?” All religions now seem to be faced with a crisis of conservation vs. transformation. But perhaps this is a false dichotomy. Certainly there are decisions made by either camp in terms of what to preserve or what to change. It is a balancing act either way for belief is being surpassed by an ability that demands that belief be itself transmuted into a new kind of faith that is based on an a presentification of the whole through oneself. Here neither conservation nor transformation can negotiate change for it is not mere change we are experiencing, but the transformation of the entire field of experience to one that by passes duality in favor of the whole. The conservation of value itself must become one where the values transformed through the whole become the inner markers of a new world perception and experience revealing a new richness of expression and where boundaries once heretofore marked psychologically become activated as new skills of perception and appreciation, compassion and empathy. While it is certainly true that people have their own inner blocks to such experiences, it also belies the fact that they already know there is something radically different occurring in the realm of faith that has not been seen before. What may trouble those who wish to stay in the conservation or transformation camp is the disturbing fact that the new consciousness appears to be no respecter of persons, i.e., the unfolding dimension seems to subvert individual egocentric thought towards an ever increasing participation in the whole.
For example, Gebser (1985, 1986) emphasizes the correlation of soul with the concretion of the spiritual. Does such an emphasis change the focus we have from a psychology of religion and spirituality founded on belief and faith to one based on the energetics of soul? Laszlo (2005) outlines the interface of quantum realities with psychological phenomena which lie far beyond the boundaries of ego beliefs and manifest more of the transpersonal and psychic dimensions of experience. Gebser (1985) said in 1948 that he suspected as the new consciousness manifested itself that parapsychology would most likely be the arena in which the most stunning revelations of the implications of the new consciousness. Clearly traditional mental rational churches will be challenged by such phenomena of remote viewing, healing at a distance, near death experiences, telesomatic medicine, superconductivity and the like. Dream research has long been involved in looking at the spiritual implications of the dream in relation to understanding consciousness (Krippner, 1990) In this respect we are dealing with a phenomena that will perhaps require a new psychology, or at the very least, a new branch of psychology. We mention these phenomena to serve as exemplars that situate the significance of the question of transformation for religions and how people will cope with the new reality. The challenge for conservation advocates will perhaps be to preserve the efficient modes of realization and expression of the previous structures while avoiding the denial of the new consciousness by devolving into dogma and ideology as a form of resistance to the new paradigm.
The impact of this transformation of consciousness, I believe, challenges psychology to its core and raises the question as to whether psychology is adequate to the task. Clearly the new consciousness is not merely a new psychological construct, and while psychology may try to research its implications for psychological beings, it seems almost that by default their discourse will appeal most to those who remain in the mental-rational egocentric world and for whom it will continue to reinforce their belief in belief systems as having pre-eminence over anything new. The double bind for us, in my view, is that we may be faced with having to first master the new consciousness in ourselves and all that that may imply for our own lives before we can assist others who are struggling with the entire question of spirituality and faith in a rapidly transforming world. In such a case, we will be obliged to master ourselves in terms of the new reality, in which case I suspect we may no longer be practicing “psychology.” What it will be called remains to be seen, but along with my colleague Rod Hemsell (2002), I hold to the view that the new consciousness is not psychological, cannot be mediated philosophically but presages the exercise of a Conscious Force that is descending to us, is bowing down to the earth and humanity in order to lift it. As Wilbur (2006) suggests any integral spirituality must recognize the universal transcendent core of the world’s spiritual tradition, but I also believe we are also obliged to recognize that was is coming has no opposite across from it and nothing to compare it to for it is, I suspect, incomparable and beyond the realms of reflective thought and emotion. It is we ourselves perhaps come round at last to bring ourselves home.

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