Transition from Intellectual-Mental-Rational to Postformal-Integral-Planetary
Discussion
Jennifer Gidley:
"Gebser and Steiner describe this transition as having its birth between the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe, where the new consciousness is struggling to emerge through the complacency of the over-ripe old consciousness structures.
Gebser (1949/1985) summarizes this situation.
- When spatial consciousness was finally consolidated around 1480-1500 [CE] it was from that time onward liberated for new tasks. Waking, diurnal consciousness had been secured. . . After this achievement modern European [people] believed that . . . [they] had accomplished all that could be accomplished and [were] content to remain in [this] state of achievement . . . . but . . . a decline sets in because of this self-satisfaction, and, beginning with the Renaissance, mental consciousness increases in deficiency and deteriorates into rationalism. . . . At the same time, however, the new mutation begins its course which becomes gradually but increasingly visible over the following centuries [and] . . . will enter the general awareness at the moment when the deficient attitude reaches its maximum of rational chaos—a moment we are reaching with finality during the present decades (p. 303).
In Steiner’s (1986a) view, the manner in which modern science developed—at least up to his time—was an overextension of head-knowledge to the extent that it was not permeated with heart -knowledge. While earlier forms of science which were more in tune — albeit not fully consciously — with the cosmic laws, modern science discovered the workings of these laws of nature “of gravity, of heat, of steam, of electricity” (p. 102) and used them to manipulate the world. Steiner pointed to his times as the turning point where humans, having reached “the highest point of [our] power to transform the physical world. . . . From now onwards [we] will become more spiritual again” (p. 102).Wilber’s position on this transition is less clear. Although he writes substantially on vision-logic—his term for the new consciousness after rationality—he makes few statements regarding its beginnings. There is one direct statement that I have located where he (Wilber, 1996c) notes that “the centaur was first reached by a significant number of individuals with the flowering of humanistic understanding of man, perhaps as early as the 1600’s in Europe (Florence, especially) but peaking with present-day humanistic-existential psychology” (p. 340, note*). In his later work Wilber (2000d), draws on Habermas indicating the idea that the collective development of ego-identity in 16th-century Europe, led to concepts of legal, moral, and political freedom. He describes the impact of this development on culture and society, citing Habermas, as facilitating notions of “global forms of intercourse” and early conceptions of world citizenship (p. 191). While this suggests planetary consciousness, Wilber does not explicitly bring this through. The following section discusses literature on the multi-faceted features of emergent consciousness." (See: Postformal-Integral-Planetary Consciousness)