Between Ikon and Eidos: Image and Hermeneutics in Meditation (Part 8 - Talking with Trees)

In the last talk we were discussing ideas of the body and of the earth, and looking at some examples of sensing with soul the body and the earth, and the possibility of approaching them with the idea, with the sense, of body and earth as sacred texts, and in that way, open to a possibly infinite interpretation and hermeneutics there. We looked at, we discussed a few examples, a few possibilities of the way ideas of the body can come into sensing with soul, and expand, open, deepen the perception and the sense, as well as the idea, concepts, of body and earth. We could have given many, many examples. We just chose a few -- for example, what is it to sense, to perceive, to feel and to conceive of the body in the present moment (not abstractly; with a felt sense, with a heart-sense, with a soul-sense), the body as somehow rooted in divinity? This body, a unique expression, a unique gift from the divine. Perhaps a theophany, the body itself as theophany.

And so, with that iconic perception, or perception of icon, body as icon, my body, your body, this body, then there is, in the nature of the iconic perception, in the nature of the sensing with soul, that sense of perfection. But 'perfect' doesn't mean, there, 'perfectly healthy.' It doesn't mean 'perfect-looking,' whatever that might mean anyway. An icon that is chipped, or old and somewhat worn, or perhaps not exactly geometrically balanced, can still have all the power and depth, and beauty and perfection, as an icon, can have the same perfection as a less worn, an unchipped, a more perfectly geometrically balanced image. Same with the body as icon, same with the body when it's sensed with soul. And 'perfect,' the perfection of the body when it's sensed with soul in this way and we have a sense of this body as somehow being rooted in divinity, the perfection there, neither is it because it's a perfect feat of biological engineering, marvellous as that is. It's a perfection of a different order, a different sensibility. Can one feel and sense oneself and one's body, do you feel and sense yourself and your body ever as holiness, as a holiness, as in holiness, or as holy gift? The holiness there, again, doesn't necessarily at all go with a kind of more ethereal range of the bodily perception or image or energy body feel. The holiness is not only in that upper range, less substantial.

We talked about body, we talked about earth and world, and this possibility, when there's the sensing with soul, when there's the openness and the fertility of the intellect, of the concepts and ideas that are operating, there can be a sense and an idea of a kind of plurality of worlds that are somehow harmonized with each other -- a spectrum, as it were, of worlds; worlds at different levels. We mentioned that yesterday, and we talked about it, I think, on the Re-enchanting the Cosmos retreat, and several other places. It's quite a common idea in different traditions. So there is this plurality of worlds, and/or, we could say, the world I see, the world I sense, is dependent on the way of looking. And part of the way of looking, an element of the way of looking, is the concept. So body, earth, world, and of course, wrapped up in that, the ideas and the senses of matter and things.

I meant to include a brief anecdote which I forgot. I'll just throw it in now, regarding matter and things, and this perception, or this sense and idea, of a kind of plurality of worlds that are harmonized with each other. This is an account by Henry Corbin of attending a meeting in 1954 in Switzerland, I think it was. There were many people there. I think probably Jung was there, etc., and also D. T. Suzuki, who I mentioned the other day, and his description of the dharmadhātu in the Gandavyūha Sūtra. Corbin and a few others were asking D. T. Suzuki about his impressions and what he knew about Western spirituality. They learnt that he was interested in Swedenborg and other things. Later on, they asked him what homologies, what similarities in structure he found between Mahāyāna Buddhism and, for example, the cosmology of Swedenborg in respect to the symbolism and correspondences of the worlds. He says:

Of course we expected not a theoretical answer, but a sign attesting the encounter in a concrete person of an experience common to Buddhism and to Swedenborgian spirituality. And I can still see Suzuki suddenly brandishing a spoon and saying with a smile: "This spoon now exists in Paradise...." "We are now in Heaven," he explained. [Corbin says] This was an authentically Zen way of answering the question.^[1]

So the things and the elements, the material elements of this existence, can be perceived as, this material existence can be perceived, we said, as we are already in the Pure Land. This is the Lotus Land if I look the right way, if I sense with soul. And there's the possibility of this appreciation or sensing and conception of, as I said, a spectrum of worlds, worlds at different levels, somehow harmonizing, echoing, mirroring each other, so that all this exists, so to speak -- different dimensions.

