Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness

In July, 2021 I joined Emergent Commons and soon became an active member. EC has many interesting activities, more than I have time for. However, I decided to join a Crew with a stated objective to engage in A Mutual Inquiry into Jean Gebser's "Integral" as presented in his book "Ever Present Origin".

I first became aware of Jean Gebser while reading Collective Presencing by Ria Baeck in 2019. Her book impacted me more than any other book I had read in recent years. She very favourably references Gebser numerous times.

The framework I found that best fit our experiences was Jean Gebser’s description of the mutation of consciousness, written half way through the previous century… You don’t need to know anything about Theory U or Gebser’s framework to understand what is written here and to be able to apply it. More crucial is the practice of Circle work, in all its depth and humility.

This human capacity is emerging neither as change within a level of context, nor even as a transformational change to a new and higher level and/or context. It is much more than that: it is a real turning point, a paradigm shift… a mutation in consciousness, as Gebser named it.

It is no longer a secret that a paradigm shift is ongoing in our world today. The mutation described by Jean Gebser (see quotes) is much more profound than most people imagine. It is not simply a next step in our development, which will call for some training – as challenging as that may be. Rather, it is a radically new way of perceiving life and reality in general, which influences the totality of our thinking, feeling and behaving, grounded in a different place than we are used to. Firstly, this movement transcends paradoxes, dichotomies and dialectical thinking. In the West, we tend to understand polarity as dualities, opposites or antinomies whereas the Asiatic view tends to experience it as complementaries, correspondences and interdependence. We are now heading towards an embrace of these ‘opposites’ or ‘paradoxes’, integrating them into a totally new view and – just as important – into corresponding new practices.

As predicted mid-way through the last century by Jean Gebser, integral consciousness is emerging in humanity at this time. In his fascinating book The Ever-Present Origin, he offers many definitions of integral consciousness, calling it an a-perspectival consciousness structure, “a consciousness of the whole, an integral consciousness encompassing all time and embracing both man’s distant past and his approaching future as a living present.” With the dawning of this consciousness, the artificial structures and boundaries of dualistic thought become transparent, allowing us to ‘see’ beyond them and invite life to present itself to us more directly, putting us on the path that leads out of the maps and into the territory.

I know, from the countless therapy sessions I have conducted, that even though most presenting problems stem from situations a long time ago, healing happens in the present moment. How can we apply this insight to change and transformation relating to the future? If healing takes place in the now because we access the past and the present in some kind of field that is beyond time and space, might the same not be true for the manifestation of future events? This prospect invites the integration of the ‘time freedom’ Gebser refers to. I cannot claim to fully understand this, let alone embody it, but I sense that I am drawing ever closer.

This leaves me with a favourable impression of Jean Gebser.

One of the members of my Crafting Communitas Crew encouraged me to join the Gebser Crew. They are starting their inquiry with the short book Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness by Jeremy Johnson. I decided to buy and read this book and I found it very stimulating. I am processing the ideas in this book by writing this book report, a process which helps me to clarify my own thinking. I have some concerns that some of what I have to say will not be well received.

Chapter 1 - Towards an Integral Philosophy of the Present

This incipient integral age—the “integral aperspectival” as a term I will attempt to introduce and convey to the reader in this volume—is nothing short of a leap from civilization as we know it (to what, we know not yet)... Key to understanding this leap is not mere intellectual comprehension alone but a form of spiritual clarity, a recognition of wholeness, a waring of past, present, and future.

There is a growing anticipation in some fringe areas of society that we homo sapiens are on the verge of a leap forward, a shift, and evolution to a higher state of consciousness. I have concerns that there are a growing number of people who are True Believers that this will in fact happen, and soon. Some assert that this is the only solution to the metacrisis, the only way to avoid collapse, the only path to human survival. But I do not know what Gebser means when he uses the word leap.

I accept the leap only as a possibility. I believe we are in a liminal time between two possibilities, breakthrough or breakdown. A few months ago, something Peter Limberg wrote resonated with me.

I am hearing this from intellectually sophisticated post-progressive Integralites, Californian spiritual types, and spiritual traditionalists like Eastern Orthodox Christians. My working theory is that those who are plugged into the spirit are feeling an extremely strong push towards the restriction of consciousness rather than an expansion of consciousness. Their memetic borders obviously influence how they understand what is happening, but their sense of the spirit is conveying the same thing: consciousness is under threat like it has never been before in our lifetime.

