Tag: Fly

Basarab Nicolescu is a physicist and proponent of transdisciplinarity.  In the book of the same name (which he edited), he speaks of multiple “levels of Reality”, which are accompanied by multiple “levels of perception”. These two complementary duals form, on the one hand, what he calls the “transdisciplinary object” and on the other the “transdisciplinary subject”.  These are united by a flow of “nonresistance to experience” he calls the sacred, which moves through all the levels.  See the picture from his book below:

Although this view is a bit schematic, one of the things that Nicloescu includes which is often very lost in modern discussions about these sorts of things is the necessity for a corresponding “level of perception” when encountering various levels of reality.

Specifically, this is something verifiable in my own experience: that it actually takes not just some kind of intellectual shift to see things from a new perspective, but rather the rhythmic development of new organs of perception in order to perceive new realities.  I’m speaking of ‘organs of perception’ because they are strictly analogous to real organs like our eyes and ears, but without physicality — they are, if you will, organs made ‘on the fly’ in the soul, which are capable of resolving details in a situation that otherwise would be lost.  Their constituency relies entirely upon the way in which they are themselves created — they form in the image of what they can thus perceive.  For example, a Waldorf teacher I know has developed in her contemplative work with children a soul-organ which can perceive movements of ‘warmth’ in ways that offer specific and practical information and actions regarding individuals — this is something experienced as eminently real and subtle, which would be lost on anyone who hadn’t done the same rhythmic work to create the relevant capacity for experience to hold that kind of perception.

It seems we often expect that such perceptions should be contingent upon a primarily intellectual shift in understanding — and an understanding of outer phenomena in particular — as if it were only a question of having the right ideas about things that would allow us to perceive newly.  I think this is an error;  that kind of change is only preparation and accompaniment, but cannot fully constitute the necessary basis for actual perception of new realms.