Megan's child

 

 

You packed a lot in here and I would say I agree with, and even more, appreciate everything you say.  This Whiteheadian notion of prehension is a most fascinating one in reconciling the body/mind division (dualism) in Western philosophy.  You seem to situate yourself squarely in the center of Whiteheadian process philosophy and would indeed be considered a panpychist.  For you, Noah (and I agree), relationships are primary and constituted in relationships; and that is true of individual human beings as well as any other phenomena. From this perspective, what we call causality is actually an intersubjective experience of shared meaning:  “I feel that as I touch a tree or a rock, or any feature of my surroundings, I am also being touched. That my “feeling” of these Others is equally their feeling of me, not as separate subjects—I don’t see a plant as having interiority per se, or mental function—but more in the sense that there is awareness forming between us; and that awareness always takes on a particular character or mood, a particular way of knowing, which is informed by the Other that is co-creating the feeling between us.”  That is radical!

 

Our discussion on whether plants have “awareness” or “feeling” recalls for me a prickly debate between Ken Wilber and Christian De Quincey.  The debate had to do with the term “panpsychism,” which, according to De Quincey, is the view that  “the fundamental units of reality are “moments of experience.”  Every individual actuality [phenomenon] is experiential , possessing interiority or feeling.  Mind or consciousness goes all the way down to quanta or quarks or whatever might lie beyond.” P. 301

 

Wilber’s argument is as follows:

 

“I accept the Whitehead/Griffin version of prehension (as far as it goes), but I state a personal preference: "I accept the notion of Whitehead (Hartshorne, Griffin) that we can picture 'prehension' as perhaps the earliest form of interiors (every interior touches--prehends--an exterior at some point, since interior and exterior mutually arise), but when that prehension is explained in terms such as feeling or emotion, I believe that is overdoing it."

 

……………

 

There are two reasons that I accept "prehension" but not "feelings" as a name for the interiors that go all the way down. De Quincey's authoritative assertion is that I reject the word "feelings" because I am out of touch with mine, and therefore I cannot see the truth of his position. But I maintain that I don't use the term "feeling" because: … [the reason] I try not to characterize or qualify the nature of interiors is that ultimately (and here I am switching from a relative to an absolute form of argument a la Madhymaka), the interiors of each holon open directly onto radical, absolute, unqualifiable Spirit or pure Emptiness, so that the interior of each holon acts as an opening or clearing in which other holons can emerge, so that all holons are mutually arising in the clearing that they mutually supply for each other.” (This is also the ground meaning or ultimate meaning of intersubjectivity, which exists alongside the four or five others.)”

 

A very difficult way of saying that, if we claim all phenomena have feelings, we potentially fall into a propositional(and thus, perceived) trap of  a type of idealism that fails to recognize the ultimate interreleatedness of ALL phenomena, which we call emptiness.  And so, if we can’t speak of real existence, we cannot speak of non-existence either.  Wilber seems to be saying that De Quincey’s position somehow undermines the nonduality of emptiness though, I must be honest, I am inferring far more than I should here given Wilber’s abstruseness. 

 

My concern about conflating different categories or ontologies is psychological, that is, it potentially undermines the development of self-awareness, and so, ultimately, spiritual awareness.  But you beautifully (and poetically, of course) address this concern:

 

“Though I would think that prehension, or prehensive qualities reflect a definite level of consciousness. It may be more appropriate to say that I feel any landscape has, via the intangible relating of its innumerable prehensive aspects, physically and energetically, a responsive form of consciousness, which we are able to recognize instinctually on a visceral level , rationally on an aesthetic and mechanical level, and 'transrationally' when these understandings are integrated with a deep body-mind awareness. Here we feel the most potent sense of connection and integration with the surrounding space, emotionally and spiritually, so that we see our self as both part of the larger environment and profoundly related with it.”

 

Noah, this is one of best definitions of spirituality I have seen and I’m going to use it in my workshop! 

 

Your mention of animism recalls for me Rilke, whose mystical presence in the word is completely infused with animism. I wrote a couple of essays on Rilke’s animism, in which I describe Rilke’s spirituality as emphasizing “the creative imagination as that position from which God can be realized.  The artist for Rilke makes things and so reminds us of God’s creative beauty.  Beauty for Rilke is an aesthetization of spiritual awakening and can be witnessed in all of life.  He says, “there is much beauty here, because everywhere there is much beauty.”  But, he also tells us we must begin within:

 

`You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.’

                                                   Letters To A Young Poet-Rilke

 

 

Rilke, as a young man, was the great sculptor, Auguste Rodin's secretary and went on tour, so to speak, to promote Rodin's work.  Rilke's brilliance and the mysticism that evolved through his animistic religiosity already began to take form in an essay he wrote on Rodin.  

