Sentience: Theory and Application of Connection and Communication with the More-Than-Human World
This paper looks at the elements that can weave together in the field of perception and interaction to create a reciprocal connection between humans and their surroundings. Shifting human consciousness to a way of perceiving that is similar to what David Abram’s calls intersubjectivity or Martin Buber’s concept of the I-Thou relationship aids in this process of creating this relationship. Often we experience the world objectively- as something that is separate and distant from us; something that we cannot relate or have empathy with. Connecting to the subjective nature of self and what is beyond the self, allowing for object and subject to mutually perceive each other, creates a stronger possibility for connection. Cultivating an awareness of our senses, simultaneous perception and synaethesia, as well as combining them with imagination, image, and altering of consensus space and time enhances human’s abilities to intersubjectivly participate with the more-than-human and gain a deeper sense of place and connection. This method of perceiving produces a world where our surroundings and the non-human world can share with us its living sentience and animism. This can result in creating a world that facilitates greater symbiosis between humans and the planet.
Objective and Subjective
The ability to perceive something purely objectively, without affecting it, or it affecting you, has been the bases of scientific ideology from its beginning during the era of the enlightenment. Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason solidified the idea that science could possess ultimate truth through objective perception. Descartes’’ rationalism contributed to the objective views of the world, denying our senses and the body’s perception all together. “To define another being as an inert or passive object is to deny its ability to actively engage us and to provoke our senses; we thus block our perceptual reciprocity with that being. By linguistically defining the surrounding world as a determinate set of objects, we cut our conscious, speaking selves off from the spontaneous life of our sensing bodies” (Abrams 1996, p, 56).
Today, post-modern thought has brought this ability to be purely objective into question. Now even in scientific experiments they are discovering that the scientific observers cannot help but affect and change what they are observing: just by observing they create a change. All “realities are subjective-objective, any view that reality is independently objective has a suppressed and unacknowledged subjective component which is prior, and which is inevitably misrepresented by the purely objective account. So in perceiving a world, if the subjective process of visual imaging is displaced and projected out as an objective image, then the subject is misrepresented as a disassociated Cartesian ego peering out at an independent world, instead of being known as a presence in a mutual participative engagement with other presences in a shared world” (Heron 2006,p. 67).
Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity is something in phenomenology that is in between objective and subjective experience. It allows for a kind of empathy, where the perceiver experiences the subject as something that can also perceive back. It allows and acknowledges a connection between objects; that there is relationship that we co-create together- perceiver and perceived and vice versa. David Abrams describes it as “phenomena experienced by a multiplicity of sensing objects.” (Abrams 1996, p. 38).
When we open to this intersubjectivity, we let the veil become more transparent, the light in from other’s eyes, and allow the intimacy and love that exists between perceiver and perceived. To participate in intersubjective interactions we risk loosing our hierarchical distance in order to surrender and subject ourselves to the vibrant rich life on this planet touching us deeply. “The alive quality of nature is something frequently revealed in transpersonal states, when the objective becomes subjective and one is afforded sacred entrance into the interiority of nature. The profound insight into the living spirit of nature, inclusive of the sandiest forms of matter on earth, the lapis or stone, has been known to alchemists and to indigenous peoples around the globe (Jaenke 2004, p. 13). “I find myself forced to acknowledge that any visible, tangible form that meets my gaze may also be an experiencing subject, sensitive and responsive to the beings around it, and to me” (Abrams 1996, p. 67).
The I-Thou Relationship
This intersubjective experience can also be described within Martin Buber’s concept of the I-Thou experience. The I-Thou experience of engaging the world is a non-conceptual direct exchange between two beings. He contrasts this with the I-It relationships where the exchange is objective, and the other is not really met, but engaged through an idea, concept or fantasy. He believed that the nature of existence was relational and that modernity’s objective, rational materialism which emphasized the I-It encounter, devalued existents and the nature of existence itself. The I-Thou is described a concrete authentic meeting between two beings; it is dialogical, whereas the I-It is a monologue. In the I-Thou, infinity and universality are made actual.
The Thou meets me. But I step into direct relation with it. Hence the relation means being chosen and choosing, suffering and action in one…
… All real living is meeting.
The relation to the Thou is direct. No system of ideas, no foreknowledge, and no fancy intervene between I and Thou. The memory itself is transformed, as it plunges out of its isolation into the unity of the whole. No aim, no lust, and no anticipation intervene between I and Thou. Desire itself is transformed as it plunges out of its dream into the appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only when every means has collapsed does the meeting come about. (Buber 1956, p. 45).