It seems to me that while the consciousness of a few may be expanding, the consciousness of many is becoming increasingly restricted. People are increasingly being trapped by culture wars, extreme polarization and ideology. And people are unaware that they are trapped, thinking instead that they have found a path to greater freedom and deeper truth.

Origin is not time-bound, nor space-bound, but is the originator or source of all that is time and space bound.

The use of the word Origin, and the use of the word Source by Ria Baeck, reminds me of the use of the word God by the Christian community, of which I was once a fervent member. On this matter I am an agnostic, a hard agnostic. I DO NOT KNOW if there really is any such thing and, furthermore, I believe that it is not possible for anyone to know for certain at this time.

Yet, what is arguably unique to Gebser in all of this is his singularly phenomenological approach to integral consciousness and the structures—it is not developmental. Nor is it a work of sophisticated meta-theoretical abstraction. In fact, throughout most of Ever-Present Origin, Gebser will repeatedly attempt to get out from under the natural machinations of the categorical mind.

I think I understand the problems of creating categories, of creating labels. I think I understand, and somewhat share, the desire to transcend such limitations. I can accept this concept as perhaps part of my aspirational self. But I make no claim that I have managed to progress very far from having a categorical mind. And I am skeptical of those who claim they have reached a state beyond the need for categories.

Gebser’s time, I believe, has come yet again: to help us in this age of existential and ecological crisis to think towards a planetary future.

This sentence sparks two thoughts.

I do not believe Gebser’s time has come again. I do think he has interesting ideas worthy of serious consideration. But the aggregate human knowledge and wisdom has progressed significantly since the time of Gebser. More useful today are those who understand Gebser and move beyond his thinking. Two current examples that I am aware of are Ria Baeck and Bonnitta Roy. And more useful today, in my opinion, is the work of Gregg Henriques who, to the best of my knowledge, seems to be largely unaware of Gebser.

I do not believe that this is the time to look to gurus. I believe that this is a time to go in a very different direction. This is a time to look for, and contribute to, the collective wisdom of average and ordinary people.

The world cannot be mastered, at any rate, with the rational mind…

This statement I completely agree with.

Gebser was understandably critical of grand narratives…

I think grand narratives are very important, perhaps critical. The grand narratives that have sustained western civilization for the last five hundred years are rapidly losing their power. New grand narratives have not yet emerged but are desperately needed. For some, INTEGRAL is the grand new narrative. But I think it may only be a piece of the puzzle, perhaps just one paragraph of the narrative we need.

What was left for Gebser to do, then, was to lean into the future and attempt to speak for it… “We are shaped not only by today and yesterday, but by tomorrow as well,” Gebser writes… Past and future loom large in the present.

Here I have a fundamental disagreement with Gebser. I do not believe that the future coexists with the present in some type of field that we can somehow access. I believe the future is unknown and unknowable and is a MYSTERY and will probably remain so.

The past is a different matter. There are objective facts about the past but they are insufficient for understanding it. There is no such thing as a universal historical truth. Therefore, much of the past will also remain a MYSTERY.

Only an integral human being, one who has wared the whole, is capable of overcoming their own fragmentation and leaping from planetary crisis to planetary consciousness. This is our individual and collective task.

New models of human beings have emerged since the time of Gebser. One that excites me is understanding human beings as complex systems which cannot be adequately reduced to its parts and cannot be fully understood by examining parts. At the same time, it is not possible to fully grasp the whole. Where this leads me is to an understanding that we can never fully understand each other, nor ourselves. And we must learn to live successfully with this insight. In my view, the idea that humans are fragmented and can be fully integrated is an illusion, but probably a useful and helpful illusion, or in language I prefer, a story.

Chapter 2 - A Catalytic Reading

Gebser’s structures, like Jung’s “reality of the psyche,” should stir something in you. You find something there, already present, and at last recognized.

Over the course of my life, certain words have become red flags for me. One of those words is the word should. I do not like being told that reading Gebser should stir something in me. Am I to conclude that if it does not that I am somehow deficient? In my opinion, the above sentence is psychological manipulation.

