The Energetics of an Encounter and Potentials of Participation
By: Tuck Tyrrell
Tags: Phenomenology, Encounter, Ecology, Goethe, Gaia

In this discourse, I intend to explore the energetics of an encounter with an Oak tree through a phenomenological and experiential Goethean Science methodology. The experience instigated an inquiry into our role in an evolving ecological consciousness. The inquiry aims to inspire deeper participation in our natural world and illuminate Humanity’s meaning in the animate understanding of Gaia and the Cosmos. What is our purpose as a species? Would the Earth be better off without us…? To this, I strongly argue, no. We hold deep purpose in our potential. Here I will attempt to articulate a subtle yet highly substantial meaning to our presence on the planet and in the web of life.

We are weavers, able to perceive and poetically express a sense of self. We, humans, possess an advanced reflective consciousness, which allows us to mirror the intricate and inherent beauty of all beings back unto themselves. This reflective process could possibly hold the key to the evolution of collective consciousness. We may be here to simply inquire into the nature of existence, providing a circle of questions for Gaia to know herself more deeply.

In order to articulate this spiral towards meaning, we must first seed a contextual constellation from which we will relate to and refer from. We will explore Goethean Science, the nature of self, the participatory reality, and openly ask, “Is the world enriched by our engagement?”

A Science of Qualities

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 18th-century poet, and scientist practiced a radical way of perceiving and participating in the natural world. His work as a scientist is often overlooked by the mechanistic worldview, which has prevailed for the last few centuries. Goethe’s approach followed his romantic roots. He developed a participatory relationship with plants through dedicated and open observation, which led to a number of important discoveries and progressions in the field of biology. Goethe’s qualitative approach was in direct contrast to the analytical and linear methods employed by mainstream science.

René Descartes, the provincial father of Modern Science, proposed a separation of mind and matter and distinction of subject and object granting the scientist a God’s eye view of the cosmos. He pushed forward an objective reality that our limited sensory organs are not able to grasp and which may ultimately be measured. This approach wished to wash away any semblance of subjective experience and denied the participatory nature of reality. As well, this methodology insinuated an inherently flawed human perspective.

The Cartesian way sought to understand the world as a system of independent reactionary parts, which functioned solely on a series of mathematical laws. Reductionism is used to cut the context out of observation and fragment the system into mechanical parts. Every interaction, in this view, is causal and deterministic, which justified a feeling of control over Nature and emphasized an inanimate perspective. With this understanding, a predictable clockwork universe was constructed. This methodology gave rise to countless technological marvels though has also allowed the destruction and exploitation of our natural world. As well, the Cartesian Model has ceased to cohere with many of the revolutionary 20th-century unveilings such as Quantum Mechanics, Epigenetics, and Gaia Theory.

Goethe’s poetic approach to science is a qualitative complement to the quantitative Cartesian way. This animistic and holistic approach is essential to our continuing inquiry into the nature of the Earth, the Cosmos, and our dynamic selves. Goethe acknowledged himself as an active participant in the phenomena, seeking to immerse in the life process of coming-into-being. As surmised by Mark Riegner, “The observer… becomes an active, but transparent, vessel so that the phenomenon itself ‘thinks’ in the mind of the observer, and thus a communion takes place that transcends both subject and object.” (Riegner 2013: 1) Through the awareness of his own subjectivity, Goethe endeavored to enter an observation without any previous conceptions that may affect his perceptions. He reasoned to “Seek nothing beyond the phenomena for they themselves are the theory.” (Seamon 1998: 24). In mainstream science, there is no acknowledgment of the observer, let alone the very limiting conceptions the observer may be imposing on the observed. There is also a suffocating trend to form the hypothesis as a statement and then set out to prove it, as opposed to the Goethean way of open inquiry. Goethe believed that “…the mind function[s] as an organ of perception instead of the medium of logical thought.” (Bortoft 1996: 21) With an embodied engagement in the phenomenon, he thought with the plant as opposed to thinking about it. This shift in perspective identifies the observed as a being in its own right and through this respect opens a dialogue. Goethe also spoke of moving into the act of seeing. By experiencing the experience, we step more fully into the phenomenon and release the limiting subject/object paradigm. These techniques allowed Goethe to narrow the gap between his conceptions and perceptions and receive clear knowledge of the happening.

To acknowledge our inherent participation, openly inquire without seeking to impose, and by stepping directly into experience, Goethe dove into the science of qualities. When this feeling and intuitive way is combined with the quantitative Cartesian methodology, a holistic approach to science emerges. Acknowledgment of the psyche, observer, and animate nature of the observed are essential aspects in unfolding the timeless questions of How and Why.

