The Seer, II

Occasionally, in reading the ancient literature one comes across peculiar passages that suggest that the eye, in days of yore, wasn’t considered a passive receptor as today but more like a projector. The eye didn’t so much suffer the light but actively illuminated what it saw. There is still an echo of this ancient view when we speak of “the light of the eyes” — the eye as an emitter of light. There is still something of this in Jesus’ remark to his disciples, “why hide your light under a bushel basket?”. This “light”, of course, is Gebser’s “diaphainon“.

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The Seer

Some of you may be familiar with the works of Carlos Castaneda, although they are controversial and many find them incredible (in the sense of unbelievable). Some of you may also be familiar with the corpus of works broadly referred to as “The Seth Material” (and about that material I’ll have more to say in future posts). Both have been frequently dismissed as “hoaxes”, although on occasion even Ken Wilber has taken the risk of citing Castaneda’s works. I have even heard both described by religious fundamentalists as being “works of the Devil” or “the Antichrist”.

Such judgements, though, is a reflection of how difficult the mental-rational/perspectival consciousness structure has in comprehendding the “mutation” of which Gebser also writes. But in actuality, they have stood “the test of time” pretty well, and both are quite consonant with what we find in Jean Gebser’s works also.

Velation and Revelation at Our “End of History”

There are multiple and manifold aspects to what Jean Gebser calls “the double-movement” that characterises a chaotic transition between Ages (and consciousness structures), and which is reflected in the processes we refer to as “polarisation” or “crisis of paradox” (as Jacob Bronowski calls it). Although Gebser’s “double-movement” is most represented chiefly as the twin processes of disintegration and a corresponding re-integration of culture and consciousness, it may also be described as the simultaneous processes of velation and revelation. When Marshall Berman, for example, declares that today “everything is pregnant with its opposite” (in his book All That Is Solid Melts Into Air) this also describes processes that we might call “revelatory”.