Chapter 3 - A Few Words on Approach, Or How to Render the Invisible, Visible

Any work that must be done in furthering a more integral tomorrow is surely through the collaboration of planetary artists, scholars, and philosophers.

I strongly agree with this statement but it misses something important. The collaboration to a more integral future needs to include average and ordinary people. But perhaps this is something that I want to believe in order to create a meaningful role for myself.

Chapter 4 - Three Worlds - Coming to Awareness

Coming to Awareness

This phenomenological approach, one in which we consider the “consciousness of space and time” in any epoch “through unique forms of visual as well as linguistic expression,” is where we derive the designations of unperspectival, perspectival, and aperspectival.

In this chapter, we will move in an admittedly chronological fashion through these broad phenomenological views before exploring the more qualitatively discrete structures: the archaic, magic, mythic, mental, and integral mutations.

The Unperspectival World, or the Dreaming Vault of Stars

The word mutations is used many times in Johnson’s book. Perhaps the word is misused. I prefer to read it as Ria Baeck does, as meaning a paradigm shift.

As a recent discovery suggests Neanderthals, approximately 200,000 years ago, were building ritualistic spaces in the deep caves of southwest France… the enclosure of the world for the unperspectival self is, in reality, the opening of another… we know that the unperspectival consciousness was as challengingly complex as our own.

In my opinion, Johnson is imposing his narrative on history and I am skeptical. We cannot not know very much about what the consciousness of Neanderthals was like. I doubt it was as complex as the consciousness of homo sapiens today.

The Perspectival World: To the Eye, All That is Measurable

This new form of sight, not of the imaginal, psychic, or soul-bound world-spaces but the measurable spaces of the daylight… The light of reason may produce wonders, but there are also new and greater monsters indeed.

Yes, indeed. To his great credit, before many others, Gebser saw the monsters coming and that is impressive. And it is astounding to me today that now that the monsters are here, there are many people who still do not see them.

Solutions to our crisis cannot originate from the same perspectival thinking, which can only continue to sector and divide. We are compelled to make an integral response; only a whole-oriented consciousness can now act and itself becomes a dire necessity—a crisis and mutation. What we are invited to realize in our time, just like the artists and scientists of the perspectival age, is the emergence of the aperspectival world. This is the integral mutation.

Yes, indeed. But I would rewrite the last sentence above to simply read, “This is the new paradigm.”

The A-Perspectival World, or Time-as-Wholeness

For Gebser, the three worlds of unperspectival, perspectival, and aperspectival were not enough clarification. He realized that a more distinguished and thorough phenomenological description of the coming-to-consciousness of humanity was necessary and evident. These are the structures of consciousness, which introduce to us the archaic, magic, mythic, mental, and integral forms of time-space expression. These structures allow the past, present, and future to concretize in a way that does not threaten to overwhelm us but reveal themselves in clarity.

Here is the frame that I put around the above paragraph. Gebser realized that the knowledge and insight of his time was incomplete. So he added to it, and he seems to have done so brilliantly. But what results remains incomplete. Others are now addressing the incompleteness of Gebser.

Chapter 5 - Mutations, Structures, Becomings

Prologue: Animate Histories

The archaic, magic, and mythic always retain their potency in us; they are spiritually and ontologically present, challenging (and sometimes overtaking) the contemporary mental consciousness with the allurement of their alterity. The daylight mind looks with both superstition and temptation at the siren songs of dreaming phantasmagoria. So, it is recommended—as a practice—that the reader continue to observe their own awareness in this process…

I see value in the archaic, magic, and mythic but I give them no special power to influence me. Johnson and Gebser give us one model, one path, one way. There are many other paths, some of which interest me more than this one.

This work, because it is work for many of us, invites an internal re-structuring. We must make room again for the latent worlds within in our souls (indeed, for our souls themselves), lest they become ghosts in a haunted perspectival landscape.

Another red flag word for me is must. I do not like being told what I must do. I like being invited to go down a certain path, as I felt Ria Baeck did in her book Collective Presencing.

Do watch out for those “stirrings.”

I had some stirrings while reading A Mutual Inquiry but not the kind that Johnson had in mind.

Mutations, or Discontinuous Transformations

Many who come to Gebser’s writing after working with other stage-based models of consciousness evolution are surprised to discover that the structures of consciousness are also not developmental.

