Postformal-Integral-Planetary Consciousness
Terminology
Jennifer Gidley:
"It is evident from the above that in addition to Steiner, Gebser and Wilber, many other researchers have endeavored to understand, characterize and communicate the new consciousness. Paradoxically, their contributions to understanding and communicating this phenomenon demonstrate both universal similarities and unique particularities. There is a profusion of terminology in the field—both between and within disciplinary boundaries. The major terms being used are:
• Postformal — to denote new developmental stages. Adult developmental psychologists have been undertaking research into postformal thinking for several decades, identifying up to four stages of development beyond Piaget’s formal operations (Arlin, 1999;Campbell, 2006; Cartwright, 2001; Commons et al., 1990; Commons, Trudeau, Stein, Richards, & Krause, 1998; Cook-Greuter, 2000; Kegan, 1994; Kohlberg, 1990;Labouvie-Vief, 1990; Sinnott, 1998; Yan & Arlin, 1995). The term postformal is also being utilized by several educationists (Horn, 2001; Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1993;Kincheloe, Steinberg, & Hinchey, 1999; Rose & Kincheloe, 2003). Kincheloe and Steinberg (1993) refer to post-formality as the socio-cognitive expression of postmodernism (p. 309);
• Integral — there are now several different schools of thought that use the term integral, which it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss in detail. This section will be mainly concerned with the usages of Gebser and Wilber, but my own usage of the term is primarily according to the usage of Gebser, which, in my view, most adequately contextualizes the other usages. Other terms relating to the new consciousness, such as Gebser’s
aperspectival ; Wilber’s vision-logic, centaur and AQAL; and Steiner’s consciousness soul or spiritual soul will be clarified where appropriate;
• Planetary — to denote a critical counterbalance to the more politico-economic term: globalization, as mentioned in the introduction. The term, planetary — which denotes amore anthropo-socio-cultural and ecological framing is gaining increasing currency as aterm to characterize important features of the new consciousness, particularly for those theorists who have a critical sensibility in the light of our complex current planetary situation (Earley, 1997; Gangadean, 2006a; Miller, 2006; Montuori, 1999; Morin & Kern,1999; Nicolescu, 2002; Swimme & Tucker, 2006).
Gebser used the term integral-Aperspectival to refer to the gradual transformation through awareness, concretion and integration of all the previous structures of consciousness that we have been exploring—archaic, magic, mythic and mental—into a new structure of consciousness. The aperspectival consciousness structure is a consciousness of the whole, an integral consciousness encompassing all time and embracing both man’s distant past and his approaching future as a living present. (Gebser, 1949/1985, p. 6)
Gebser and others credit Sri Aurobindo with being the first to draw attention to a new movement of consciousness arising in his time (Anderson, 2006). In his earliest writings one volution, included in his first publication Karmayogin, Sri Aurobindo draws attention to a deeper, more ancient lineage behind modern evolution theory than Charles Darwin, or even the German idealists (Aurobindo, 1909). He draws on the seminal evolutionary writings of the ancient Indian sacred texts, the Upanishads. A close scrutiny of the early 20th century writings of Steiner and Sri Aurobindo points to the likelihood that the latter met and was influenced by Steiner during these seminal times, though I am still researching this possibility. My research indicates, however, that as early as 1904, Steiner had already identified an emergent movement of consciousness, both ontogenetically—as an aspect of individual development — and phylogenetically — arising in humanity as a whole (Steiner, 1904/1959,1986a). He spoke of the awakening of consciousness soul or spiritual soul in the fifth [post-glacial] cultural period that began in the early 15th century CE and would continue to develop on into the future (Steiner, 1986a pp. 97-105). He also claimed that this new consciousness would be expected to strengthen in the 20th and 21st centuries and beyond. He noted that the true nature of the self, the I , “reveals itself in the consciousness soul . . . An inner activity of the I begins with a perception of the I, through self-contemplation.” (Steiner, 1910/1939, p. 31) Hence his use of the term “Consciousness Soul, [in which] the Ego is then able to transform its inner experiences into conscious knowledge of the outer world.” (Steiner, 1930/1983a, pp. 23-24) This reflective self-contemplation resembles Wilber’s (2000d) “vision-logic [that] . . . finds its own operation increasingly transparent to itself” (p. 193).Wilber draws on Gebser and Sri Aurobindo among others, as well as the developmental psychology research on postformal thinking, so his work is a remarkably sweeping synthesis, though by no means complete, or accurate in all the details of its sources, as he himself admits(Wilber, 2000a, p. xii). He notes that what unites all these perspectives is that they all point to something that goes beyond formal, modernist, abstract, rational thinking. He has coined the term vision-logic to describe this stage—an appropriate term because of its inherent dialectical nature. Where perspectival reason privileges the exclusive perspective of the particular subject, vision-logic adds up all the perspectives, privileging none, and thus attempts to grasp the integral, the whole, the multiple contexts. (Wilber, 2000b, p. 167)