An Encounter with Oak

On a sunny autumn morning, I set out to visit an ancient Oak tree I had spent time with week’s prior. This particular tree is the eldest amongst a row of native Beech, Maples, and Oaks growing on the southern bank of the River Dart. As I approached this grandmother arbor from afar, I began to consciously shift my mental state into an active receptivity. Step by step her crown begins to tower over my head. The age and immensity of this being dawns on me, I estimate 33 meters tall and over 300 years old. This is an elder. I slow down and progress with respect. Once my feet are beneath the branches I remove my shoes and take note of my mental state, “What am I bringing to this encounter?” In order to relax the body and mind, I spend some minutes meditating and shift into the mode of receptivity. Time to slow down into the Oak’s context, the temporal experience of a tree is much more patient than the modern human’s. As well, I begin to explore the Oak’s spatial context. Circle around the trunk three times, first round looking down at the ground where the wide outset of roots appear, then eye-level to the trunk of intersecting patterns outlined in bark, and lastly up into the weaving branches overhead. I gain a sense of sprawling fractal patterns that echo from trunk to branch to bud. Stepping back, I continue to change my context and angle of perspective to gain a greater sense of this being’s body, observing the tree from all sides, up close and from afar. Finally, I sit and feel ready to open a dialogue with the ancient Oak. I inquire, careful to ask an open question that may portray the phenomena, and not simply seek to explain it. Intuitively, a query comes to mind, “How do you sense me, Oaktree?” All at once, I am expanded by a new quality of silence. Acorn kerplunks into the Dart, Raven caws in the distance, Oak leaves scrape in the breeze, Sun’s beams buzz, breath deepens, I receive a response, an active absence, this land is alive and so am I.

My eyes close for a practice of exact sensorial imagination. I recreate the tree and all aspects as best I am able in my mind’s eye. Eyes open to observe Oak again, moving a bit deeper into the details, now noticing the spiral nature of the branches, the reaching quality of the buds. Eyes close, recreate the tree with more accuracy. Eyes open, an oscillation between observing and imagining. Through the process, new qualities emerge; I begin to sense an energetic extension of the tree. I sense vortex lines of organizing energy emanating up the trunk and out the crown wrapping down to the inflection point about a meter above the ground and equally balanced lines reflecting down through the roots wrapping up to the same inflection point above the ground. Two dynamic toroids mirrored at the Oak’s base. This shape spirals in my mind’s eye, complimenting the spacing and proliferation of branches rising up the trunk. The tree’s field overlays and interweaves with mine, creating unique patterns of energy from which new qualities may emerge.

Immersed in this energetic encounter, I lose the ingrained sense of independence to a wondrous feeling of interbeing. For moments I soak in Oak-ness and feel myself as much deeper than mind and much wider than matter. For moments, I am the tree and the tree is me, an energetic exchange in which time and space seem to stretch past the point of recognition towards the enfolded zero-point, the infinite and infinitesimal dimensionless.

Shown below is an illustrated expression to further understand the phenomenon I actively partook in. The first few sketches represent my experience of the Oak’s energy field. The last drawing uses the medium of projective geometry to express the third quality by the emergence of the color green between the yellow and blue patterns that represent the Oak and me respectively. I believe this third quality emerged from the superposition of our unique energetic patterns.

And my feet are on the ground; I blink and wiggle my toes. The moment has passed; I am an independent entity once more, though certainly altered by the experience. My body feels softer, lighter and with a stable ease, a residual feeling of Oak-ness is present in every cell. I look up and see the tree more clearly than before, is she brighter? Or are my eyes lighter? Observing the surroundings, the sun has shifted in the sky, the breeze has gently picked up and the whole landscape seems to be shining. My gaze returns to the glistening leaves and I sense an acknowledgment from Oak. I feel a bond has formed. In the long slow walk back to my books, I ruminate that Oak may have absorbed a bit of my human-ness and that maybe the tree too has been enriched by our shared experience.

The Oak and I met in communion, an emergent encounter that began with respect and genuine inquiry. As we engaged in energetic exchange, a third and previously unknown quality entered, one that lays beyond the limits of written language. I still sense this quality as a feeling of wholeness, of interbeing, of being held while also holding. Some words emerged from our communion that I continue to sit with and unravel.

The sound sings the song.

Quantum physicists speak about an “all-encompassing organic pattern” (Zukav 1979: 73) and David Bohm’s Holomovement points to a participatory reality in which every thing or “relatively independent sub-totality” (Talbot 1991: 49) is projected from the same dimensionless source. Thus the universe is holding itself up by its bootstraps. Every being, wisp of wind and mote of dust is interwoven in the interdependent fabric of the universe. The poet, William Blake, best writes this quality of being,

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. (Blake 1863)

Sense of Self

The pioneering psychoanalyst Carl Jung states, “The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as ego is the centre of consciousness.” (Jung 1963: 389)

For the purposes of coherence, we will denote the uppercase Self as Jung’s “whole circumference” to include our ecosphere, Gaia, while denoting the lowercase self as the ego-self.

(Freeman 2014)

All life holds a sense of Self through a series of cognitive feedback loops, which sense and respond to the local environment. As Fritjof Capra affirms, life is a cognitive process (Capra Course 2016). A single-celled amoeba shows aliveness through an awareness of surroundings: a sense of food and the creature moves towards, a sense of danger and the creature moves away. More complex creatures, such as the deer, possess a deeper awareness through their multifaceted cognition. Deer have sharp eyes, tuned ears, and a powerful nose, which when combined with tactile sense, gives rise to a spatial understanding of existence. With this, the deer holds a deep awareness of the environment and sense of Self. The deer moves towards food and away from predators, though also decides where to rest, takes care of young, and knows when it is time to hunker down for an impending storm. In both creatures, there is a sense of the wider Self, scaled from a drop of dew to a vast forest.

