Towards an integral model of healing

The potential for profound transformation is one of humanity’s greatest gifts - our innate ability to conceive and enact change on both a personal and global level.

It is the fluid and flexible nature of consciousness that grants us this opportunity. And the subtly different ways in which we view ourselves, others and the world around us means that each of us experiences our own subjective version of reality.

But shared human structures of experience do exist, such as the ‘collective unconsciousness’ - a shared psychological substrata of meaning and symbols first described by Carl Jung.

According to Jung, this shared psychological heritage shapes human consciousness throughout specific socio-historical periods. And according to psychologist Ann Wilson Shaef the past 200 years of western culture has been dominated by a technocratic materialistic mechanistic outlook. 

Our current age of hyper-rationalisation has seen astonishing material and technological advances. But this model produced very little in terms of reducing human suffering - either by reducing inequality or diminishing the threat of another world war.

In his seminal work, The Ever-Present Origin, philosopher, linguist and poet, Jean Gebser (1905-1973), sought to map out the structure of human consciousness throughout history.

Gebser differentiated between five structures of consciousness:

1. The archaic structure - started circa 1-1.6 million years ago.

2. The magic structure - started circa 150,000 years ago.

3. The mythical structure - started circa 25,000-3,000 years ago.

4. The mental structure - started circa 3,000 years ago and has accelerated in the past 200 years in Western thought to become the current world view. 

5. The integral structure - the one that is beginning to emerge as a subculture. 

Gebser demonstrated these five distinct world views through an in depth study of how humanity has expressed itself in art, architecture, philosophy, and spirituality from prehistoric cave art through to conceptual art of the 20th Century. 

And although there has been an observable shift in these states of consciousness over millions of years, we can still see them at work in our lives today.

The Archaic

Whilst in our mother’s womb, we bathed in the timeless, space-less dimension of the archaic. There was no sense of self and other - only of being ‘at one with.’ 

We return to this state in deep sleep and in certain levels of meditative absorption.

The Shamanic-Magical

The shamanic-magical part of our consciousness develops in early childhood when we learn to interact with and manipulate the physical environment. Using a spoon to tap out sounds on a table, for example, gave us a magical sense of sending out powerful vibrations through space. 

In adulthood the same magic is felt when we anticipate what someone is about to say or do, or we have a ‘gut feeling’ about something. In this state emotions are valued as providing important information and it naturally occurs in normal sleep and biofeedback (alpha wave).

The Mythical

In the mythical state imagination is the main mode of cognition. Remember how enthralled you were when you heard your first fairy tale? This was an awakening of the mythical part of your waking consciousness. 

This aspect of awareness is at work when we are moved by a drama, brought to tears by a royal wedding, or touched by the symbolism of a dream. It also occurs when we enter a dream state of sleep (rapid eye movement), or when we daydream. 

The Mental

By carefully studying changes in art, architecture and cultural expressions Gebser noticed how old models of consciousness fell away when they could no longer serve the needs of humanity. And when outdated modes of perception no longer provided viable solutions for humanity, new paradigms had to emerge. 

Gebser calls the current human paradigm the mental structure. This is predicated on cause and effect logic, adherence to mind-matter split, and the dogmatic insistence that everything arises from matter - even consciousness. 

As mentioned above, this view has yielded enormous technological and material development - especially in the fields of medical and surgical sciences. But it has not increased human happiness or reduced human suffering. And it brings with it many dangers, such as the relentless destruction of nature in the name of progress and ever-increasing annual profit margins.

This current mental structure is increasingly less viable in meeting the complexities and challenges of the twenty-first century. Which means that conditions are ripe for an evolution in human consciousness - something we all have an important part to play in.

The Integral

The ‘integral’ is Gebser's name for the new structure that is emerging. It first developed in the early part of the twentieth century alongside the discovery that time is relative rather than fixed. Quantum physicists suggested that the split between mind and matter was an illusion, that objects are directly influenced by the observer, and that true ‘objectivity’ may never have existed in the first place. 

Integrality, as the new paradigm of human consciousness, takes up and utilises all of the earlier structures of waking consciousness. In particular, through the understanding that time is not fixed or linear, we can gain insight into how our current mental consciousness is layered with the archaic, magical, and mythical lenses with which previous epochs of humanity have perceived the world.

And as we draw these layers of consciousness together, we enter into the newly emergent structure of integrality. We step into it by seeing through the shortcomings of our previous ‘mental’ paradigm - by relinquishing its materialist world-view and its tendency to seek solutions from outside of ourselves. 

In future articles I shall describe practical tools and methods to begin to explore this shift in consciousness and to step into a brand new paradigm of integrality.