Friday, March 2, 2007

Jung, Whitehead, Teilhard, Steiner, Gebser, and Sri Aurobindo

More and more I realise how boring conversations based on words are. On the one hand, there should be more practice, whether it be activist in the world or yogic transformation of the self; and on the other an Integral Paradigm needs to have a spiritual, not a rational-philosophical, center; Integral Spirituality as proposed by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother means going beyond mental discussions and the limitations on the Reality they impose, to the essential Divine. It's the same with Sri Ramana too. Two interesting books I've been reading lately have been David Korten The Great Turning, and Jean Gebser The Ever Present Origin (my comments here). Both have important contributions to make to the Integral Paradigm. Posted on Mar 1st, 2007 by M. Alan
Initial impressions reading Jean Gebser: I've started reading Jean Gebser's Ever Present Origin - actually it isn't the sort of book one can read from cover to cover so i'm reading it in bits. Very intriguing but also very heavy and difficult to read; very much that "old world" style of writing. Blavatsky, Jung, and Aurobindo are the same (as are most 18th and 19th century authors), it makes for very tiring reading; although if you read only small selections here and there you tune in to a lot of wisdom...
Gebser also reminds me of Steiner in the description of his Magical, Mythic, and Mental structures of consciousness. But unlike Steiner and Wilber these are not "sequential", as mentioned, Gebser rejects that sort of interpretation; "archetypal" might be a better word; all the structures are archetypal, as indicated by the table of correspondences in the back of the book. So this has really deepened my appreciation of teh range of persoectives that constitute the Integral movement and Integral philosophy. Whitehead, who I haven't read, and Teilhard who I have, a bit, are two evolutionary theologians who are also representative of the "Integral Paradigm"....posted by m alan kazlev at 12:50 AM Thursday, March 01, 2007

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