Jean Gebser’s “primal trust” helped him negotiate many future leaps into the unknown which included quitting his well established job and accepting high forms of risks. His belief started with him claiming that a new form of consciousness was emerging as compared to the state of Western consciousness in the first decade of the 21st century. Gebser believed that consciousness has moved through four previous “structures,” each achieving a further separation and distinction from an immaterial, spiritual source called “origin.”
As much of his earlier examples of forms of consciousness is in depth and takes some time to understand, his claim was that the new structure of consciousness was an advent of the previous structure breaking down and becoming obsolete. Gebser believed that the mental-rational structure entered its “deficient” mode in 1336 AD with rise of perspective and the switch from the “two-dimensional” “embedded” vision of the world common in the Middle Ages (think of tapestry) to the acute awareness of distance and space embodied in the paintings of the early Renaissance (think of landscape paintings). Gebser believed that this “deficient” mode reached its most radical extreme in the nineteenth century and that throughout the twentieth century it was in the process of deconstructing itself.
The big change and shift of paradigm….was time as he points to Einstein’s relativity (as one example of many). A more modern example as I am sure the late Gebser would of used would be anyone that uses TiVo or listens to podcasts is no longer bound by the idea of a certain television program or radio broadcast being on at a certain time. The whole internet experience has altered our way of thinking about both time and space. Gebser’s ideas of consciousness is deeply complex BUT theories and ideas can be disputed and I am sure much of his work would be compared to how his surroundings shaped his ideas (as Freud and Machiavelli have been judged). What I would like to close this article with is how he faced the world as he lived through the First World War and Hitler’s National Socialism to name a few.
He turned to “primal trust” rather than facing “primal fear” which defined much of his experience in life and work. His description of “primal trust” was when he jumped from a high dive into a deep pool in preparatory school. He felt that the leap into the pool was also a leap into the unknown, and it was then that he lost “fear in the face of uncertainty.” I can’t help but think of the new Star Trek movie (2009) and how the character of Kirk fulfilled his destiny even when his past was altered.
The conversation between Kirk and Spock when Kirk beat Spock’s simulation included Spock trying to teach Kirk fear…
"Then not only did you violate the rules, you also fail to understand the principal lesson"
“You of all people should know, Cadet Kirk, a captain cannot cheat death”
“The purpose is to experience fear, fear in the face of certain death, to accept that fear, and maintain control of oneself and one's crew. This is the quality expected in every Starfleet captain.”
Kirk had a choice...and it defined him in every way....
When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you – Fredrich Nietzsche