Archaic Consciousness and Wilber’s Critique
Gebser’s Archaic Consciousness and Wilber’s Critique Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D. Director, Yoga Research Center As part of his comprehensive phenomenology of consciousness, Jean Gebser undertook in The Ever–Present Origin the difficult and to some extent daring task of delineating the character of the archaic structure of consciousness. Among other things, he made the controversial statement that this particular cognitive modality is “closest to and presumably originally identical with origin” (1985). In my book Structures of Consciousness , I addressed the fundamental problem inherent in Gebser’s statement as follows: The most primitive structure of consciousness (both in the sense of being the earliest and the least articulated (is what Gebser calls the archaic modality of consciousness. It is, as he somewhat enigmatically remarks, “closest to and presumably originally identical with Origin.” From the viewpoint of contemporary positivistic science, which purports to deal with “hard” facts, Gebser appears to indulge here in metaphysical wordplay. At best, science concerns itself with beginnings, but the question of Origin (Ursprung ) is hardly permissible outside theology. Even for the sympathetic reader, who is able to suspend any scientific (or, rather, scientistic) bias that he or she may have, Gebser’s statement is not immediately transparent (1987).
I then went on to discuss the nature of evidence and Gebser’s idiosyncratic and boldly innovative use of it. In this connection, I cited Ken Wilber’s book Up From Eden , which is a panoramic treatment of human evolution from the perspective of transpersonal spectrum theory (1981). In particular, I took Wilber to task for accusing Gebser of failing to differentiate between “pre–subject/object” and “trans–subject/object,” that is, of committing what in transpersonal theory is called a “pre/trans fallacy.” This stands for a confusion between prepersonal and transpersonal levels of experience. Then I went on to say: It [the archaic consciousness] is closest to the ever–present Origin solely in terms of the simplicity of its internal configuration. Only from the perspective of the mental–rational consciousness (which operates with a linear time concept) does Origin appear to be also the beginning of the whole evolutionary progression so that the archaic consciousness would be closest to the Origin in a temporal sense as well.
But close does not mean identical. For, as Gebser insists, the Origin is not defined by any of the structures of consciousness. It is atemporal and aspatial. Therefore Gebser’s remark that the archaic consciousness may “originally” have been identical with Origin could be true of it only in its potential mode, prior to its appearance in space–time. And in that case Gebser’s statement necessarily holds true also of all the other structures of consciousness in potentia . What this brings home to us is the fact that Origin is not the temporal beginning of anything but the ever–present backdrop of all developmental happenings. As will be appreciated, Gebser’s observation has something of the quality of a Zen koan (Feuerstein, 58–59). Both Gebser’s controversial statement and my somewhat lukewarm vindication of it have recently provoked Wilber’s friendly but nonetheless face–on countercriticism. In his mammoth work Sex, ,Ecology , and Spirituality, which is the first volume of a projected trilogy, Wilber reiterates his earlier rejection of the Gebserian claim that the archaic structure is closest to the ever–present Origin, arguing correctly that “Origin is neither simple nor complex, but acategorical” (1995, 762) For Wilber, the archaic structure is closest not to Origin but to the great apes and hominids. He further humorously observes that by the criterion of simplicity, worms are even closer to Origin. And these, one might add, are structurally and historically preceded by rocks and the primordial soup from which our universe is said to have emerged. Picking up on my own critique of the Gebserian position, Wilber rightly argues that “since each structure is in potentia identically close to Origin, the only other measure is 34