In summary, Steiner’s major contributions were: he was the first to identify in writing, as early as 1904, a new consciousness emergence, and to write and lecture extensively on the evolution of consciousness, building on ancient Indian, Greek and particularly, German idealist/Romantic lineages; and secondly, he developed and published a comprehensive series of practices/injunctions designed to awaken the new consciousness in humanity—particularly through education, contemplative practices and the arts (Steiner, 1905/1981b, 1904/19931926/1966b, 1930/1983a, 1950, 1904/1959, 1964a, 1909/1965, 1966a, 1971a, 1982b, 1986a).Gebser’s major contributions were: firstly, to begin to academically formalize the emergent integral structure of consciousness; and secondly, to observe and note its emergence in the world in various disciplines and discourses in the first half of the last century (Gebser,1949/1985, 1970/2005, 1996a). Tragically, both Steiner’s and Gebser’s outstanding contributions have been largely ignored by the Anglophone academic world, as mentioned in the rationale for this research. Wilber’s major contributions so far have been: firstly, to synthesize, contemporize and popularize much of the earlier research; and secondly, to theorize a framework—the most recent form of which is AQA219 —designed to assist with the application of his integral theory to a range of disciplinary fields (Wilber, 1996b, 1996c, 2000a, 2000b, 2000d, 2004, 2006).Thirdly, Wilber has popularized the need for injunctions, or integral life practices, already emphasized by Steiner and Sri Aurobindo and more recently in the USA by George Leonard and Michael Murphy—not to mention millennia of spiritual and religious practices across numerous traditions. I acknowledge that this latter contribution of Wilber’s provides some counterweight to critiques about his cogni-centrism.
An important point in considering this new movement of consciousness is that unlike the previous structures, most of which tended to have a geographic locale—although not necessarily a single one—the new emergence is, by its own nature, planetary, cosmopolitan. This will become more evident below and is further developed in Appendix B. It is important to distinguish such a planetizing noospheric movement—which emphasizes the more inner-oriented developments of psychology and culture, with respect for individual and cultural diversity—from the notion of globalization —primarily a politico-economic movement based on the agendas of multi-national corporations, but tacitly carrying with it—like a Trojan horse — a largely modernist, materialistic, mono-cultural worldview. It is critically important to question whether contemporary integral theory has been colonized by Americo-centrism, or Eurocentrism, or whether it fully embodies a planetary sensibility in all its cultural diversity. A fully integral theory of planetary consciousness would transcend and include the politico-economic notion of globalization. The latter could be regarded as an attempt to dominate cultural worldviews and consciousness around the planet with outmoded characteristics of the previous stage of consciousness development. In the theory of emergent consciousness that I am developing through the journey of this narrative, the term planetary refers to the critical awareness of the impending planetary crisis. It also implies that no race, nation, language group, religion, ideology, academic discipline or single brand of integral theory can claim ownership of the new movement of consciousness. Unless the integral theory in relation to the evolution of consciousness arises out of such epistemological and cultural diversity, it would hardly qualify for the descriptor integral .To honor and integrate the diversity of the three major notions that inform the several growing tips of the evolution of consciousness discourse, I propose the composite term postformal-integral-planetary consciousness as a conceptual bridge.
I am aware that this section may suffer from some of the folds, doubling and circling that Foucault struggled with in his concept of the “immanent transcendental,” where the “forces of the outside . . . fold back upon themselves and affect themselves as the affect of self upon self, enabling the creation of ‘new forms of subjectivity’” (Robinson, 2007, p. 21). Demonstrating the paradoxical circularity of the new consciousness, Foucault adds: “indeed the end of philosophy .. . is the return of the beginning of philosophy. . . . The unfolding of a space in which it is once more possible to think” (Foucault, 1966/1994, p. 342).
