Integral Reality

Jeremy D Johnson, host of Mutations Podcast and author of Seeing Through the World, offers an exploration of the key philosophical themes and spiritual import of the “integral world.” Drawing primarily from Jean Gebser’s magnum opus, The Ever-Present Origin (1949), this seminar presents a coherent summary of the emergent “temporal” themes and concepts, as well as the spiritual import, of the aperspectival world.

INTEGRAL REALITY is an exploration of our time between worlds, or what Gebser himself had called “the interim world.”

We live in the unbearable tension of the liminal: a transitional epoch, where the old worldview is still unraveling—or, we should say, “composting”—but the new worldview, if there is one, is all too nascent. Like the meaning of the word ‘limn,’ the new remains a mere tracing, an outline of a future-possible.

Our time is Janus-Faced, with one side looking back, another ahead. Where, then, do we turn for insight, meaning and even the spiritual strength needed to respond to the crisis of our times?

How do we discern the trappings of the old from the promise of the new?

Finally, is it possible for us to live the new?

These are precisely the questions that Gebser’s oeuvre investigates and this seminar will work to unpack. In Part Two of Ever-Present Origin, published in 1953,

Ever-Present Origin is a challenging, transformative text. It is the kind of book that, as historian William Irwin Thompson once wrote, “that changed one’s life.”

While Part One conveys a vividly rich and living history of consciousness, Part Two invites — and arguably requires — a “certain participation” in the reader. Part Two is the quintessential ‘catalytic read,’ providing tools for learning and embodying ‘integrative’ capacities in the human being, capacities that help us to navigate the present spiritual impasse of cultural atomization and overwhelm.

It is not enough to philosophize about cultural transformation. We must, somehow, start living, enacting the kind of future our philosophies affirm. Stated poetically, our endeavors are only successful to the degree they allow tomorrow to shape the present. To this aim, the tools Ever-Present Origin provide us with have a twofold purpose: first, they are enactments, not mere representations, of the integrative reality they point to. When we work with these perceptual tools, they, in turn, work on us. Second, these tools, to the degree that they help us embody an integrative consciousness, hold the potential to empower us with greater degrees of creative agency and freedom in response to our civilizational crisis.

THE THEME OF THIS COURSE

Hosted over the course of one weekend at the end of April, this seminar is intended to be a clarifying and contextualizing deep dive into the themes, concepts, and spiritual import of Part Two of Ever-Present Origin. Arguably, the book remains a remarkable and prescient text that, translated and brought into a ‘conversation’ with our own cultural moment, can become a powerfully orienting lode star. Students will come away with a sense of how many of the tools and methods presented in Gebser’s time can be applied to the unique challenges we face in 2024. The thesis of the book, stated succinctly, is that we are already living in a new time, demanding a new worldview. What happens when we turn towards this challenge, creatively overturning our perceptual habits and conceptual thought? How do we turn towards modes of planetary thinking and, ultimately, primordial and spiritual trust? Explore these questions over the course of the seminar with like-minded explorers of the future-possible.

What to Expect

Three lectures, plus one open dialogue session.

• Lectures will take place on April 26, 27 & 28. Lectures will convene at 9:30 am PT / 12:30 pm ET.

• One open dialogue and Q&A session on Saturday, April 27 at 1 pm PT / 4 pm ET.

• All sessions will be recorded and available for later viewing.

• Access to a class forum where participants can post reflections, review course materials, and discuss their explorations and insights together. Students will retain access to the forum after the conclusion of the course.

Schedule

Friday (4/26):

Lecture I - The Interim World: A Brief History of Consciousness

Lesson I opens the weekend seminar in the mythic spirit of philosophical and spiritual storytelling, framing our civilizational crisis—today referred to as the ‘meta-crisis’ or ‘polycrisis’—within a greater unfolding history of consciousness. While simultaneously conveying the central themes of what Gebser called the emerging ‘aperspectival world,’ this first talk will explore how the new worldview has come about. It is not only a new epoch, a new time, but a new consciousness of time.

Saturday (4/27):

Lecture II - Tools for Enacting the Integral World

Part Two of Ever-Present Origin provides the reader with an array of conceptual tools and methods for relating, thinking, and perceiving a complex and multifaceted form of ‘integral time.’ In this lecture, these key concepts will be explored and applied as we turn them to our present day anthropocene and ‘posthuman’ context. In the end, these are ‘catalytic’ tools which meant to challenge, and ultimately help us enact a more intensified and creative relationship with the future.

Open Dialogue: Collective Presencing Session (1 pm PT / 4 pm ET)

In this session, participants are invited to enter a relational and dialogical space hosted within the container of collective presencing practice. After brief opening remarks by the instructor (Jeremy), participants will be invited to enter themes breakout rooms exploring the themes and insights which may have generated over the first two days of the seminar. After breakout discussions have concluded, students will be invited back to the room for a short Q&A.

Sunday (4/28):

Lecture III - Primordial Trust and the Spiritual Import

Perhaps one of the most significant insights that Ever-Present Origin conveys are spiritual in their nature. The principle of diaphany is, for Gebser, an “epiphany of the spiritual.” Integral to the text itself is a way of imagining a post-religious and planetary spirituality. Diaphany, as a form of spiritual perception, is free for both the twilight language of soul and the wakeful thought of reason alike. Lesson III returns to the narrative form of Lesson I, framing the transformation of present-day spirituality as part of the unfolding history of consciousness. Key to this lesson will be the poetic invocations of Rilke and Mallarmé, each who helps us to understand the present spiritual mutation as “backleaps from the ever-present future.”

Student Learning Outcomes

Students will:

• Delve into the spiritual, metaphysical and historical aspects of Gebser’s Ever-Present Origin, encouraging the development of personal, creative, and professional insights.

• Deepen their understanding of today’s complex challenges within the greater context of the history of consciousness,

• Gain a more coherent sense not only of where we have been, but where we may yet go, what we may yet be, and what sort of futures are still possible

• Develop both a greater intuitive sense and conceptual understanding of the emergent ‘integral’ world, fostering the capacity to apply these insights to personal and cultural transformation.

• Have opportunities to share and exchange ideas with the instructor and fellow students.

• Join a vibrant online community — the Mutations community — concerned with the direction of our world and seeking new, transformative ways of seeing.

Registration: $97

Student rates:
Send us a note to receive a pay-what-you-can registration link: info (at) nuralearning (dot) com

Thank you, and see you in class!

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