Educational imperatives of the evolution of consciousness: the integral visions of Rudolf Steiner and Ken Wilber

Abstract

Rudolf Steiner and Ken Wilber claim that human consciousness is evolving beyond the ‘formal’, abstract, intellectual mode toward a ‘post‐formal’, integral mode. Wilber calls this ‘vision‐logic’ and Steiner calls it ‘consciousness/spiritual soul’. Both point to the emergence of more complex, dialectical, imaginative, self‐reflective and spiritual ways of thinking, living and loving. Very little ‘evolution of consciousness’ literature appears in educational discourses. This article distils hermeneutic fragments of psychological, cultural‐historical and philosophical texts and begins to examine education in this light. This evolutionary perspective may illuminate the emergence of contemporary understandings of spirituality as alternatives both to ‘formal’ secular and ‘formal’ religious education. A novel educational perspective is introduced based on a contemporised Australian interpretation of Steiner education seen through the lens of Wilber’s integral framework. This creative, ‘transmodern’ educational vision offers one way forward to consciously facilitate the emergence in children of more life‐promoting, integral, spiritually aware forms of consciousness.

Keywords:

• Evolution of consciousness
• Integral
• Education
• Steiner
• Wilber
• Gebser
• Post‐formal

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the important contribution of my friend and colleague Gary Hampson to the refinement of some of the ideas in this paper, through our many varied and inspiring hermeneutic conversations.

Notes

1. Personal Reflection

As founder and pioneer of a Rudolf Steiner school in a rural Australian setting during the 1980s/90s, I attempted to contemporise Steiner education for that particular time/place. I now see this as a ‘reconstructive postmodern’ interpretation of Steiner. Thus, my implementation of Steiner was less ‘traditional Waldorf’ and more ‘creative self‐transcendence … radical openness to new experience and novel conditions’ (R. Miller, 2000). I worked directly and authentically from Steiner’s original teachings rather than any set Waldorf curriculum. I believe this is what Steiner intended teachers to do. Although I had not encountered Wilber’s framework, I intuitively deconstructed and reconstructed Steiner’s indications only reflecting back on this later, when I discovered Wilber’s writings.