Additional more extensive work is in preparation that builds on this gestalt of fragments. Sri Aurobindo pointed 50 years ago to the difficulty in writing about integrality: Integrality must by its nature be complex, many-sided and intricate; only some main line scan be laid down in writing, for an excess of detail would confuse the picture." (Aurobindo,1997, 152, p. 359)
Characteristics
Key Features of Postformal-Integral-Planetary Consciousness
Jenffier Gidley:
TO BE ADDED
Discussion
Jennifer Gidley on the Emergence of Reintegration:
"Let us call what shines forth in the soul as eternal, the consciousness soul. . . . The kernel of human consciousness, that is, the soul within the soul . . . is then distinguished from the intellectual soul, which is still entangled in the sensation, impulses and passions. . . . Only that truth is permanent, however, that has freed itself from all flavor of such sympathy and antipathy of feeling. . . . That part of the soul in which this truth lives will be called consciousness soul. (Steiner, 1904/1971e, pp. 24-25) Transparency (diaphaneity) is the form of manifestation of the spiritual.
. . . Integral reality is the world’s transparency, a perceiving of the world as truth: a mutual perceiving and imparting of truth of the world and of man and all that transluces both.” (Gebser,1949/1985, p. 7)As vision-logic begins to emerge, postconventional awareness deepens into fully universal, existential concerns: life and death, authenticity, full body-mind integration, self-actualization, global awareness, holistic embrace . . . In the archaeological journey to the Self, the personal realm’s exclusive reign is coming to an end, starting to be peeled off a radiant Spirit, and that universal radiance begins increasingly to shine through, rendering the self more and more transparent. (Wilber, 2000b, p. 105)
Context for Emergence of Postformal-Integral-Planetary Consciousness
Steiner, Gebser, and to a lesser extent Wilber—as discussed previously—refer to the first glimmerings of the emergence of a new movement of consciousness in the cultural phenomena of 15th to 16th century western Europe. For Steiner, the early 15th century marks the beginning of what he calls the fifth [post-glacial] cultural period. Tarnas (2006) agrees that the European Renaissance ushered in a new era. He pinpoints “the time span of a single generation surrounding the year 1500,” beginning with Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man in 1486, as the context for the birth of the modern self, and the birth of the modern cosmos (p. 4). In an earlier work, Tarnas (1991) noted that during this period, when translations of the original Greek philosophical works became available for the first time humanist philosophical syncretism also began. What arose was a revisiting of the “ancient Greek balance and tension between Aristotle and Plato, between reason and imagination, immanence and transcendence, nature and spirit, external world and interior psyche” (p. 219). Apart from a sprinkling of individual contributions, the next major flourishing of the new integrative spirit was expressed through German idealism and Romanticism in the late 18th century. This arose most notably via Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, and the young poet-philosophers of the Jena Romantic School: Schelling, Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, Holderlin. Wilber claims that although the idealists were accessing forms of consciousness beyond the formal-operational, rational-mental mode, they did not offer injunctions for others to develop such consciousness, and have thus been dismissed as “mere metaphysics” (Wilber, 2000d, p. 537). This latter assertion needs to be contested, based on a recent study by Schellingian scholar, Jason Wirth, reviewed by Michael Schwartz (2005).
This also raises the whole question of whether Wilber’s claim in this regard is valid for any of the German idealists or Romantics. There was a strong influence of both Hermeticism and Christianity, particularly in its esoteric form through Rosicricianism in Goethe and many of the German philosopher-poets of this period. More scholarship is needed in this under researched issue. What is clear, however, is that although they pointed to the notion of anew stage, structure or movement of consciousness they did not formalize it.
This apparently had to wait until the 20th century, for the contributions of Steiner, Sri Aurobindo and Gebser— subsequently pursued by Wilber and the additional research discussed below. It is difficult to do justice to the new consciousness in the space available here, since its emergent nature places it in a unique situation compared with the major movements of consciousness that have already arisen and become consolidated (archaic, magic, mythical and mental). This presents several challenges in academic contextualization. Firstly, signs of its emergence can be perceived within various disciplines, most notably adult developmental psychology, postformal educational approaches, the new sciences, postmodern philosophy and spirituality, postmodern poetry-music-film—and also between disciplines, through the holistic, integral and transdisciplinary urge to integrate knowledge. A major challenge in cohering and theorizing this new consciousness is the diversity of conceptualization between the different disciplines. For example, although research from adult developmental psychology make scientific claims to have firmly established four stages of development beyond formal operations (Commons, Trudeau, Stein, Richards, & Krause, 1998), postmodern philosophers who are evidently enacting some of these higher stages did not conceptualize it in such ways. Recent research has made significant inroads into building conceptual bridges in this area (G. Hampson,2007). My addition to Hampson’s seminal philosophical contribution to bridging integral and postmodern conceptualizations is to contextualize the adult development research on postformal thinking, integral theory, the critical planetary discourse and postmodern philosophy—and many other discourses—within the broader movement of consciousness that I am theorizing here. I propose a theoretical bifurcation between contemporary research that actually identifies new stage(s) of consciousness development—either individual or socio-cultural—and research that enacts new stages of consciousness without necessarily conceptualizing it as such.