In a sense, the structures of consciousness are not anything. They are empty of essence in a Buddhist way. But the structures of consciousness can be modeled as developmental stages and that yields certain insights. Or the structures of consciousness can be modeled as Gebser does and that yields certain insights. Or the structures of consciousness can be modeled in various other ways yielding even more insights.

If the whole of the mutational process—which is the coming to awareness of consciousness—has any progressive claim, it is the coming to awareness in the human being of the spiritual origin…

Do human beings have a spiritual origin? Perhaps, but I DO NOT KNOW and I am skeptical of those who assert this with certainty. It is an interesting story, a powerful story.

The integral itself reveals a process through which mutations appear to have their hidden, arational ordering: systasis. Systasis is a break from synthesis, dialetical, categorical, or systemic styles of thought entirely:

Systasis was a new word to me so I looked it up in Wiktionary. Synthesis and union were given as meanings. But Johnson says systasis is a break from synthesis. Consequently, I found the use of this word confusing. I prefer greater clarity.

Synairesis, then, is the “mode” of integral understanding marked by “completion,” an “encompassing all sides” whereby the individual perceives aperspectivally.

Synairesis was another word I did not know and in this case Wiktionary was not much help. I am well aware of my own lack of education. And I greatly appreciate very educated individuals who can write at a level I can understand and I will not be adding Jeremy Johnson to my list.

The above quote reminded me of the excellent website AllSides. It seeks to look at the news from the left, from the centre and from the right. But to regularly look at what is in the news from three perspectives is a massive undertaking. And for me, it leads to more confusion than clarity. I quickly become overwhelmed. Now let’s consider looking at every dimension of life from every possible angle. Surely it is obvious that such an approach vastly exceeds human capacity. And that is the reason we are better served by simplifying stories.

Because this process is not linear but one of discontinuous leaps into new plateaus of reality, integration does not necessarily follow new mutations until we reach the integral structure.

I wonder whether this sentence has any meaning for anyone who has not read A Mutual Inquiry into Jean Gebser. I DO NOT KNOW what new plateaus of reality are. Again, I like clarity.

Gebser’s mutational approach, then, is discontinuous, offering us a careful way to talk about the future, about becoming, which of course involves some form of emergence through the processes of chronological time (i.e., humanity’s progressive realization of origin).

It seems to me that Gebser is offering an unhelpful way, perhaps even a harmful way, to talk about the future. My preferred way to view the future is through an agnostic lens. I DO NOT KNOW the future and I am skeptical of those who claim to know.

The Archaic Structure “Dreamlessly the true men of earlier times slept”

There is not much that can be said, or documented, about the archaic… And so we move to the first recognizable leap.

The Magic Structure

This insight seems to concur with Gebser’s understanding that consciousness is not ours; we might speak of its realization in us but it is not, in truth, ours to possess.

Perhaps our consciousness comes from outside of us, from Origin, from Source or from God. Or, perhaps, somehow, our consciousness merely emerges from our brains in an unknown way. Perhaps our consciousness is a MYSTERY and will remain so for a long time. I DO NOT KNOW how I have come to be conscious and I am skeptical of those who claim to know.

For Gebser… Any one point is a secret passage all points. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are interchangeable.

I am skeptical of all those who claim they have keys to secret passages.

The Mythical Structure

“Very nearly all myths contain an element of consciousness emergence.”

I do believe that myths contain much wisdom but Gebser‘s framework is not the only one useful for extracting that wisdom.

The Mental Structure

The mental structure announces the coming of the ego… the perspectival world is the mental world of spatialized consciousness.

Secularity in the West takes hold, and the reality of the magical nexus and mythical temporality evaporates like a dream soon after rousing to wakeful consciousness.

The mental, like all mutations, originates as a spiritual and creative leap substantiated by origin itself.

Or, perhaps, the mental originates in the mind that mysteriously emerges from the brain.

But the promise of the mental (if it can be said that there is one) is that it indeed points to a future realized co-creative capacity: to become co-fashioners of our cosmos. This participatory turn is what Richard Tarnas, in The Passion of the Western Mind, sees as our ultimate task for tomorrow…

Yes, indeed.