 

“Reflecting on my task, however, it has become clear to me that I have not come before you to speak of people, but rather of things.

 

Things. When I say the word (are you listening?), it grows silent; the silence that

surrounds things.  All motion subsides and becomes contour, and something

permanent is formed from the past and the future: space, the great calm of things, liberated from desire."

                     `Auguste Rodin' by Ranier Maria Rilke (p.68)

 

 

We begin with a metaphysics on space and time.  “The silence that surrounds things.  All motion subsides and becomes contour [surface].”  The silence that surrounds things is consciousness, spirit wrapping its arms around things found and things made, like a mother nourishing its essence and so giving it form.  And it is the silence that brings us closer to the essence, for silence is the dimension of spirit.  Silence is God’s first language.  But, it is a specific type of silence, a silence nestled in a stillness that unlayers the motion of time.  Time ceases in the stillness and is thus relegated to the surface of things.  When time is unraveled from the surface of space, space, in all its unadornment, is “liberated from desire.”  In the silent stillness, desire meets Awareness and dissolves, along with even space, into its ineffable, uncreated, infinite eternality.  It is that moment of union, when space touches silence in “the great calm of things,” that realization occurs.  Rilke’s mysticism senses the connection between time and eternity, space and infinity: “something permanent is formed from the past and future.”  His is an inverted sense of what we now know as things (phenomena) being formed in the dimension of space/time.  Rilke’s linguistic conflation belies the  intuition revealed within his words: that space is not space itself; it is the spacelessness of Being (liberated from desire) from which all things arise, including space (the great calm of things) and time (past and future) and matter (things).  In this context, “something permanent” refers to form and the beauty (essence) emanating through its surface in either image or word.” 

 

 

No, you do not feel it growing silent.  The word “things” means nothing to you—too much and thus too ordinary—and passes right by.  And in this sense it is good that I have evoked childhood; perhaps this sense of something precious, something associated with many memories, can help me bring this word home to you.  -- Rilke

 

Rilke’s touch is deeply therapeutic and guiding, like a light coming out of dark space from which your curiosity of its mystery impels you to follow.  Rilke is a poet of mystery and so is a mystical presence.  He

elevates the ordinary through the senses and textually places “Things” atop his essay so as to illustrate his spiritual notion of space, or through linguistic productions.  This is the utterance of something beyond that which is being stated, what the philosopher of hermeneutics, Gadamer, calls Ereignis, an event that “appropriates us” into itself.  It jolts us, knocks us over, and sets up a world of its own, into which we are drawn, as it were.”  Works of Art “stand in themselves’ and “are only truly there in our coming back to them.”

 

One does not possess the meaning of a work of art in a kind of way that would allow one to speak of a transfer of meaning (referring to Heidegger’s definition of the beautiful as “the sensuous appearing of the idea”).  The meaning of a work of art can never be simply transferred.  A work of art must itself be there….  You cannot substitute something else for it…. When a work of art truly takes hold of us, it is not an object that stands opposite us which we look at in hope of seeing through it to an intended conceptual meaning.  Just the reverse.  The work is an Ereignis—an event that “appropriates us” into itself.  It jolts us, it knocks us over, and sets up a world of its own, into which we are drawn, as it were. Works of Art “stand in themselves” and “are only truly there in their coming back to them.”

 

 

One does not possess the meaning of a work of art in a kind of way that would allow one to speak of a transfer of meaning (referring to Heidegger’s definition of the beautiful as “the sensuous appearing of the idea”).  The meaning of a work of art can never be simply transferred.  A work of art must itself be there….  You cannot substitute something else for it…. When a work of art truly takes hold of us, it is not an object that stands opposite us which we look at in hope of seeing through it to an intended conceptual meaning.  Just the reverse.  The work is an Ereignis—an event that “appropriates us” into itself.  It jolts us, it knocks us over, and sets up a world of its own, into which we are drawn, as it were.

 

--Gadamer p. 71 

 

Like Rilke, Gadamer emphasizes the intersubjective (relational) space from where the counterplay between intended meaning and self-expression converge in relationship.  But, there is at the same time the resistance of the aesthetic object, necessarily because it is an experience of meaning, a meaning which can only be brought out by understanding.  And, according to Rilke, this experience is spawned in childhood.  The “something precious” that is beheld directly affects the child by what it says; through the encounter the child is forced to think again and again what is being said. 

 

“No, you do not feel it growing silent.  The word “things” means nothing to you—too much and thus too ordinary—and passes right by.  And in this sense it is good that I have evoked childhood; perhaps this sense of something precious, something associated with many memories, can help me bring this word home to you.”

 

It is the play of creative imagination that grows in the silence, that sees the extraordinary in the “too ordinary” thing.  Rilke intuitively understands the power of memory and how things evoked are truly there in our coming back to them.  It is as if we had left them in the shadows of our youth and, like a loyal companion, they were awaiting us. 

