This story seems to me to recount an experience of enchantment of the kind Patrick Curry describes, and maybe can also be seen as an ontopoetic response of the world responding to my call.
Am just reflecting on how the woman’s angry claiming of ownership upsets the delicate balances of things. How assertion of ownership itself violates the “we-ness” of the land community (to use Aldo Leopoldo’s term. Maybe the woman feels unsafe. Maybe she’s been hassled by shady characters near the river. Who knows. But the crossness and the desire to exclude run counter to the way the land community itself operates. I’m not surprised the river went silent. The other beings know what supports and what impedes their life-flows. And I’m glad you got to share some magic moments with Otter.
Hi Priscilla, thank you for your interesting comments on my Otter post. I don’t think it is 'shady' characters that the woman is worried about. Her farm is very close to a major writing Centre in the middle of rural of Wales. So she will have a continual influx of people she will see us outsiders, 'townies, even English people!. I’m sure she feels invaded by lifestyles she doesn’t understand and imagines them tramping all over her land and is in consequence protective. It is for this reason that I refrain from including information that would identify the place I have one or two very beautiful pictures of River there but I chose not to include them.
I am touched that you understand me when I write that the river went silent. I do seem to be understanding and experience of a world which is way beyond taken for granted Western world view. I remain flabbergasted that these experiences are made available to a highly educated western middle class male as I have written in my About living into the catastrophe. of course, sometimes the sentient world feels unavailable to us. There is no response. I know a danger of almost demanding ki recognises our presence. This week in a piece that I haven’t yet posted but I’ve shared with my Co-operative inquiry group, River was so quiet and still and peaceful at about 5 o’clock in the morning. I experienced deep gratitude and it felt all I needed to say was 'thank you'. I felt it would be rude to ask for more!
I’m also interested in the Process of enquiry that we have going around these issues. I find myself located in the intimacy of inquiring friendships; the small friendship groups that have been going maybe five years; the more formal groups like Living Waters that we run through Schumacher College, which produces a larger network of people who share a viewpoint and have worked together; and then the more defuse global inquiry community including yourself and and many other people in many different communities across the world. It feels that these diverse communities all contribute to this inquiry into a living world in their different ways
Unfortunately, the extreme right wing Probably feels it has a similar diffuse community of support!
Thank you so much for sharing this upsetting event, Peter. Isn't this what we experience, in one way or another, all our lives, in search of being in alignment with nature, if indeed we are searching?
The other day I listened to a talk recorded by Rupert Sheldrake in a church (he is a Christian). The terms, animism, pantheism, panpsychism, and others shimmer at the edge of realities I can't quite hold in my mind. Your story of as it were singing a reality into existence seems to have evoked perhaps two coincidences in your participation. Wonderfully the otter, who must resolve the issue promptly, and, differently, another autonomy within the synchronicity, the human instantly responding with an abstract version of ownership. Both reactions might be regarded as defensive? Even the river has a history. The dull thump of contemporary argument and the enchantment is gone?
Thanks, Philip. I appreciate your interest. Freya Mathews would argue that a careful philosophical account of living cosmos panpsychism is essential to counter that dull thump of contemporary argument, which is based in a view of the world as primarily brute matter with a little mainly human intelligence around the edges. If we start as Freya and other Panpsychists do and understand the cosmos from the beginning as a coherent field of matter and mind (neither term is satisfactory)then we are arguing in a very different field. Yes, the authors response may be coincidence. And as we have pursued these explorations that argument from coincidence both evidently and experientially becomes less compelling. There are explorations of the questions both here on Substack and in papers on my website eg one referenced in this post)
'Synchronicities' or whatever happen in my experience, perhaps in some places and circumstances more than others. I picked up this morning from earlier Freya M (2009) a reference to Mary Graham and narrative being essential in 'dreaming'. I guess this brings 'history' into the reality? It likewise seems to me that active invocation probably invites coincidence, often as not combining attention to 'contraries' as Blake regarded them. 'The world' can increasingly urgently demand our attention?
Big subject I agree... thanks for your invite to exploration.
PS Perhaps it was 'dull thud' in EM Forster's 'Passage to India'?
