Seeing Through the World

Jeremy D Johnson, host of Mutations Podcast and author of Seeing Through the World, offers a seven-week delve into the spiritual philosophy of Jean Gebser. Reading the work as a prescient treatise on the spiritual crisis of our modern era, this course traces a path from the chaos of worldview transition to the dim—and yet ever-present—future whose seeds are assuredly present.

Jean Gebser (1905-1973) was a philosopher, poet, and phenomenologist of consciousness best known for his magisterial The Ever-Present Origin (Ursprung und Gegenwart, 1949). Writing in the mid-twentieth 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 he called the “integral” structure. This new consciousness marked a fundamental change in the subject-object relationship. The dualistic worldview, which so characterized modernity, was undergoing a quiet metamorphosis. What lies beyond the present-day experience of estrangement and alienation from our world is a new mode of participation: the “world without opposite.”

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 corroboration links Gebser’s kulturphilosophie with the “integral yoga” of Indian revolutionary and yogi Sri Aurobindo’s (The  Life Divine), as well as the evolutionary mysticism of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (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.”

“Gebser was a brilliantly intuitive mystic with a profound understanding of poetry… [The Ever-Present Origin is] the kind of book that changed one’s life.”

Feuerstein’s comment is more appropriate than ever. Now, in a time of extreme climate disruption and societal atomization, we need new philosophies of life and time, agency and becoming, that help us to find a new ‘strength of spirit’ for such times. As Gebser suggests, a worldview metamorphosis has long been underway—in the living present we are already shaped by the future. What is needed are ‘senseful’ tools that hone our perception and help us attune to these new modes of participation. This course aims to introduce and distill the core themes of Jean Gebser’s integral philosophy, and in doing so, familiarize students with many of the perceptual and conceptual tools that his work offers us—all in the service of worldview metamorphosis.

What is needed are ‘senseful’ tools that hone our perception.

In this moment of civilizational crisis, Gebser’s time has come yet again to help us cohere our ‘unthinkable present’ and wayfind towards habitable futures. More than ever it is vital to recall this singular idea: tomorrow already lives in us.

If we are already in relation with latent futures, it behooves us all to aspire towards greater degrees of agency in the face of technocratic dehumanization, presence in the face of rampant clock-time, and freedom in the face of spiritual estrangement.

When we live in a “world without opposite,” we already live from tomorrow.

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Please note: 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.

Watch Jeremy’s introduction to Jean Gebser for the In the Making docu-series by Katie Teague.

Class Outline

• The course will begin on February 23, 2024 and run for seven weeks.

• Lessons are recorded live on Zoom on Sundays at 9:30 am PT / 12:30 PM ET.

• Office Hours will be held on Mondays at 9:30 am PT / 12:30 pm ET.

• Lectures and group discussions will be 90 minutes long.

Lessons

• Lesson I - Beyond the Technoculture: How Jean Gebser’s Philosophy Helps us Imagine a World Beyond the Meta-crisis

• Lesson II - Gebser’s Kulturphilosophie: The Method and Art of Poetic History

• Lesson III - Mutations (From the Archaic to the Integral)

• Lesson IV - Mutations II (Interrelationships and Unfoldment)

• Lesson V - Our History is a Metamorphosis

• Lesson VI - Seeing Through: Diaphaneity, or Perceiving Wholeness

• Lesson VII - Epilogue: A Star Shapes us From Tomorrow

About Your Instructor

Jeremy is an author (Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness), publisher (Integral Imprint), editor in chief (Mutations), podcaster, and senior research associate at Perspectiva.

His academic research, writing, and publishing advocates new forays into integrative thinking and praxis—uniting the philosophical with the poetic, and ecological thought with spiritual creativity—as vital and existential work for a time of planetary crisis.

Jeremy is a PhD student in the Philosophy at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His academic research emphasizes the study of Gebser’s kulturphilosophie, and integrative philosophy at large, and its important application to contemporary ecological thought and worldview transformation.

The manuscript for his second book, Fragments of an Integral Future: Essays on Time, Ecology, and a New World View (Integral Imprint) is nearing completion, to be published in Spring 2025.

Student Learning Outcomes

Students will:

• participate in an exploration of the core spiritual and philosophical themes in Jean Gebser’s integral philosophy

• deepen their understanding of Gebser’s key text, The Ever-Present Origin

• be introduced to a host of other, related works (poetry, film, fiction, philosophy, etc.) that enrich their understanding of integral concepts and themes

• cultivate a more embodied, experiential insight with respect to the ‘structures of consciousness’ (from the archaic to the integral)

• understand a more robust and clarified understanding of key, philosophical concepts and their application in personal and professional life

• acquire ‘senseful’ tools for participatory knowing that help them develop greater degrees of agency, creativity, and freedom in an age of techno-cultural overwhelm and social atomization

• clearly discern the themes of emergent, integral worldview in the present day

• 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. See link below.

Student rates:
Send us a note to receive a pay-what-you-can, sliding scale registration link: jeremy (at) nuralearning (dot) com.

Thank you, and see you in class!

Already on the Mutations Mighty Network? Receive the alumni discount by registering here.