On A Personal Note…

I’ve been away from The Chrysalis for far too long, as you know. The last few months have been something of a whirlwind of changes for me — completing a transition from my rural idyll of the last few years to the hustle and bustle of urban life along with making the necessary adjustments. It was, nonetheless, a timely transition as I was almost immediately hospitalised after my move with kidney failure and am now undergoing dialysis with an additional complication of a cancer diagnosis — esophagal cancer. Most of my days are filled with medical matters now — appointments, consultations, treatments, or information sessions. And, of course, dialysis. It does not leave much time for reading or attentive reflection on the meaning of current events.

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Where the Peril is Greatest

“Where the peril is greatest, there lies the saving power also” – Hölderlin

Hölderlin’s proverb is quite true, and the truth of it is the subject of today’s post on The Chrysalis. We will continue also with our attempt to gain deeper insight into what Jean Gebser means by the “deficient” and the “effective” modes of a consciousness structure as a “civilisational type” so that there is no confusion about this.

Consciousness in Mutation

If you have been with The Chrysalis for any length of time, you’ll know how much emphasis I place on the “fourfold” and the mandala as a more appropriate representation of Gebser’s “aperspectival” or “integral consciousness”, and Blake’s own “fourfold vision”. So, when we speak of the present “perspectival” consciousness structure as now having become “dysfunctional” (or “deficient” in Gebser’s terms) we can easily understand this by comparing two symbolic representations of different “consciousness structures”.