Intersubjectivity and the I-Thou way of encountering the world are both relational methods of engagement. They are ways to fully participate in the world instead of objectively observe it. Merleau-Ponty, a mid twentieth century French phenomenological philosopher believes that, “we may ultimately describe perception as a mutual interaction, an intercourse, “a coition, so to speak, of my body with things” (Abrams 1996, p. 55). He continues with the idea that perception is “inherently participatory, we mean that perception always involves, at its most intimate level, the experience of an active interplay, or coupling, between the perceiving body and that which it perceives” (Abrams 1996, p 57). We are constantly in interaction with the phenomena around us and within us. “We participate in the phenomena- the question is how conscious we are of it” (Kremer 1994, p. 22). Humans can consciously become aware and cultivate this more full participation with our surroundings.
Our Senses
To participate in the world through intersubjectivity, we must use the tools we possess to connect. Our body’s senses are tied into every experience or association we experience; it is how we make sense of the world. These senses are the way we intersubjectively linked ourselves to the more-than-human world. They are the key to fully entering an embedded world that we can participate within, instead of be isolated from. The senses link matter and spirit. “Any dichotomy of bodily activities on the one hand and intellectual and spiritual ones on the other is fallacious in the process of conveying meaning. We are totally sexual, for all that we do is done as woman, or man. We do not have bodies; we are bodies in a most real sense” (Donnelly 1982, p, 127). ”If this body is my very presence in the world, if it is the body that alone enables me to enter into relations with other presences, if without these eyes, this voice, or these hands I would be unable to see, to taste, and to touch things, or to be touched by them- if without this body, in other words, there would be no possibility of experience- then the body itself is the true subject of experience” (Abrams 1996, p. 45).
Our proprioception is a form of perceiving and sensing that involves how we sense our body in space. This is another aspect of the senses, beyond seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and the kinesthetic, that helps us connect to our surroundings. Cultivating our senses, increasing our “listening” skill so to speak, increases our ability to sense subtle energies that are normally beyond our normal range of perception and find our sense of place in the environment.
Our senses are also a part of sensing the extra-sensory experiences that are outside of our normally accepted reality. The more we are open to I-Thou relationship, the more extra-sensory perception becomes average-sensory experience. Thoughts, images, feelings, and psychic experiences all seam to be communicated through some sort of sensory reference of past, present, or future. Even the limits of our senses, reveal the potential infinity of reality(s). “Every perceptual; circumference or boundary, every finite limit to the seeing and hearing of our sensory field, declares its latent infinity. Each limit declares there is more beyond it. It announces a series of limits that are unlimited” (Heron 2006, p. 111).
Conscious awareness of our senses and our bodies in space, also produces a state where the mental thoughts are quieted. The mind often needs something to focus on, from our cultural patterning- we use often use our minds to think disembodied thoughts that disconnect us from the present and our surroundings. Focusing the mind on our senses that are experiencing in the moment, gives the mind an action that is in the present and of the body.
Simultaneous Perception
We naturally have an ability to be aware of multiple senses at once. We can be thinking of one thing, while simultaneously our body is participating in an awareness of sounds, sights, feelings, smells, and impulses. This multi-sensory experience is called Simultaneous Perception. Tony Hiss in his book, “The Experience of Place,” describes this type of awareness and speaks about how it allows us to experience a rich sense of place. It is a state where we are paying equal attention to everything at once in our surroundings, omitting nothing, while at the same time emphasizing nothing. He identifies simultaneous perception as an extra or sixth sense. This type of awareness is innate to us, but is often de-emphasized as we mature into adulthood. We are trained to be single focused, and rely heavily on our inner thoughts, often tuning out our surrounding environment completely. However, our bodies are always simultaneously listening to our environment, sensing to orient ourselves and for things that could threaten our survival. “Through one system of perception we see ourselves as observers of an environment composed of separate objects, but at the same time, though another system of perception, equally active, we look for ways in which we are connected to or are part of our surroundings” (Hiss 1990, p. 22).
This simultaneous perception can be cultivated through practices, such as mind-body awareness techniques such as T’ai-Chi and sitting meditation. Places themselves can support us and call out our multi-sensory tendencies. For example, natural environments of beauty, with special lighting, birdcalls, and air temperature can call us to pause and listen again to where we are. Manmade spaces can also be designed to support our body’s remembering to simultaneously perceive. Many Catholic churches with expansive vaulted ceilings, frankincense incense, and filtered glowing light, have been designed to instill awe and beauty, and they secondarily produce a desire to pause when we enter and experience the place with all our senses. Cultivating our simultaneous perception increases our awareness of our surroundings and strengthens our bond with the non-human world.
