Seeing Through the World

Jeremy D Johnson, host of Mutations Podcast and author of Seeing Through the World, offers a seven-week delve into Jean Gebser’s magnum opus, The Ever-Present Origin. Reading the work as a prescient spiritual treatise on the crisis of our modern age, the course will trace a path from the darkness of civilizational transition to the dim, but ever-present light of tomorrow, whose seeds are assuredly present.

Jean Gebser (1905-1973) was a philosopher, poet, and phenomenologist of integral consciousness best known for his magisterial The Ever-Present Origin (Ursprung und Gegenwart, 1949). Writing in the mid-century during a period of intense cultural transformation and crisis in Europe, Gebser intuited a series of mutational leaps spanning the history of human consciousness, the latest of which emerging he called the “integral” structure, marked by the presence of time-freedom.

Gebser’s insights into the phenomenology of human consciousness has offered profound intellectual depth—and spiritual transmission—to the field of integral philosophy and consciousness studies, influencing the works of American historians such as William Irwin Thompson and the philosopher Ken Wilber. Further syncretic corroboration links Gebser’s integral epoch to those of the Indian revolutionary and yogi Sri Aurobindo’s “integral yoga” (The  Life Divine) and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary mysticism (The Human Phenomenon).

​As William Irwin Thompson writes, “Gebser was a brilliantly intuitive mystic with a profound understanding of poetry and art,” and that Ever-Present Origin  is, “the kind of book that changed one’s life.” Georg Feuerstein, Gebser's colleague and friend, wrote that, “Socratic spirits like Gebser typically live before their time… perhaps the present climate is more receptive to Gebser’s arguments.” 

Now, in this time of extreme climate disruption and social fragmentation, we need more than ever “senseful” approaches that help us to revivify our future imaginaries.

Yet, as Gebser would say, tomorrow is already present.

The future lives in us. In this moment of civilizational crisis, Gebser’s time has come yet again to help us navigate a liminal age of worldview transition. We must learn to be sufficiently present in order to live the future that is already living us.

This course requires no familiarity with the ideas discussed in previous courses on the Mutations platform (previously Nura Learning). New students and alumni are welcome.

Class Outline

• The course will begin on February 13, 2024 and run for seven weeks.

• Lectures will be held on Tuesdays at 9:30 am PT / 12:30 PM ET.

• Office Hours will be held on Wednesdays at 4 pm PT / 7 pm ET.

• Gebser labs, also optional, will convene on Thursdays at 9:30 am PT / 12:30 pm ET.

• Lectures and group discussions will be 90 minutes long.

Lessons

• Lesson I - Origin is Ever-Present: Reading Jean Gebser as Contemplative Practice

• Lesson II - The Transformation of our World: History Re-Visioned

• Lesson III - From Archaic Roots to Magic Entanglement

• Lesson IV - Time and the Image of the Soul in the Mythic Structure

• Lesson V - Thinking and Being in the Mental Structure

• Lesson VI - Diaphaneity, or Becoming Transparent in the Integral Structure

• Lesson VII - ‘Backleaps from the Ever-Present Future’ - Voices from the Aperspectival World

Student Learning Outcomes

Students will:

• participate in a reading of Ever-Present Origin, in an attempt to make new connections with our modern world

• explore a host of other, related works (poetry, film, fiction, philosophy, etc.) to deepen their understanding of key themes and ideas

• cultivate embodied and experiential insight on the structures of consciousness — the archaic, magic, mythic, mental and integral — in their daily lives

• familiarize themselves with Gebser’s core insights into integral consciousness, such as ‘time concretion,’ ‘systasis’ and ‘diaphaneity’(transparency)

• acquire tools for participatory knowing and other ‘senseful’ capacities that help them navigate cultural fragmentation and worldview transition

• have the opportunity to exchange with the instructor and fellow students on a variety of topics touching on the subject matter of the book and related works 

• join a community of seekers who believe in the transformational potential of consciousness and culture, and the power of art, imagination, and contemplative wonder to help realize a more beautiful world

Registration: $175

Alumni receive a $25 discount. Please send us a note if you would like to receive access to alumni registration.
Student rates:
Send us a note to receive a pay-what-you-can registration link: jeremy (at) mutations (dot) blog

Thank you, and see you in class!

Already on the Mutations Mighty Network? Click here to register.

Alumni from a previous Gebser class? Register here.