Now, much earlier in the retreat, I talked briefly, I think, about loving trees, and feeling loved by trees or particular trees. I think it was in the talk on "Sensing with Soul." So how do I know that this tree I love loves me? How do I feel, how do I sense, how do I receive that communication from the tree, which includes a communication of love? I think I said, "I know like lovers know. I know as lovers know." And the communication is the communication of lovers, or akin to lovers. How do lovers know that the other loves them? How do they feel that love? How is that communicated? One possibility for human lovers, but also between tree and human, is through touch. This tree that I love communicates to me, and communicates its love also, when I touch it with love, with reverence, with openness, with a refined attention and sensitivity. Just placing the hand on the limb or the trunk, the hands there, touching it with love, and feeling that love. Somehow it's communicated to me.

[10:01] If another person were to touch you with love without moving their hand, and just placed their hand on your arm or your shoulder or your back, whatever it is, without moving, in the same way that the tree doesn't move when I touch it, and there's no movement of my hand, either, is it possible to feel the love through an unmoving human touch? Can you feel when you're touched with love? Is that scientifically measurable? You can measure how hard or how soft, or how much pressure there is in the touch, how much humidity, perhaps. Can you sense? Is that possible, for human beings to sense love through touch?

And what actually is communicated this way, between lovers, or when there's deep friendship between human beings, in that touch, or in the silent gaze of eyes, or in the communication of bodies that aren't even touching? How does it carry? And what is communicated? We tend to think 'communication,' and we tend to think of information: "Oh, sweetheart, I left the tofu casserole in the oven. Would you mind turning the oven off?", that kind of communication that contains information. Maybe that's involved, but there's a whole other kind of communication that's not 'information' in that sense. It cannot be even translated so much, perhaps, into linguistic ideas or syllogistic ideas. Perhaps you could say it's information that there is love there, that I am receiving love, that there's love flowing both ways. It's information that there's some awareness, some intelligence, some mutual awareness of other, some mutual intersubjectivity. This is a kind of information. But what is communicated, and how is it communicated? How do we feel it? What happens between humans when there's deep love there? How and what?

When we extend this possibility for communication, and for receiving love, and feeling love, and sensing love, and knowing love from, for example, a tree, for some of you, that idea is already quite familiar, and you're quite comfortable with it. You perhaps already practise that way and live that way. For other people in our culture -- I mean, certainly for the majority of people in our wider culture -- that's going to sound like a very strange idea. But with all this talk about sensing with soul, and the ideas involved, and the ways of looking, and perception, and all that, even if it's strange, you may want to try, to put yourself in a mode of practice, in a mode of humility and openness, and just try. Like all practice, we develop it. It gets refined. It deepens. We discover things. We find our own way, our own ways.

What would it be, if you feel -- you don't have to do anything, of course, but if at some point with all this business of sensing with soul, you feel that's a possibility of something you want to experiment with, what would it be to approach a tree with that openness, with the willingness to experiment, the willingness to discover? And take in the tree with your senses. Perhaps there's sight. You can touch the tree with your hands. How are you touching it? How are you sensing into that contact, with the hands on the bark or the leaves or whatever? Perhaps there's smell. Perhaps even the sound of the wind in the leaves. Bringing your senses there with openness, with the poise of sensitivity, touching the tree, looking at it, open to it with your senses.

What if one were, as much as possible, through the openness of the senses and the contact, to make oneself available, or support a sense of your appreciating that tree, that being? Deep appreciation, honouring it, revering even. What if that's possible, to actually bring that attitude? Or just try to move towards an opening of those kinds of attitudes? And what if you were to actually say and speak to the tree, and say, "Hello," and say, "I love you. I love you"? Perhaps you can be aware and feel and be conscious of the way the tree is connected to the soil, and the earth, and the sky, and the air, and the light. Your body, if you're standing, touching the tree, your body is parallel with the tree, and the whole body can be open to the tree. The whole energy body in relationship, knowing the tree with your whole body, and that openness and attunement, delicacy and sensitivity of the attention, and the openness of mind. What might you notice? Who knows? And perhaps some of it is -- if we talk about the character of this tree, and perhaps the mood of this tree in that specific moment, and how it feels about the encounter, and what's being communicated there -- perhaps all this might be very subtle. We might need that sensitivity and subtlety of attention, and the kind of ability to tune in and focus on a certain wavelength or frequency of, let's say, energetic vibration, or communication, or whatever, similar to the way one focuses on frequencies or wavelengths in working with the energy body in jhāna, or more widely in jhāna anyway.

