We is

Gebser’s theory of the mutations of consciousness (see Chapter 2), takes us from the emergence of archaic consciousness in pre-humans, through magic, mythical, and mental structures of consciousness to the integral consciousness he claims to see emerging in the mid-20^th century. Gebser considers that the emergence of the different kinds of consciousness has a trajectory and, accordingly, it is possible for the authors to speculate credibly on what kind of human consciousness is in the process of emerging in the 21^st century. A core dimension of consciousness is the sense of who we are and how we relate to the world. Gebser writes about this in terms of the ego. In the archaic consciousness of the earliest hominids there was no sense of ego or self: consciousness was cosmic or universal. The magical consciousness of the Stone Age was ego-less and earth-oriented. The mythical consciousness which emerged several thousand years ago was ego-less and we-oriented. The mental consciousness that emerged in the great classical civilisations was ego-centric—and, in the deficient, ‘rational’ form which has characterised European consciousness for the past 400 years, the authors would argue, obsessively so. Finally, the integral consciousness, as Gebser views it, is ego-free.