Synaesthesia
Taking simultaneous perception one step further, we can allow and cultivate a type of perception called, synaesthesia to increase our experience of intersubjectivity. Synaesthesia, instead of just experiencing multiple sensory inputs all at once, also blends and crosses the senses- such as “seeing color” or “hearing touch.” “Although contemporary neuroscientists study “synaesthesia” – the overlap and blending of the senses- as though it were a rare or pathological experience to which only certain persons are prone (those who report “seeing sounds,” “hearing colors,” and the like), our primordial, preconception experience, as Merleau-Ponty makes evident, is inherently synaesthetic” (Abrams 1996, p. 60). “Synaesthetic perception is the rule, and we are unaware of it only because scientific knowledge shifts the center of gravity of experience, so that we have unlearned how to see, hear, and generally speaking, feel, in order to deduce, from our bodily organization and the world as the physicist conceives it, what we are to see, hear, and feel” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 229). Allowing our senses to blend, gives us a deeper understanding and connection to what we perceive. It is as though instead of translating a profound poem in just one language, we choose to learn multiple languages to hear the poem translated from a range of cultural perspectives that language reveals. Through weaving the senses and letting them create a unique language of sorts, the perceiver can translate other modes of communication from the more-than-human world into viable communication and connection.
Imagination
Our imagination can also blend with our senses to increase our ability to communicate and interact with the more-than-human world. For the imagination is not fantasy, or illusion, but rather a channel in which we can open to that which is beyond our conditioned perceptions. It is a tool that allows humans to perceive deeper into the living nature of things in all their unique flourishes. The “imagination is not a separate mental faculty (as we so often assume) but is rather the way the senses themselves have of throwing themselves beyond what is immediately given, in order to make tentative contact with the other sides of things that we do not sense directly, with the hidden or invisible aspects of the sensible” (Abrams 1996, p. 58). For example, as I step out into my garden, I feel the moist cool mulch under my bare feet- they slightly sink with the help of gravity- my imagination tells me I’m sinking down into the earth, my whole body then feels enveloped in rich soil. I feel the soil pressing into me- meeting me- the dark texture, like blanket or cave, available for interaction, inviting me to stay awhile. Imagination fuels and enriches the language from the more-than-human world in a way that we gain a deeper sense of knowing and connection.
Image
Imagination leads us to image. The non-human world rarely communicates and perceives as humans do. The “other” often communicates through image. Image and symbol are more universal communication tools than spoken and written language (especially the English language). ”The embeddedness of the human consciousness in nature is experienced and lived in a direct and supposedly unconscious way with very permeable boundaries between self and phenomena, and little defectiveness… Thinking occurs in images rather than concepts” (Kremer 1994, p. 16). The soil provided me with an image of a cave, not a single visual image but a multi-sensory image- I saw, felt and smelt the cave entire. It was not a literal cave, but a way that my senses with the aid of my imagination could produce an image that deepened my experience and knowing of a place, element, or being. This way of experiencing image is a physical experience of something, that moves beyond what is literally in front of us. Simultaneous perception and synaesthesia combined with imagination and letting communication come through images, enables human to more fully connect and communicate with the more-than-human world.
Altering Consensus Time and Space
To fully participate in our sensuous world through our senses, when must allow them to be bent beyond the normal perception of space and time. Western society since Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E) and Euclid (c. 300 B.C.E) have primarily sensed time and space as linear and absolute. Time was understood through the idea that two parallel lines, if they were, straight, no matter how far they extended in either direction would never cross (Abrams 1996, p. 198). However, many Indigenous societies view time as circular as mutable and as a place where past, present, and future, are all one, they are all in the present. And now we know the earth is circular- and those parallel lines possibly could cross each other. Using our imagination to bend consensus time and space, letting the lines cross in other words, can aid us in fully letting our senses flourish and dive into what is beyond the consensus reality of our culture.
The traditional magician cultivates an ability to shift out of his or her common state of consciousness precisely in order to make contact with the other organic forms of sensitivity and awareness with which human existence is intertwined. Only by temporarily shedding the accepted perceptual logic of his culture can the sorcerer hope to enter into relation with other species on their own terms; only by altering the common organization of his senses will he be able to enter into a rapport with the multiple nonhuman sensibilities that animate the local landscape. It is this, we might say, that defines the shaman: the ability to readily slip out of the perceptual boundaries that demarcate his of her particular culture- boundaries that demarcate his or particular culture- boundaries reinforced by social customs, taboos, and most importantly, the common speech or language- in order to make contact with, and learn from, the other powers in the land. His magic is precisely this heightened receptivity to the meaningful solicitations- songs, cries, gestures- of the larger, more-than-human field” (Abrams, 1996, p. 9).