Contemporary Research that Identifies New Stage(s) of Consciousness
• Adult developmental psychology research that identifies several stages of postformal psychological development (Arlin, 1999; Campbell, 2006; Cartwright, 2001;Commons et al., 1990; Commons, Trudeau, Stein, Richards, & Krause, 1998; Cook-Greuter, 2000; Kegan, 1994; Kohlberg, 1990; Kramer, 1983; Labouvie-Vief, 1990;Riegel, 1973; Sinnott, 1998; Yan & Arlin, 1995);
• Research from a range of disciplines that identifies an emergent stage in socio-cultural evolution, often referred to as integral or planetary (Beck & Cowan, 1996; Combs, 2002;Cowan & Todorovic, 2005; Earley, 1997; Elgin, 1997; Feuerstein, 1987; Gangadean,2006a; Gebser, 1970/2005; Goerner, 2004; Montuori, 1999; Morin & Kern, 1999;Murphy, 1992; Neville, 2006; Nicolescu, 2002; Ornstein & Ehrlich, 1991; Ray, 1996;Russell, 2000; Scott, 2000; Swimme & Tucker, 2006; Thompson, 1991; Wilber, 2000b).One of the gaps I have discerned in the literature is that—in spite of rhetoric about integrality and inclusion—much of this research operates within disciplinary boundaries without reference to the research undertaken in parallel disciplines. Wilber’s work is clearly an exception to this and this is one of his significant contributions to the contemporary literature. Part of my endeavor in proposing this bifurcation is to increase understanding of the relationship between these contributions as two faces of the one evolution of consciousness.
Contemporary Research that Enacts New Stage(s) of Consciousness
• Philosophical developments, including critical theory, global reason, hermeneutics, integral theory, phenomenology, postmodernism, poststructuralism and process philosophy (Benedikter, 2005; Deleuze & Millett, 1997; Derrida, 1995; Foucault, 2005;Gangadean, 1998, 2006b; Gare, 2002; Habermas, 1992; Hampson, 2007; Keller & Daniell, 2002; Kristeva, 1986; Lyotard, 2004; McDermott, 2001b; McDermott, 2004;Morin, 2005a; Ricoeur, 1986);
• Scientific developments such as quantum physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity, chaos and complexity sciences, and emergentism in evolution (Combs, 2002; Deacon, 2003;Goodenough & Deacon, 2006; László, 2007; Russell, 2000, 2002; Swimme, 1999;Thompson, 1991; Zajonc, 2004);
• Postmodern approaches to spirituality and religion (Benedikter, 2005; Boadella, 1998;Clayton, 2006; Esbjörn-Hargens & Wilber, 2006; Scott, 2007; Tacey, 2003; Wilber,2006);
• Postformal educational approaches, such as critical, futures, holistic and integral(Esbjörn-Hargens, 2005; Ferrer, Romero, & Albareda, 2005; Freire, 1970; Gidley, 2005b,2007; Giroux, 1992, 2005; Hart, 2001; Kessler, 2000; Kincheloe, Steinberg, & Hinchey,1999; MacLure, 2006b; Marshak, 1997; McDermott, 2005; Miller, J. P., 2000; Miller,2005, 2006; Milojevic, 2005a; Montuori, 2006; Morin, 2001a; Neville, 2000; Noddings,2005; Palmer, 2007; Slaughter, 2002; St. Pierre, 2004; Subbiondo, 2005; Thompson,2001);
• The manifestation of integrality through the arts of music; architecture; painting; literature; film; and new forms of movement (Cobusson, 2002; Deleuze & Conley, 1992;Derrida, 2001; Gebser, 1949/1985; Gidley, 2001e; Kristeva, 1982; Lawlor, 1982;Montuori, 2003; Rose & Kincheloe, 2003);
• The implications of the information age, particularly the world wide web (Gidley, 2004c;Grossman, Degaetano, & Grossman, 1999; Healy, 1998; Pearce, 1992; Steinberg &Kincheloe, 2004; Thompson, 1998);
• Creation of knowledge-bridges through, for example, Wilber’s “methodological pluralism” (Wilber, 2006); interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary and trandisciplinary research (Grigg, Johnston, & Milson, 2003; Nicolescu, 2002; PaulRicoeur, 1997; van den Besselaar & Heimeriks, 2001; Volckmann, 2007); including new fields such as cultural studies, futures studies and integral studies."