Thanks for all your work on this subject, Brendan. We are clearly in the midst of an exciting and dangerous cultural moment. The meaning crisis has brought people to their wits end, and as the Puritan John Flavel once said (and I don't think I agree with anything else he said!), "man's extremity is God's opportunity." But in the rush to retrieve the deep meaning of Christian theology, many are simultaneously retreating from hard won developmental thresholds. Thus "Christian nationalism" and various other attempts to immanentize the eschaton (Voegelin) by conflating myth with history.
Personally, I think Gebser gets at something important by emphasizing the transparency of an integral structure of consciousness. There is a seeing through the various developmental structures rather than a replacement of one with another. In other words, we ought not to imagine that scientific rationality simply replaces mythic and magic modes of consciousness. That leads us straight into "deficient mental" consciousness, which because it denies its magical and mythic roots, ends up being pathologically magical and mythic in its thinking (witness modern fetishizations of technology and money, the myth of progress, etc.). So the point is emphatically not to dispel "efficient" magic and myth because now we are big boys who only need rationality and science. The point is to understand the unique and mutually enriching phenomenologies and ontological insights provided by each structure of consciousness.
I’m pretty sure I’m not smart enough, or patient enough, to track every movement of your thought, Brendan. But I get the gist of it, I think, and if that’s true then it’s like the first breath of actual oxygen I’ve inhaled in quite some time.
My own thoughts have increasingly turned toward a pan-religious human ethic which would basically look around in our current era, see what human civilization needs to become next, and carry forward (only) those aspects of our various religions which will inspire humanity toward those ends.
A Christian biblical scholar, I’ve already tried several times, Thomas Jefferson-style, to start with scripture and excerpt only those passages and themes which still have value and force today, in order to focus only on these in teaching. But doing so only creates a pastiche, not a narrative which is cohesive enough to become our human/religious story, moving forward. However, starting with ethics and reaching backward into scripture, to trace them to their source, works much better — and works for most major religions, at least at my crude level of excerpting from contexts.
My doctoral professor (James Sanders, translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls) suggested that we say ‘First Testament,’ in order to avoid the dismissive anti-Semitic term ‘Old Testament.’ I always liked that practice because it created intellectual room for humanity to be viewed in every era as a ‘Third Testament’ — and that’s how I see your exciting work!
Thank you — and I just check out your website. Your explanatory analysis of seeing highly symmetrical, geometric hallucinations in altered states of consciousness was helpful to me. I’ve been seeing lots of tunnels. Wasn’t sure what that was about… Now it’s a little clearer. Lots of cathedrals too. I didn’t realize these chapels even existed in the United States. I guess I’ll need to make it out to Arkansas one day.
Firstly thank you for your post, I found it most stimulating to my own thought. I have read your post but not yet watched the videos. I would like to make one comment referring to one of my favourite Biblical verses: Ecclesiastes 1:9
“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”
We, in our proud modern way, think we are thinking original thoughts. However, I find that echoes of them can be found in the Neolithic writings of the Old Testament. They obviously understood the world with less scientific understanding than we have at our disposal today. However, I don’t believe there has been significant evolution of human intelligence in the era of written language. I therefore think it is perfectly feasible to find similar thoughts to ours in ancient writings.
Thanks for all your work on this subject, Brendan. We are clearly in the midst of an exciting and dangerous cultural moment. The meaning crisis has brought people to their wits end, and as the Puritan John Flavel once said (and I don't think I agree with anything else he said!), "man's extremity is God's opportunity." But in the rush to retrieve the deep meaning of Christian theology, many are simultaneously retreating from hard won developmental thresholds. Thus "Christian nationalism" and various other attempts to immanentize the eschaton (Voegelin) by conflating myth with history.
Personally, I think Gebser gets at something important by emphasizing the transparency of an integral structure of consciousness. There is a seeing through the various developmental structures rather than a replacement of one with another. In other words, we ought not to imagine that scientific rationality simply replaces mythic and magic modes of consciousness. That leads us straight into "deficient mental" consciousness, which because it denies its magical and mythic roots, ends up being pathologically magical and mythic in its thinking (witness modern fetishizations of technology and money, the myth of progress, etc.). So the point is emphatically not to dispel "efficient" magic and myth because now we are big boys who only need rationality and science. The point is to understand the unique and mutually enriching phenomenologies and ontological insights provided by each structure of consciousness.
I’m pretty sure I’m not smart enough, or patient enough, to track every movement of your thought, Brendan. But I get the gist of it, I think, and if that’s true then it’s like the first breath of actual oxygen I’ve inhaled in quite some time.
My own thoughts have increasingly turned toward a pan-religious human ethic which would basically look around in our current era, see what human civilization needs to become next, and carry forward (only) those aspects of our various religions which will inspire humanity toward those ends.
A Christian biblical scholar, I’ve already tried several times, Thomas Jefferson-style, to start with scripture and excerpt only those passages and themes which still have value and force today, in order to focus only on these in teaching. But doing so only creates a pastiche, not a narrative which is cohesive enough to become our human/religious story, moving forward. However, starting with ethics and reaching backward into scripture, to trace them to their source, works much better — and works for most major religions, at least at my crude level of excerpting from contexts.
My doctoral professor (James Sanders, translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls) suggested that we say ‘First Testament,’ in order to avoid the dismissive anti-Semitic term ‘Old Testament.’ I always liked that practice because it created intellectual room for humanity to be viewed in every era as a ‘Third Testament’ — and that’s how I see your exciting work!
Thanks for giving me so much fodder for thought.
Where is the cathedral located? It’s such a stunning photograph.
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/arkansas/mildred-b-cooper-chapel/
Thank you — and I just check out your website. Your explanatory analysis of seeing highly symmetrical, geometric hallucinations in altered states of consciousness was helpful to me. I’ve been seeing lots of tunnels. Wasn’t sure what that was about… Now it’s a little clearer. Lots of cathedrals too. I didn’t realize these chapels even existed in the United States. I guess I’ll need to make it out to Arkansas one day.
Ah, you mean the “form constants”?
Yes. I’m very confused. I’ll need more time at your website. I love what you did with the folio pages. Looks like the Red Book. Beautiful!
Firstly thank you for your post, I found it most stimulating to my own thought. I have read your post but not yet watched the videos. I would like to make one comment referring to one of my favourite Biblical verses: Ecclesiastes 1:9
“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”
We, in our proud modern way, think we are thinking original thoughts. However, I find that echoes of them can be found in the Neolithic writings of the Old Testament. They obviously understood the world with less scientific understanding than we have at our disposal today. However, I don’t believe there has been significant evolution of human intelligence in the era of written language. I therefore think it is perfectly feasible to find similar thoughts to ours in ancient writings.
Check this out! Gives me hope for the future of true Christianity in the USA!
https://youtu.be/Blph_2RSBno?si=ModXE1Jr7udjmgmW