Experiential evidence for a sentient world

This post is the first of several that will set out the learnings from our co-operative inquiries exploring living in a sentient world. Here, we outline of different qualities of experience and illustrate these from participant narratives. The post is designed to be read as an overview, with the opportunity to follow the links to detailed narratives for a more in depth view.

From a panpsychic view, ‘the aim is not to theorize the world, but to relate to it, to rejoice in that relationship’;[1] the same is true for Gaian, ontopoetic, and ecologies of place perspectives that we have drawn on in these inquiries. If these are to be more than metaphysical abstractions; if they truly have consequences for authentic living at individual and cultural levels, they pose the question: how do we modern humans learn again to experience ourselves as participants in the community of life on Earth – not just know it intellectually, but ‘feel it upon our pulses’, as the poet John Keats put it? 

‘the aim is not to theorise the world, but to relate to it, to rejoice in that relationship’

If we conceive the world as brute object it will only reveal itself as such. But if we take seriously that we live in a community of sentient beings who are in continual mutual communication and influence, this has consequences for everyday life. How can we learn to re-engage with this poetic order? What orientation to the world is appropriate? What kinds of intentional practices can lead us toward communicative engagement? What kinds of new skills may be needed? And what kinds of experiences may such practices lead to?

A co-operative Inquiry approach

In our work together we have adopted a co-operative inquiry approach. Together and separately, we have invited human participants, in collaboration with Rivers worldwide, to join us in a continuing series of such inquiries, in which together we have explored ways of engaging with the world as sentient, reflected together, and written accounts of on our experiences and tentative understandings.  At the time of writing, these inquiries have involved around fifty participant co-inquirers in relation to Rivers across the planet.

Co-operative inquiry has two central characteristics that make it profoundly suitable for inquiry into a sentient world: it treats those involved – both human and more-than-human persons – as subjective, self-directing beings and therefore as equal participants in the inquiry process; and it emphasises the experiential ground of knowing. Co-operative inquiry is an action research, in that it leads to radical alterations in our lived experience. There have been six such inquiry initiatives.

In all these inquiries, we invited the human participants to engage together exploring how to invoke Rivers in their locale as sentient beings. As faculty, we offered readings and videos to explain and support our different perspectives, and some simple starting points for practice. We offered the inquiry groups guidelines for engaging in cycles of action and reflection, with participants visiting local Rivers at least weekly; and practical suggestions for invoking their sentient presence. We asked them to record their experience in written and visual forms, and to meet weekly online to reflect together on their experiences.

Our grounding principle is all this is that it is not possible to recognise a world of sentient beings simply by thinking about it, but by enacting and experiencing it. As Andrea puts it after forming a deep relationship with the River Tah-la-loo in Western Canada as part of two inquiries:

This is essentially experiential. We’ve known for a long time about Indigenous worldviews, but I can read every book, I can have an intellectual, even maybe an emotional connect with what they're speaking about. But I had to be stirred. This is not an intellectual exercise. We have to reconnect in order for us to have any understanding.

Narratives

In all the evidence drawn from co-operative inquiries, we have curated on our co-researchers’ accounts using their own words and images to present narratives of experience of encounter with the other-than-human. All the narratives we present are drawn from repeated encounters, cycles of action and careful reflection with colleagues. Together we have spent many hours with, by, and even in Rivers; and many hours in individual and shared reflection on what we have experienced.

Experiences of Sentience

Our approaches River with the intention of invoking them as sentient presences in the world drew forth a range of responses, both inner and outer.

• For many co-inquirers the initial challenge to get over the internal voices that questioned the whole activity; and to quieten the mind enough to give fuller attention to River. Many found themselves at first distracted and self-absorbed.

• Once inner voices were somewhat quietened it was still easy to drop into a traditional subject/object relationship, to look at the river as still ‘out there’. With persistence, practice, and support from the inquiry community, most people were able to sustain a feeling of sentient presence, and then move into what one group called ‘getting in the zone’, with the world feeling embodied and one’s own animal body as part of it, accompanied often by feelings of pleasure and gratitude, and maybe wonder at the sheer beauty of it all.

Read Mary’s narrative

• Going deeper, there may arise a curious juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extraordinary; and close to that a profound feeling that the world is all extraordinary.

Read Johanna’s narrative

• One may also develop a complex imaginative psychic response, as if the world is somehow ‘speaking’ in words and images.

Read Justina’s narrative

• There maybe what one group called ‘slipping under the psychic skin of the world’ or ‘lifting the veil’ when the illusion of separation slips away, and quite close to the Buddhist notions of direct perception, ‘seeing the nature’

Read Dave’s narrative

• Finally, there may be active ontopoetic responses, moments of grace when the world gestures back.

Read Kathleen’s narrative

Read Peter’s narrative

For clarity, we present these as distinct ‘levels’ of experience, but would emphasize that these experiences overlap and interpenetrate in all the narrative examples we include. An ‘uncanny shift’, or ‘liminal space’ often occurs as experience shifts to a deeper level.

A posts will explore more about the themes that arose from the inquires

A future post will outline practices and protocols developed in the inquiry groups

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[1] Mathews, F. (2003). For Love of Matter: A contemporary panpsychism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, p. 88.