The Mental Crisis, or Prelude to the Integral Structure

We seem to face a fork in the road between planetization—the Teilhardian notion of an integral world civilization—and a new Dark Age, which William Irwin Thompson points out does tend to occur in “chaotic bifurcations” between major leaps of consciousness.

I frame this point in time differently, with no reference to a leap forward. As I said earlier, I believe we are in a liminal time between two possibilities, breakthrough or breakdown. Which possibility will manifest is unknown and unknowable. And I believe that it will take the collective wisdom of average and ordinary people to obtain a positive outcome. And we may fail.

And now we come to some more red flags.

Yet, the aperspectival world must take hold if we are to have a future… Tomorrow’s integral world is one where a new solidity must be found… We must find another way to relate to people, people, or more accurately: to reveal to them how they are already ecological beings living in a symbiotic and (my choice word) aperspectival reality.

I was once a True Believer doing the Work of revealing the light of God’s truth to a world in darkness.

Seeing From All Sides

It is hopefully clearer now as to why the mental assessment of gradations, stages, levels, and other forms of spatialized thinking (such as the pyramidal dialectic) are not sufficient expressions of integrality. The mutations, being discontinuous leaps, demonstrate both a processual unfoldment—a coming-to-consciousness—and a non-linear co-presence and interdependence; the spiritual light reigning between objects is also reigning between the structures.

Yes, but… In my opinion, believing that there is any such thing as a sufficient expression of integrality is a mistake. No one person can hold the whole, not even close. But we could each hold a piece and collectively make the whole, no easy task.

At the very least—in Gebser’s concept of systasis—we are pointed to something more than perspectival linearity: in this new definition of emergence, a “seeing from all sides,” the past, present, and future dynamically inform a coherent whole and its manifold realizations.

And, I am skeptical of the idea that there is such a thing as a framework, a model, a paradigm or a particular human being that is a fully coherent whole.

An entirely new reality is opening up to us, and so we should begin an exploration of the integral structure.

And there is that word should again.

The Integral Mutation, or Diaphaneity

For now we should simply keep in mind that the human being is the integrality of their mutations, and that to begin to leap into the integral world, we must further address time. The preliminary task for the integral world is the concretion of time. We must… be willing to break forth into a new reality: space has been wrought to its uttermost, and mentation has succumbed to its own leaden and fixed rationality.

Chapter 6 - The Integral A-Perspectival World: Time-Freedom and its Contemporary Manifestations

Speeding to the Present

Consciousness “moves” towards its intrinsic wholeness. We have been roused to wakefulness in the mental, but in the integral we are being initiated into the lucidity of origin. This is an immense, or rather we should say, immeasurable spiritual task: to not only fathom but concretize the spiritual whole.

My differences with Gebser and Johnson are becoming clearer to me. There is no such thing as a spiritual whole. Gebser and Johnson tell a story, a useful story, a helpful story. We need their story but it is incomplete. Therefore, we need many other stories.

However, stories become harmful if they generate True Believers, those convinced that any particular story is the true story that will save us.

The breaking forth of time occurs to us when we are not yet aware of what the phenomenon is; it appears to be happening to us. Time irruption is experienced as the increasing consciousness of time as it irrupts in our cultural phenomenology; the concept of time, clock time and anxiety, time as a force that is speeding up and out of control. Lastly, time concretion is the manifestation of time as an acute phenomenon in our lives, freed—at least, partially—from the spatial abstractions of the mental and expressed as a tangible presence and reality.

Most of us understand and experience time as chronological time. But there is more to the story of time. There are aspects of time that are not understood, that are a MYSTERY. Consequently, many stories can be told about time and we need those stories. Gebser and Johnson are merely telling one story.

The Machine and Revolution

When we consider Gebser’s insights on the early cultural phenomena of the aperspectival world—connecting everything…

There is more to say about the idea of connecting everything.

Divine Wind, Modern Angel

The mental epoch, as we have been saying (for its importance bears a continued reminder), can merely initiate the integral, but not master it.

Integral Singularities

We must continuously ask ourselves: what is catastrophe telling us?

Yes, indeed, except I would merely invite others to ask this question.

Time Freedom and the Spiritual Implications of Integral Consciousness

What does it mean that time is time freedom? …This would mean that the future is here with us just as much as the past… We should only use these concepts if they are more than mere concepts, but phenomenologically encountered realities… we attempt a seeing through, a relating to the whole and sustaining ourselves in the whole).