Just some possibilities to try, if you feel called to. As I said, you don't have to do anything. But just in the spirit of openness, in the spirit of experimentation. And one could start [with] something like what I just suggested, but as I said, all practices will develop in time, and they become personal. We need to make any practice that we do personal. We make it personal. We discover, we create the practice, and we find in responsiveness to what feels like it's working and the threads that are suggested to us.

So in this tree that we love, that we're approaching that way, it might communicate something verbalizable, so to speak, some information or something visualizable or something like that. But often not. Maybe not. It may be that the communication, and therefore the sensitivity that I bring, has to be open to a certain, let's call it 'range of wavelengths,' that's more dark and more dense, very different than a typical human conversation, typical human communication.

Now, of course, some people will hear this, almost certainly, and say, "Oof. That's just crazy. Crazy tree-huggers." Mark Twain, with his sharp brilliance, wrote:

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.^[2]

Again, is it a matter of the refinement, the sensitivity of the perceptions, and the openness of mind and sense? What he says about calling animals dumb, and that being vain and impertinent, same we could say of the earth, of the trees, of the forests, of the stones, of the rivers, of the stars.

I think I said already somewhere or other that we bring so much cultural conditioning to ideas that we hear, and suggestions, and to our perceptions. And that limits and conditions them. In some cultures and times, and maybe in our culture, in these places where we are today, where you are today, in the future (whether or not we call that the same culture, because this is quite a considerable shift), but in some cultures and times, they would consider crazy our assumptions, and our inability to feel, sense, respect and revere the tree's fullness of being, its particular intelligence, its kind of loving, its communication. They'd say, "Why are you so stunted? Why are you so stuck on those assumptions?" They might think we have some kind of mental disability collectively, a bit akin to -- I think someone used the example of autism. Autism is an interesting example. One theory of autism is that it's diagnosed when there's an inability to sense that another has a mind. 'Absence of theory of mind,' it's called. I think it's in severe autism. It's that absence of the ability to sense another mind in another person. We regard that as a problem, a deficiency, an incapacity, generally speaking, in the way the dominant culture diagnoses mental health issues and mental capacities, etc. Maybe those of us who now laugh at the idea of relating to nature this way (they might pour scorn, as I said, on tree-huggers or whatever they would call them), maybe there's something lacking there.

Maybe we're not as superior in intelligence as we assume ourselves to be. Again, why are we so convinced of that? Is it really that we're such radically independent thinkers? Has the question, and deep questioning, led to this belief about trees? Or is it actually just the product of what's been communicated to us through the culture, a kind of indoctrination? It's not really that one is so clever for believing that.

[24:29] This tree that I love loves me. I can feel that. I can know that. I read a little while ago that a medicine man or woman, a medicine person, from the Lakota tribe, a Lakota medicine person, speaks to a stone and calls it Tunkashila, which means 'Grandfather' -- the stone, for example.^[3] It's a completely different relationship. It's more than a metaphor: "I call you 'Grandfather' because you've been around a long time," because stones really last a long time, so it's a flippant metaphor. There's something else going on there, of a very different order, a very different dimension, a very different attitude. Some of you know St Francis of Assisi, a beautiful spirit, "Brother Sun," "Sister Moon," speaking to the birds, etc. Different relationship, a sensing with soul. Different idea of what is going on, what is real, what is true, what is worthy of respect, what is worthy of attention. It's reflected in the speech. And I did deliberately say, "What happens if you speak to the tree and say, 'I love you'? Or say 'hello.' Say 'I love you.'" As much as you can, try to at least move in the direction of meaning it. Just try. This, to me, is quite interesting, the aspect of speech, like a Lakota medicine person, like St Francis.

