Gebser and integral consciousness

See this Gebser piece for reference. The first quote reminds me of a Gidley quote I posted earlier in another thread, that integral is not hyper-complexity, which is deficient rational.

"The uniqueness of the Integral consciousness lies in the fact that it is in no way based upon the increase of intellectual knowledge, which may be misunderstood or misapplied. The new consciousness has nothing to do with such knowledge; its character is derived from spiritual, not from purely intellectual, values."

In this quote he discusses a more specific application of complimentarity. This was more broadly explored in various Ning IPS threads on a different type of complexity, e.g. Morin, which is different from the more typical transcend and include kind Wilber uses from Commons and company, i.e., deficient rational.

"It is precisely because Asia and the Occident are not mutually exclusive opposites, but are mutually complementary poles (which may very well one day rediscover their common roots), that it is important for this consciousness to be coherently and fully explored."

In the next, he discusses the development of ego. It was quite useful for a time but has gone over into self-obsession in late-stage capitalism leading to the following:

"The threat arises from the fact that excessive ego-centricity, which is associated with unbridled possessiveness and lust for power, results in a corrosive materialism and a ruthless disregard for the essential quality of human life."

Again though Gebser stresses that we should not just aim for egolessness but complimentarity with ego in the integral. So this one reminds me of how Eisler discusses actualization hierarchies as a partnership between compliments, rather than their dichotomy. The former leads to something more akin to the Commons and not at all like capitalism/materialism.

"If we succeed in overcoming both egolessness and egoness by consciously integrating them, our mental, ego-centered waking consciousness is transformed into an Integral, fully awake consciousness, free from time and ego. By this means we overcome the fatal danger that threatens our culture today—the danger that we may perish of ego-hardening and the fall into complete materialism."

In this one he shows how the emergence of the integral is not by linear progression, that it arises spontaneously via transparency. This requires acceptance and use of the previous stages but does not fall prey to any one of them exclusively, including the rational. It's not exactly transcend and include, since the so-called higher level of rationality, for example, does not supersede the other orders. It's more like they are autonomous parts that nonetheless work together via structural coupling, which I noted elsehwere in discussing Luhmann, Varela and Thompson.

"The idea that the younger generation is born into the climate of a new structure of consciousness is difficult to accept unless we think of the concept of cultural evolution in somewhat different terms, for it requires acceptance of the fact that the new consciousness manifests itself of its own accord, that is, arises naturally and spontaneously in man, in the world and in time, by becoming “transparent” in them. So long as we are unable to free ourselves from the conventional routines of thought which have now become anachronistic and therefore erroneous, we will think of cultural evolution as a process that urges us toward a goal in a linear progression. So long as we attribute exclusive validity to a pragmatically narrow definition of progress by accretion, the assumption that a generation can be “born into” a new consciousness is impossible."

The next reiterates some of the previous points but also discusses how the process is both involution-evolution. Which of course reminds me of my thread on the fold.

"The manifestation of the new consciousness is not a milestone on the path to a so-called higher development; it is rather, on the one hand, an enrichment and intensification of the human consciousness and, on the other, our conscious response to the Integral Structure of the world, which through us becomes transparent. This invisible process activates in us the new consciousness that has always been latent in us. Evolution, from this point of view, is the evolving (e = from, volvere = proceeding, forming) of man’s hitherto latent possibilities of consciousness, which are released by a corresponding supplementary “involution” of the Integral component of the world-consciousness: that involution (in = inward) in the terrestrial sphere is answered by its other pole, awakening—our readiness at a given time for the Integral and time-free consciousness; to evolve from within us."