Our culture in particular, holds a dominant view that the world is not alive and does not have the ability to communicate with us. The altered-state experienced through the senses, enable us to interact with the more-than-human world in new ways that makes space for a non-human style of communication and perception that previous the state of consciousness was not able to comprehend. Our imagination lets space and time become more mutable; what is beyond our normal reality can come into our awareness, increasing our ability to understand the language of the non-human world.
Sentience and Animism
Our senses and imagination are a way back into the living spirit in matter. We humans are of matter, and yet most of us hold a sense of energy or spirit that is within and beyond our bodies. To connect to what is outside of us that is made of matter, it is beneficial to feel the energy and livingness of that matter as well. This way of perceiving is ancient and new, and it can connect us to the vibrant life that is all around us all the time, man-made or wild. Many indigenous cultures perceive themselves as a part of their environment. They are not individuals, as we currently define our boundaries of self; their boundaries are more mutable and also include that which exists outside the body, often including non-humans and the greater earth. This inclusion also perceives that which is non-human as alive, and containing a form of consciousness. This is referred to anthropologically as animism. Animism is a belief and way of perceiving the world where natural objects, phenomena, and the universe itself possesses soul and consciousness.
When we engage the world in this connected animistic way, it and us often feel more full and alive. In this context, by alive I mean possessing a quality of sentience. I am defining sentience as a state of awareness, an elemental consciousness, and/or an ability to perceive or sense. In my experience and from talking with others, the more-than-human world- animals, plants, objects- all have a unique sentience. They have their own unique type of awareness and perception. It does not act like human sentience, but is individual to each being or element.
Humans have the ability to interact with this sentience in beings around them through accessing their own pure sentience through the world of their senses and their ability to be open to connection, relationship, and communication. The more-than-human world is aware and available to be related with in deep meaningful ways that support all life in this cosmos. The world is made up of “multiple intelligences, the intuition that every form one perceives- from the swallow swooping overhead to the fly on the blade of grass, and indeed the blade of grass itself- is an experiencing form, an entity with its own predilections and sensations, albeit sensations that are very different from our own” (Abrams 1996, p. 10). “Only by affirming the animateness of perceived things do we allow our words to emerge directly from the depths of our ongoing reciprocity with the world” (Abram 1996, p. 56).
Conclusion
Through being in the present and utilizing our senses, as they weave with our imagination, image and allow space and time to be altered, humans can find a new intimacy and participation with the sentient world. This intersubjectivity and participation leads to a world and self that is permeable and open to a full experience of being. We can then experience a world that we are embedded within and are a part of. We can experience the “deeply interior of this world, an immanent, ecstatic source, a wellspring, that we can contact in the living ground of our embodied experience.” (Kremer 1994, p. 17).
It is strange to think that we could be separate from the world, where we ourselves being made of matter from the world. Our bodies, while we are alive, are here, and we can try to numb our senses, but we still exist in bodily form. It takes so much effort to deny our senses, to label them as illusion and false. How disheartening to live a life, where everything we perceive is told to us to be an illusion, dead, as something to transcend or escape, or be release from. It is logical then that there is so much depression, suicide, war, and oppression in society today. This is what can occur when we deny our own right to be in are own bodies and fully experiencing the sentient world.
Bibliography
Abrams, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books.
Donnelly, D.H. (1982). The Sexual Mystic: Embodied Sexuality. In M.E. Giles (Ed.). The Feminist Mystic and Other Essays on Women and Spirituality (pp. 120-141). New York: Crossroad.
Heron, J. (2006). The Authoritarian Blight. Spiritual Projection and Authority. Personhood and Spiritual Inquiry. In Participation Spirituality: A Farewell to Authoritarian Religion (pp. 59-73; 104-25). Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press.
Hiss, T. (1990). The Experience of Place. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Jaenke, K. (2004), The Participatory Turn. Review of Jorge Ferrer, Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality. Revision 26(4), 8-14.
Kremer, J. (1994). The Dark Night of the Scholar. In Looking for Dame Yggdrasil (pp. 9-36). Red Bluff, CA: Falkenflug Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Objective and Subjective
Intersubjectivity
The I-Thou Relationship
Our Senses
Simultaneous Perception
Synaesthesia
Imagination
Image
Altering Consensus Time and Space
Sentience and Animism