Awareness of Self via cognition is at the heart of the life process. The complexity in cognition relates to a wider sense of Self, which correlates with a depth of consciousness. Thus the sensing of Self is an expression of consciousness.

Let us now turn our attention inwards towards the human being. The human cognitive process is so highly complex that we sense elements of the Self through evolved sensory organs while simultaneously sensing our internal environment (the ego-self) through the thinking process. As well, we are even able to sense the process of sensing. Capra states, “Not only do we know, we know that we know.” Ibid.

This sense of self, the knowledge that there is a who, combined with a sense of the sensing, enables a unique ability to shift the how. Once we know that we are making decisions, we may shift how we make them. In this great freedom of choice comes an equally great opportunity for responsibility. We are freed from instinct, we do not always know what to do, and this may be an inherent part of the human condition. We are born helpless, knowing nothing, and thus are required to learn and develop throughout our lives. This continuous inquiry gives rise to an immense quest of the Unfinished.

We are beings of meaning and have been asking questions since time immemorial. Kurt Vonnegut dances these words this in his classic Cat’s Cradle,

Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?” Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand. (Vonnegut 1963: 106)

Participatory Reality

Imagine a wild rose, a beautiful perennial with bright petals, a long stem, and incisive leaves. This unique plant being has been shaped by a continuous turning of seasons. An early spring may have invited a long stalk here and a family of deer one year may have stumped the shrub short of blooming there. The rose’s present form has been informed by the passage of time.

Now, from where did this wild rose emerge? It formed from the seed, which formed from a previous iteration of the wild rose, which too formed from an ancestral seed. By looking upstream, we may surmise that enfolded within this flower is every flower that ever came before. We may also gather that all ancestral environments inform the present wild rose. Now let’s peer in the other direction and acknowledge that enfolded within this wild rose is the seeded potential for every future rose that may ever come-into-being. Thus, enfolded within this single flower is the transcendence of time; expressed through an interdependent relationship with all ancestors and potential descendants.

Spatially, where does this rose end? Surely with the roots, though those are connected to an ever-reaching mychorrizal network that takes in nutrients from the soil and forms into flower. Or it must end with the leaves, though those too absorb photon particle-waves from the sun and alchemize into usable energy that forms into plant matter. Wherever we look, we see that the energetic extension of the wild rose grows far beyond our initial conception. Pollen from the bee, carbon dioxide from our lungs, liquid water from the atmosphere, the flower lives through all of these essential relations. The wind, soil, sun, stars, and all living beings interdependently inform into flower. The entire cosmos and beyond, everything and no-thing are enfolded within the wild rose. Within the living breathing process of the plant is an implicate order of unfathomable depth, a wholeness being expressed through the superposition of form, patterns, and awareness that we name Wild Rose.

When we see the Wild Rose in all her infinite manifestation through our very human lens, we tend to explicate and unfold, to pluck a petal and observe only a single expressive fragmentation of the implicate whole. However, we can use our extended human capacities to look very deeply, unraveling the mystery and history of the ecological and emotional dimensions. Using microscopes we have the ability to notice the presence of mitochondria, which our rational mind rides all the way back to the primordial endosymbiotic merging some ~1,500 million years ago! As well we perceive the color of the petal and are able to understand how the reflection of sun’s light attracts pollinators to share nectar and spread pollen with immense eco-communities. We may inhale the lustrous smell of the petal’s perfume and be swept away in memories and emotions the flower has now invited inside our psyche. This continues, we have the ability look deeper and feel further. If we use the petal as an access point, then within this unfolded part is also the enfolded whole.

So, why pluck?

When communing with the flower, an opportunity opens for new qualities to emerge. Through our explicating mind and expressive abilities, we are able to feedback this newfound knowledge to the flower so she may know herself more fully by our participation. Through this process, the Self may find a deeper sense of realization and a mutual self-actualization occurs. Carl Jung was tuned into this essential aspect of humanity,

“The self in its divinity (i.e. the archetype) is unconscious of itself. It can become conscious only within our consciousness. And it can do that only if the ego stands firm.”

(Jung 1973: 335–6)

We are a way for consciousness to know itself.

Inquiry

Is the world enriched by our engagement?

With our uniquely human gifts of inquiry, perception and expression, we are able to study the nature of existence and then feed our gained knowledge back to the whole. Each time we go around this hermeneutic circle of impression and expression, we spiral closer to the meaning beyond words. We act as opening agents, Self induced operators of continual recreation.

As well we are an expression of Nature. When we are enlightened by our engagement with the natural world, then surely, so is She.

Please! Participate fully in the unfolding and evolving world around you! Feel the beauty, connection, and wholeness gained from our unique contribution. Find meaning, purpose, and Self-actualization in natural presence. May all beings be free, including me. Om Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu.

Yes.