While reviewing the recording, I misspoke at one point; one thought occurred to me in relation to something Doug asked early on, and I remembered the other example I wanted to give Marco.
Erratum:
@ 41:00 (or thereabouts) I was pointing out that each of the Abrahamic religions – in Meru’s Model of Continuous Creation – plays a primary role. I said Islam was about learning. What I meant was Judaism is about Learning (Lamed), Christianity is about Love (or lovingkindness, compassion), and Islam, as the word says, is Submission (to G-d’s will). That is the three-in-one, so to speak, of wholeness depicted by the model.
@Douggins @49:00 or thereabouts
You had asked about some of the technical Gebserian terms that were being bantered about but you also were wondering how do we transmit knowledge intergenerationally?
That was an excellent question that didn’t get enough attention. You are correct, we can’t just “transmit” integral consciousness on to our children. For one, because most of us don’t have it (and the more I look around my world these days, the less chance I see that we’re going to get it). Your analogy to prayer was a good one and it already has the answer implicit in it.
Pylogeny replicates ontogeny … a lot of folks discredit the maxim, but there’s something to it: the individual instance of a species replicates the development of species itself. Kerri Welch’s interview (and her dissertation) showed that there is a parallel between brain-wave states and times of day: delta - archaic; theta - magical; alpha - mythical; beta - mental; (and with a lot of qualifications and reservations) gamma - integral. The developmental stages of an individual (and Feuerstein touches on this more in his book on Gebser) show parallels as well: babies - archaic; toddlers - magical; adolescents - mythical; adults - mental; grown-ups - (could be, but most of us aren’t) integral. At least that’s one way to look at it.
Since the magical structure can’t grok the mythical, there is no advantage in dealing with an individual who is operating magically, let us say, in mental terms. If their own consciousness is unfolding, you could certainly introduce mythical elements (but not too many too quickly) to help them along the path they are traversing anyway. It is an time-proven adage of education that you have to pick students up where they are, period. Having said that, it is important that what we know as adults, for example, not be forgotten. That is the historical problem you identified. The Torah has been there since the beginning of what became Judaism, but not everybody got it. Why? Because it’s hard to get. It takes a lot of work, and not everyone can, or is willing to, invest the effort. Once we realize, however, that there is something “more” there, it is our obligation to do what we can to promote and perpetuate what we can for those who come after.
At the same time, I’m tend to think that when things get really bleak “down here”, someone shows up and rejuvenates the search, just like certain key individuals made momentous breakthroughs (e.g., Petrarch, in Gebser’s account) who help us along. This might be build into the process, but I don’t know enough about the process to say for sure. For example, I’m reminded of the story of Hillel who was asked to explain the Torah while standing on one foot. He said (standing on one foot), “Love G-d, and don’t do anything to others you wouldn’t want them doing to you. The rest is commentary, go study.” Much later one Jesus of Nazareth “issued” two Great Commandments: Love G-d, and love your neighbor as yourself." Repeat at a time it was probably needed. Both, according to Tenen, are in traditions who have access to the code, even if they don’t know it. But once you do … ?
@madrush @58:00 or thereabouts
The topic being discussed was “access to origin” … how is it “ever-present”? I mentioned the one Kabbalistic teaching about the creation being regenerated in every instant (which ties in directly, of course, to the name Tenen gave to one of his primary models: the Model of Continuous Creation). The other story I wanted to tell is this:
There is a Kabbalistic teaching that the Hebrew Letters pre-existed creation as we know it for G-d used these letters as the (as we are seeing and Tenen is also saying) building blocks of creation. There is another teaching that tells us that the Torah we have is the one we have because that is how the events involved played out. If other things had happened (G-d makes mammals before flying things or fish, for example) then the letters would have appeared in a different order; if G-d hadn’t put a particular tree in the middle of particular garden, there would be a different order of letters and we would have a different Torah.
So what? you might be asking. Well, if in fact we have the Torah we have, and if the rabbis and sages and the people have been reading (and studying) and re-reading (and re-studying) this particular text day-after-day, year-after-year, century-after-century, then we are constantly (and here I refer back to the opening exchange we had on hermeneuticism and reading texts) regenerating the text. We are constantly, or perhaps continually is a better word, bringing that text into the present. We enliven texts when we read them, so it would seem that since the text is about Origin (to use the Gebserian term), then we are re-engaging Origin every time we read it, especially when we read it “deeply”. Tenen has now come along and said that we don’t just have to suck in the squigglies through our eyes, we can gesture them, and, oh, by the way, it turns out that could have a more profound impact on your consciousness than “mere” reading.
That’s all I was going to add, but I forgot. It’s hell getting old; I have to learn to take more and better notes when we’re in these sessions.
as a gift) that I have had after/while reading 
(as if that were any kind of defense).
