unity of the human and divine and absorption into the godhead. The highest level of
consciousness is the direct experience of non-duality, where no divisions exist, and
everything is equally the One (Wilber, 1983:29).
(d) Anima Mundi or World Soul
I n Wilber’s concept of trans-egoic vision logic one can discern similarities
with the Celtic Web of Wyrd, the Noosphere of de Chardin and the I maginal Realm
of Corbin. Hillman advances a perspective that he suggests is not unlike that
dismissed by the Western cultural tradition, of nothing less than the world ensouled.
He proposes that we imagine the anima mundi not as above, encircling the world, a
world of powers and archetypes nor within the material world but rather as a soul-
spark, the seminal image that offers itself through each thing in its visible form;
sensuous animated possibilities that offer themselves to the imagination (Hillman,
1981:101). I t is not so much a thing as it is more a process when the soul of the
thing coalesces with ours (Hillman, 1981:102).
Wilber's hierarchical model of consciousness development with its roots in
the work of Piaget and other psychologists and its topmost branches in accounts
from the world's greatest mystics accommodates comfortably my paradigm of
consciousness as a continuum. Located at one end are manifestations or variations
of the participation mystique, SC and other intensity states such as MLC, that are
marked by a delimitation of one’s own awareness because all existence is
experienced as I dentity, whilst at the extreme other end is found the narrow
manifestation of mundane ego consciousness.
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