Cosmos Café [7/16/19] - Seeing Through the World with Jeremy Johnson - or - Dwelling in the House of Gebser

I should be able to attend. I listened to the podcast. I’m behind on all the posting and Cafes though. Will do my best to sound intelligent :slight_smile:

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Well, if it is any consolation, knowing German does not resolve the enigma … in many cases, it merely deepens it.

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I will be there with big ears a rambly mind and a quiet voice.

(also did some tidying up . . . should we give this an alternate title @johnnydavis54? Flesh it out to give it more “body” ? Seems like you and Ed were going to sleep on it and frame it after a little Aesthete’s beauty rest … looking forward to what emerges)

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I will be intrigued with the call & response that emerges with two of my Best conversational friends. Let the Play begin!

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We can work that out in the call. I am not sure.

And a quiet voice, Doug? And where does that quiet come from?

I am working with the theme of lucid lectio divina. Last night I worked with the 23rd Psalm. This gives me a direction. I know not if this be a trend or just a confabulation if not an outright heresy.

Perhaps we can start with a clean start?

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Old skin slowly shed
Out-from-body experience
Leathery spray sprawld display (like a tapestry)
A quiet vocalization from
a new silence location

Anointed with new well-oiled skins
New transparent project/ions to ware
Out-of-body experiences
New science, morphic resonances, social quantum mechanics
Reimagining and Reinventing the Sacred

A lucid lectio
read; meditate; pray; con/template; embody
A high astral whine from the Divine (my favorite line :smile:)
a new skin from within

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Good luck with the Café today, team! Kayla and the girls just got home from their road trip to see grandma (and grandpa and aunties and uncles and cousins, et al) in Minnesota, so I am going to spend the afternoon catching up with family, house, work, bills, etc.

Moreover, I still have some thinking to do about the Axial Age material you discussed a couple weeks ago, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I am working on a thesis—which I will elaborate upon in that thread as soon as I can—that that “Axial Age” is not over; that the “turning” which it represents is incomplete; and finally that the evolution of consciousness we are (at our best) witnessing today is the completion of that primary irruption in contemporary modes of transparency and integration—hence a correlation with Gebser.

In Aurobindo’s terms, we are dealing with an involutionary descent (of consciousness/Spirit) meeting and merging with an evolutionary ascent (of matter). Other thinkers, teachers, and poets frame the concepts differently—but I would like to articulate how it is that we are dealing with a singular process, which is prior to—and transcends—the distinct stages and structures we may ascribe to it.

As conscious beings, using practical Imagination, we learn how to live, work, and play/create with Space, Time, and Energy for the benefit and delight of such beings.

Hopefully, @Jeremy will be able to join the crew as guest in a future Café if some good notions and lines of inquiry come out of this one. I look forward to (aynchronously, if not aperspectivally) tuning in to the recording!

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Great talk this evening. Thanks for the time well spent.

John wanted to hear Psalm 23 in Hebrew. The guy reading this isn’t the one I was thinking of, but the reading by the guy I was thinking of only does a single verse at a time if you’re not a subscriber to the site. But, the guy in this recording is clear.

The recording begins with five words that are not part of the psalm. He says mizor kapf gimel, mizor l’david which is simply Hebrew for “Psalm 23, a psalm of David”. The actual text of the psalm begins with the word Adonai.

Enjoy.

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Looking forward to watching this talk. After listening to Jeremy’s conversation, I was interested in learning more about “integral theory” more broadly, as including Wilber but not limited to him. More specifically, I’d like to learn more about how Gebser defines “integral art,” or “integral literature,” or “integral poetry.” I’m asking for selfish reasons - I wonder if we could use integral theory to come to some understanding about Ashbery. Anyways, I’m guessing this was touched upon during the Cafe today, and I’m looking forward to watching. (If it wasn’t touched upon, I’d love to hear from all the various “Gebserites” and so on about how Gebser envisions or describes integral art - art in the broadest sense, as including the verbal arts as well.) Thanks!!

p.s. A question: when people use the term “integral theory,” are they referring explicitly to Wilber? To Gebser? Both? Neither?

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Just to take up your last query, Andrew—I believe “Integral Theory” generally refers to Wilber’s AQAL model and its meta-offshoots. One doesn’t find the same term in Aurobindo, Gebser, Steiner, or the other big originators of what we might call “Integral Philosophy” more generally (such as Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin).

You might be interested in Jennifer Gidley’s essay, which we reviewed in an earlier Café, comparing and contrasting the philosophies of Wilber, Gebser, and Steiner.

(For pedagogical reasons, she leaves Aurobindo out of the essay we reviewed.)

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Thanks, Ed. A very powerful sound. I quoted yesterday from 1 Samuel 30-31, 41-42, and II Samuel 23-24. The language of the King James is famous for it’s dignity. I wish that I could have dwelled upon more passages but I wanted to put forward a coherent narrative. I imagine that when we share our knowledge of the Bible we learn more about where our thinking comes from. There is much wrestling here within the Masculine Archetypes - King, Warrior, Lover, and Magician. David is one of my favorite heroes. He is a very compelling figure, complex and very weird. We see him grow up. One of the great Biblical portraits. The struggle between Saul and Jonathan over David is sublime. Thou son of the perverse, rebellious woman. Such powerful, enigmatic language.

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And whenever one reads the Bible one stumbles across passages that are ubiquitous in the culture. “How are the mighty fallen”, etc.

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Sorry, but I’m confused by the refs: Do you mean 1 Sam chapters 30 - 31 and chapters 41-42 (which is how I would read that)? But, 1 Sam only has 31 chapters total (but 2 Sam does have 24). (The generally accepted format for Biblical referencing is “Book name Chapter #[colon]Verse(s) #”, e.g., Psalm 23:6 (which is "And I will dwell …), if that helps.)

1 Samuel 20: 30-31, 41-42 and 2 Samuel 1: 23-24 (in the unlikely event you still need the references…)

The whole lament of David for Saul and Jonathan is quite touching. I always found the event immediately preceding this interesting: an Amalekite seeking favor proudly announces to David that he was the one to (mercy) kill them before the Philistines got to them once the battle had been lost. David… was not pleased with this…

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I think he goes psychotic. David is a twisted person in many ways and he does some pretty nasty things. He had lots of boundary issues! The gory mess is saved by the majestic language.

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No problem, John, I do it all the time. Unfortunately, things have been a bit hectic around here and I didn’t have time to try and fill in the blanks myself. I figured it was just a matter of a number somewhere. Thanks.

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Part of (on a theme from this excellent talk) the Old Testament being “steeped in life” (which I think was Ed’s great way of putting it). David was also making a political statement to those who were loyal to the house of Saul - and not necessarily privy to the Jonathan-David connection.

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I think TJ corrected me. I skipped around and unfortunately may not have made a clear reading of this but I just wanted to highlight the postmodern wave. I was trying to demonstrate how Integralists can practice by resonating with previous literature and paying attention to how our cognition works. Politics, art, law are all drawing upon the archetypal patterns laid down in the Bible. It is amazing how unaware our culture is of it’s own roots. The way we hold male, female, masculine, feminine, is shaped by these primary texts. I can’t imagine where we would be without them. I turn to them for inspiration. The Mythic and Magical as Jeremy says is hard to tease apart. As I get older I witness how derivative most of the current cultural products are.

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This, my friend, is another entire discussion…

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Yes, I think that is true. David was a political animal. We see how over and over again he trusts people he should not trust, ignores people he should not ignore. He pays a very high price for his mistakes. At the end of the story we are exhausted! I think that we see him change from a boy to a great King to an old broken man is breathtaking.

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