Am just reflecting on how the woman’s angry claiming of ownership upsets the delicate balances of things. How assertion of ownership itself violates the “we-ness” of the land community (to use Aldo Leopoldo’s term. Maybe the woman feels unsafe. Maybe she’s been hassled by shady characters near the river. Who knows. But the crossness and the desire to exclude run counter to the way the land community itself operates. I’m not surprised the river went silent. The other beings know what supports and what impedes their life-flows. And I’m glad you got to share some magic moments with Otter.
Hi Priscilla, thank you for your interesting comments on my Otter post. I don’t think it is 'shady' characters that the woman is worried about. Her farm is very close to a major writing Centre in the middle of rural of Wales. So she will have a continual influx of people she will see us outsiders, 'townies, even English people!. I’m sure she feels invaded by lifestyles she doesn’t understand and imagines them tramping all over her land and is in consequence protective. It is for this reason that I refrain from including information that would identify the place I have one or two very beautiful pictures of River there but I chose not to include them.
I am touched that you understand me when I write that the river went silent. I do seem to be understanding and experience of a world which is way beyond taken for granted Western world view. I remain flabbergasted that these experiences are made available to a highly educated western middle class male as I have written in my About living into the catastrophe. of course, sometimes the sentient world feels unavailable to us. There is no response. I know a danger of almost demanding ki recognises our presence. This week in a piece that I haven’t yet posted but I’ve shared with my Co-operative inquiry group, River was so quiet and still and peaceful at about 5 o’clock in the morning. I experienced deep gratitude and it felt all I needed to say was 'thank you'. I felt it would be rude to ask for more!
I’m also interested in the Process of enquiry that we have going around these issues. I find myself located in the intimacy of inquiring friendships; the small friendship groups that have been going maybe five years; the more formal groups like Living Waters that we run through Schumacher College, which produces a larger network of people who share a viewpoint and have worked together; and then the more defuse global inquiry community including yourself and and many other people in many different communities across the world. It feels that these diverse communities all contribute to this inquiry into a living world in their different ways
Unfortunately, the extreme right wing Probably feels it has a similar diffuse community of support!
It’s very good to be in touch with you.
Thank you so much for sharing this upsetting event, Peter. Isn't this what we experience, in one way or another, all our lives, in search of being in alignment with nature, if indeed we are searching?
Well, it wasn’t only upsetting! The meeting with Otter was Special. And I have enjoyed writing about it. Than you for the comment
Peter, thanks.
The other day I listened to a talk recorded by Rupert Sheldrake in a church (he is a Christian). The terms, animism, pantheism, panpsychism, and others shimmer at the edge of realities I can't quite hold in my mind. Your story of as it were singing a reality into existence seems to have evoked perhaps two coincidences in your participation. Wonderfully the otter, who must resolve the issue promptly, and, differently, another autonomy within the synchronicity, the human instantly responding with an abstract version of ownership. Both reactions might be regarded as defensive? Even the river has a history. The dull thump of contemporary argument and the enchantment is gone?
Thanks, Philip. I appreciate your interest. Freya Mathews would argue that a careful philosophical account of living cosmos panpsychism is essential to counter that dull thump of contemporary argument, which is based in a view of the world as primarily brute matter with a little mainly human intelligence around the edges. If we start as Freya and other Panpsychists do and understand the cosmos from the beginning as a coherent field of matter and mind (neither term is satisfactory)then we are arguing in a very different field. Yes, the authors response may be coincidence. And as we have pursued these explorations that argument from coincidence both evidently and experientially becomes less compelling. There are explorations of the questions both here on Substack and in papers on my website eg one referenced in this post)
Oh, and I think you can be Christian and panpsychic!
'Synchronicities' or whatever happen in my experience, perhaps in some places and circumstances more than others. I picked up this morning from earlier Freya M (2009) a reference to Mary Graham and narrative being essential in 'dreaming'. I guess this brings 'history' into the reality? It likewise seems to me that active invocation probably invites coincidence, often as not combining attention to 'contraries' as Blake regarded them. 'The world' can increasingly urgently demand our attention?
Big subject I agree... thanks for your invite to exploration.
PS Perhaps it was 'dull thud' in EM Forster's 'Passage to India'?