 

“If possible, I ask you to return with your mature, refined sensibility to one of the things that was most familiar to you as a child.  Try to remember if there was anything in the world that was closer, more familiar, and more necessary than this thing.  Was it not the case that everything else in the world could cause you pain or treat you badly, frightening you with pain and confusing you with uncertainty?  If kindness, trust, and the sense of not being alone could be counted among your earliest experiences, do you not owe it to that thing?  Was it not with a thing the first time you shared your little heart like a piece of bread that would have to suffice for two?”

 

This is a truly remarkable statement for the young Rilke, for almost half a century later the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, in perhaps his most famous concept, stated what Rilke had already conceived:

 

“According to Winnicott, the child initially makes no distinction between inner desires and outer reality, experiencing the mother's breast (or the bottle) as part of its inner reality that magically appears when needed. In Winnicott's account, as the mother becomes less adapted to the infant's needs, the child begins to experience the frustration of failure and the beginnings of a transition to the recognition of the autonomy of outer objects. This is assisted by a transitional object, a bit of blanket, toy, or cloth that is under the infant's control and is reliably present when needed. The transitional object opens the realm of play, where real objects are incorporated into the world of make-believe over which the child has some control, a realm which is not challenged by the question: "Did you conceive of this, or was it presented to you from without?" (Winnicott, p. 12) The realm of play is immensely exciting because it is precarious, an interplay of personal psychic reality and the experience of control of actual objects. It is "an intermediate area of experiencing , to which inner reality and external life both contribute." (Winnicott. p.2) .."a resting place for the individual engaged in the perpetual human task of keeping inner and outer reality separate yet interrelated." a shared illusory experience.”

 

How well Rilke understands the child and the child’s world of things, the “transitional objects” that reach up like flowers through mind’s desire and its need for both safety and stimulation.  What Rilke had not fully known, however, was what also preserved the purity of his animistic vision: that it was language and not the thing “in its Being and its outward appearance” that “made you familiar with thousands of things by playing thousands of roles.”  Rilke’s was a nature mysticism, an immersion within nature where a full sense of self has not yet been developed.   Yet, it was this same magical-animistic mode of consciousness that animated and elevated the very language of the things that preoccupied him as he journeyed through his own development. 

 

“Later you would find a holy joy in the legends of the saints, a blessed humility and a readiness to be all things, and you would recognize it because some small piece of wood had once taken on the same qualities for you.  This small, forgotten object, which was willing to mean almost anything, made you familiar with thousands of things by playing thousands of roles; it was animal and tree, king and child, and when it receded, all these things were there.  This something, worthless as it was, prepared the way for your first relationships with the world; it introduced you to life and to people.  And what’s more: in its Being and its outward appearance, in its final destruction or its mysterious slipping away, you experienced everything human, deep into death itself.”

 

Rilke was so highly developed linguistically he gave life to every percept and image he touched.  Like Rodin, he breathed life into even the most inanimate of objects expanding the full affective range of his experience; and through his, ours.  He also indirectly confirmed the nature of language as a naming process that creates categories and manipulates these categories through the connecting of words; and that language plus the manipulation of categories is called thinking.   But, what role did affect, or feelings play for Rilke? 

 

Rilke’s unusual sensitivity to (and terror of) the environment surround heightened his need to use language in a way a child uses things: to create safety, gain a sense of agency, bind his anxiety, and stimulate an unfathomable desire to grow.  Through words, each level of affective engagement was addressed: impulses, sensations, moods, core emotions, and complex emotions.  And through the engagement of his feeling with things, a transformative awakening occurred, a deeper interior structure from which love and sorrow would emerge and re-emerge, again and again and again. 

 

I could very much be describing your experience as well Noah: “In my body, it feels like a openness in the heart through which subtle and mysterious information enters. It is an exquisite sense of mutuality and awe, of stillness and receptivity. It is another way of speaking and listening, with the relatedness of language, but less abstracted and more direct, less comprehensible but more immediate.”

 

And the difference in the experiencing, in the awareness of what this experience is, as you appropriately articulate, is a developmental one.  And the bridge, of course, is language and the capacity to increase perspective.  Perspective means depth.  In “magical thinking,” there remains, not a separateness “between the energetic / spirited and physical levels of reality,” but rather an undifferentiated space between the symbol and the symbolized.  This is called egocentricity, the inability to separate oneself from the world.  Following this developmental stage, there is that separation you speak of; but, it does not reach a higher level of integration for most people; it remains dual, separate.  It is only in that transpersonal stage of awareness that the “substantial” of embodiment is recognized as another aspect of consciousness.  The existence of mind would be impossible without it.