Philosophy of Mind Commons^™

Rudolf Bahro's Invisible Church, Parton, Glenn

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

The Doctrine Of The "Mysterious Female" In Taoism: A Transpersonalist View, Tortchinov, Evgueni A.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Jean Gebser The Invisible Origin Evolution As A Supplementary Process, Translated By Theo Röttgers

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Jean Gebser Foreword To Eastern Wisdom And Western Thought: A Comparative Study In The Modern Philosophy Of Religion, Saher, P. J.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Inner And Outer Realities: Jean Gebser In A Cultural/Historical Perspective, Combs, Allan

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

On The Nature Of Consciousness And Reality: An Overview Of Jean Gebser's Thoughts On Consciousness, Feuerstein, Georg

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

From Homeland Earth; A New Manifesto For The New Millennium, Morin, Edgar

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Now that the fantastic adventure begun in the 15th century has come to an end, the shout of Columbus’ lookout man takes on at last a planetary meaning: Land! Land!¹ Even up to 1950-1960, we were living on a misapprehended Earth, on an abstract Earth. We were living on the Earth as object. By the end of this century, we discovered Earth as system, as Gaia, as biosphere, a cosmic speck—Homeland Earth. Each one of us has a pedigree, a terrestrial identity card. We are from, in, and on the Earth. We belong to the Earth which belongs ...

The Evolution Of The Culture Of Enterprise, Laszlo, Ervin

Journal of Conscious Evolution

At the top echelons of contemporary business, managers are becoming concerned with the unsustainability of the way companies now operate. A transformation of basic business strategies appears more and more indicated. For such transformation to be effective, the culture of the enterprise--the goals it pursues and the vision of these goals entertained by managers and collaborators--needs to change. Consequently there is a growing questioning of the viability of the typical culture of today's enterprise, and a search for more functional and timely concepts for creating anew and more timely cultural pattern.

Transpersonal Psychology And The Paradigm Of Complexity, Kelly, Sean M.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Death And Resurrection: Enlightenment And The Body Of Light, White, John

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Enlightenment or God-realization is not purely a psychological event. Bodily changes also occur, most dramatically in the higher phases of enlightenment. In the final phase, according to esoteric teachings in various sacred traditions and hermetic schools, the body is alchemically changed from flesh into light, becoming immortal. This transubstantiated body is called different names, such as resurrection body, light body, solar body and diamond body. This presentation looks at the phenomenon from a cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective. It then focuses on Christianity as a sacred tradition whose purpose is to enable people to develop through the resurrection of the body ...

Chi Kung Facilitates Integral Growth: An Empirical Investigation, Arnold, C., Bruggerman, E., Kim, H., Combs, A.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Chi Kung Facilitates Integral Growth: An Empirical Investigation C. Arnold, E. Bruggerman, H. Kim, & A. Combs[1]

Swiss cultural philosopher Jean Gebser (1949/1986) proposed a theory of the evolutionary development of structures of consciousness that describes the common ways people living in different periods of history interpreted reality and constructed their worldviews. These included four major structures corresponding to four historical epochs, an archaic, magic, mythic, and mental structure which remains dominant today. Citing changes in art, literature, and scientific during the 20th century, Gebser also proposed the emergence of a forthcoming fifth structure, that he termed integral consciousness.

The transitions from each structure to the next, which Gebser termed mutations, do not imply the replacement of previous structures. Rather, as Feuerstein (1987) and Combs (2002) note, there is a sense of increasing complexity with each successive new mutation, in which a structure comes to dominate the earlier ones. Thus, the modern human, operating predominantly in the mental structure of consciousness, continues to experience the world to some degree through the older structures as well. These structures are described elsewhere, and will not be reviewed here (Combs, 2002; Gebser, 1949/1986; Feuerstein, 1987; Wilber, 1981).

The integral structure of consciousness, however, incorporates a balanced synthesis of all four earlier structures, and was regarded by Gebser as the highest potential for human experience. Although Gebser focused mostly on the emergence of integral consciousness in terms of its wide occurrence across the human species, late in his life he came to regard meditation and other spiritual practices valuable for the cultivation of integral consciousness (Combs, 2002). Gebser was particularly fond of Taoist thought, acknowledging the play ...