What I am doing in this report is not seeing through the lens of Gebser and Johnson. I am looking at the lens of Gebser and Johnson. And I invite readers of this report to do likewise.

…Gebser leaves us with a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive list of integral qualities… This helpful list can assist us in waring the integral reality making its appearance in our own moment of cultural evolution… Finally, in these qualities we have the move from the mental ego to the integral self.

My frame is one of trying to move from my mental ego self to my aspirational self.

Primal Trust

A failure to leap into new plateaus of being as the dead weight of the past to forces time to stand still, and the world to go dark.

This reminds me of the Christian idea of telling the unconverted to take a leap of faith.

When we take these leaps of primal trust into the wisdom of tomorrow we are not acting on faith alone. We come from the future, and pull the present into a new potentiality. Let us make it, then, a spiritual present.

I want to be respectful of those who choose this path and I want to understand and honor many paths. But the above sentence does not resonate with me. This is not my path.

Chapter 7 - Integral Florilegium: Secondary Sources, Reading, Immanent Scholarship

FLORILEGIUM, which roughly translates from Latin to mean “a gathering of flowers,”

Organizations

Gebser’s work has influenced many diverse individuals across all fields—artists, philosophers, architects, poets, Jungian psychologists, transpersonal therapists, Buddhists, indigenous wisdom holders—many of whom come together annually for the International Jean Gebser Society conferences.

What seems to be missing from amongst those who are influenced by Gebser are the average and ordinary people.

Institutions

A list of Gebserian scholars and associated universities can be found on the Gebser Society’s resource page. In addition to the Department of History of Science at the University of Oklahoma, the California Institute of Integral Studies remains a highly active locus point for integral scholarship.

Secondary Sources and Translations

Gebser’s work has made its way into many different fields, but explicit, secondary English sources are exceedingly rare beyond the published works of the Gebser Society.

Foundational Books

Integral Florilegium

Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World (2013) move mental conceptualizations of the objective world into stranger territories and should be read as a trend towards aperspectival thinking. Morton’s recent Being Ecological (2018) reads as a text that fundamentally breaks perspectival anthropocentrism.

I am quite interested in the concept of hyperobjects but this is the first indication I have of connecting it with integral.

About Nura Learning

NURA LEARNING SPRUNG UP in 2017 as a virtual learning space to unite the constellations of imaginal studies, consciousness studies, and integral philosophy.

I became aware of Ken Wilber and Integral shortly after I retired in 2012. I was intrigued by what I learned but for whatever reason I was more attracted to other paths. However, I am now in a community, Emergent Commons, which has a significant number of members who have walked the Integral path. These members have earned my respect and I am building meaningful relationships with some of them. I wonder what impact, if any, my commentary on Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness by Jeremy Johnson will have on those relationships.

Is Jean Gebser special? Is Integral special? It seems to be so to some people. What is special is subjective. Nothing, in my opinion, is inherently special. Nothing has specialness as an aspect of its essence. Yet what is special seems important.

I would like a world where everyone feels free to discover and share what is special to them. I want to know what is special to others, especially those with whom I am building meaningful relationships. Of course, what is special to us changes over time.

For the first twenty-five years of my adult life, God’s truth as taught by the benign Christian cult of which I was a member, felt extremely special to me. After losing my faith, for the next twenty years, secular humanism felt special. Starting in 2014 a spiritual but not religious path became special to me.

At this time, early in 2022, here is what feels special to me now: the journal entries of Peter Limberg, the book Collective Presencing by Ria Baeck, the Liminal Movement with its many manifestations, the Emergent Commons community and my own path I am which I am still trying to understand better.

I have no formal education, no notoriety, and I am not a great writer. It will be easy for others to ignore my report, which is okay as I am trying to have only a light attachment to it. But I do hope that this resonates with some people.

Finally, here is a link to an article that captures what I am trying to say in a much more scholarly way.

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is NOT a "Theory of Everything" (TOE)

Will or would such reflection lead to anything like a TOE? I don’t know, but I have my suspicions. What seems immanent is not a TOE, but the idea itself, of which, we individual subjects are (crucial) moments (for it).