Internal Alchemy, With Michael Winn, Published In "The Empty Vessel"

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Alchemical Transformation: Consciousness And Matter, Form And Information, Peat, F. David

Journal of Conscious Evolution

There has grown up, relatively recently, a nucleus of interests called ìconsciousness studiesî in which physicists and mathematicians, as well as neuroscientists and psychologists, attempt to discover the origins of ìconsciousnessî within the brain. A variety of approaches are employed, some based upon neural networks, others that argue that consciousness must have a quantum mechanical basis, or involve self-organization arising out of non-linearity. A common thread is a certain sense of optimism that ìthe question of consciousnessî will yield its secrets in the same way as, for example, the genetic code or sub-atomic matter. I must confess that I find ...

Transition To Transcendence: Franklin Merrell-Wolff's Mathematical Yoga, Baruss, Imants

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Mathematicians--those who develop new mathematics--spend much of their time proposing the existence of mathematical constructions whose existence they then proceed to try to prove from the mathematics that has already been developed. Following that, they often try to prove that those mathematical constructions are unique, that there are no other constructions with the same characteristics. In practice, it is often easier to prove the uniqueness of a mathematical construction than its existence, so a mathematician may proceed by first proving uniqueness, as though the mathematical construction existed, and then using clues from the uniqueness proof to prove existence. I want ...

The End Of Death? Conscious Life In Global Cyberspace, Purdy, Michael

Journal of Conscious Evolution

In The Ever-Present Origin, Jean Gebser, in talking about the magical structure of consciousness[1], states: "All directing implies a consciousness process" (EPO 49). And so to die is to become not consciousness, to lose the power to direct, ultimately to lose control over our own destiny. Being only human, and realizing that death is often more real than an afterlife that we cannot experience while alive[2], we actively fight any loss of control-we fight the passage to death. In that directedness, the glimmerings of which began with magical consciousness, and that came to full awareness with the mental-rational ...

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim ...

Communication Ethics: Ellul's Complexity Of Form, Marianne Pabis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to enlarge understanding of Ellul’s dilemma of the ethical Christian communicator through a hermeneutic exploration of his intentionally un-paradigmatic treatment of technology as the determining factor in the formation of contemporary structural realities, a claim central to Ellul’s theory of technological society. It attends to the question of why, over the course of more than 50 books and over 1,000 articles, Ellul has refused to expound upon this claim as an overarching theoretical construct. As a contribution to the field of communication ethics from Ellul’s Christocentric perspective, this work also explicates the importance ...

I, Myself, And Me, The Human Being, David Manuel Cajias

Theses and Dissertations

In this project are advanced two ways of seeing the ordinary human being with the aim of understanding who he is: namely, from the perspective of his personal identity and from the point of view of his self-conception. The chapters included in the first part are meant to treat the issue of personal identity from a practical perspective, whereas the ones included in the second part intend to assess the utility of self-conception from a phenomenological standpoint. Ultimately, I bring together these two perspectives into a unitary understanding of the human being in the context of his everyday life.

Explaining The Illusion Of Phenomenal Consciousness, Daniel S. Shabasson

Publications and Research

According to illusionism, phenomenal consciousness does not exist. There is nothing “it is like” to see red or feel pain. Most people find illusionism highly counterintuitive and it remains a minority view among philosophers. To increase its intuitive plausibility, we proponents of illusionism must solve what Keith Frankish (2016) has termed the illusion problem. We must explain why phenomenal consciousness seems to exist and why the illusion that it exists is so powerful. Focusing on introspective judgments about our color experiences, I propose a theory to solve the illusion problem.

I intend to show that we can understand the general ...

A Blend Of Absurdism And Humanism: Defending Kurt Vonnegut’S Place In The Secondary Setting, Krisandra R. Johnson

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay argues that Kurt Vonnegut blends a unique humanist stance into his absurdist plots and characters, ultimately urging readers to confront the absurd with a kindness and human decency his protagonists often find rare. As a result of this absurd and humanist synthesis, I defend and promote Vonnegut’s place in the secondary English curriculum, despite his rank on many banned books lists, since his characters’ journeys correlate thematically with the growth and process of postmodern adolescents and encourage moral responsibility without sentimental manipulation.

Focusing on Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Slaughterhouse-Five as primary sources ...