Let's just dwell on that a little bit. You know that the Buddha taught Right Speech as part of his ethical training. It's part of the precepts and the eightfold path. This is important to realize, and I hope you've noticed this about Right Speech: that, for example, when we gossip or talk behind someone's back, or generally don't keep the precept of Right Speech, can you notice, do you notice -- and you notice immediately, in that moment, and in the moments after you've said whatever you said, when it's not Right Speech -- you can notice immediately the effects in body and mind. Even when it's subtly, let's say, 'wrong speech,' not Right Speech, it's noticeable immediately, the effects in body and mind. There's a slight -- what it might be -- toxic feeling, agitation, contraction, a slight dis-ease. It may all be very subtle, and again, it needs sensitivity. Without the sensitivity, I won't even notice this.

Part of the function of ethics, actually, is it works in a kind of loop. As I practise Right Ethics and practise keeping the precepts, it clears the coarser vibrations, because these vibrations of toxicity and agitation and dis-ease and contraction actually block my sensitivity or hinder my sensitivity. So one of the functions of ethics is, as I engage less in behaviour that agitates me more, makes me feel dis-ease or toxic or contracted, I've actually become more sensitive. It's like the surface of a lake growing calmer. And I can see more, and then I can pick up more on more subtle vibrations of how it feels, just the speech that is not quite Right Speech, and the vibration that that sets up, and the effect in heart, body, mind and soul of that. So we can feel this.

Also, as sometimes, curiously, is a little bit harder to notice, you can feel the converse. We can feel the positive and beneficial effect of wholesome, kind, insightful, sharing speech. There's a huge range here in what I'm talking about, in terms of what you can notice. But when we speak beautifully, there is beauty in the being. We feel that, and it's clear, and it's open, and it harmonizes something. And the opposite, the converse. It's a big range. But again, language as spell, with what we could say, almost magical effects (it's not really). But in, let's say, facing a tree, being with a tree, and touching it, and approaching it with reverence, with humility, with appreciation, with gratitude and love (as much as possible), and saying out loud, speaking, "I love you," or addressing it as "my love," this speaking has an effect on you, on your body, your mind, your heart, your soul. And it opens. It opens heart, body, mind, soul. With that openness, one is more able to tune into the tree's being and the tree's knowing.

So the speaking of the love has an effect on the being, your being, and that enables a greater degree of sensitivity -- just as when we speak to another human being and it's Right Speech, or wrong speech, or somewhere on that spectrum. We can also then receive, and feel ourselves and know ourselves receiving something, from the tree. What would we call it? Its love, its energy, its wisdom, its goodness. The body, again, the whole energy body can be open to receiving this.

As I mentioned, of course, in our culture, we tend to assume that only humans and maybe some animals have intelligence. We have a very narrow idea of what 'intelligence' means. Maybe with 'narrow,' we think of IQ tests and all that. What is this tree, this tree-being? What is its intelligence? Again, I'm not meaning it as a metaphor for the passively endowed biological function of photosynthesis, for example, conceived mechanistically, like we learnt in school biology. But you know, another piece here is my mind and my mind's ideas, your mind and your mind's ideas and concepts and assumptions, epistemological, ontological, cosmological -- the metaphysics involved. If those ideas absolutely rule out any intelligence or consciousness to a tree or to inanimate matter, to stones or plant life, or some forms of animal life -- because we tend to kind of draw a bar, don't we? Maybe it's just cats and dogs, because they're our common pets, or whatever.

If the idea is locked in, then I'm unlikely to develop this sensitivity, or the kind of sensitivity that would enable me to perceive and even dimly sense or intuit such different kinds of intelligence. And it might be quite dim, this, at first. It might be very vague. And again, there's that doubt: "What's going on here? Am I imagining it?" Like all practices, and especially the soulmaking practices, doubt is fine. It's a part of it. It shows your critical intelligence is working.

[34:00] But reverence, love, respect, gratitude. What is it to be grateful for this tree? Humility. As well as that delicacy and subtlety of attention. And a kind of training of the attention there, again, with practice. All that will help. All that will help the consciousness, the citta, the soul, to become more sensitive. And reverence is a part of it. Speech might be a part of it. In the Jewish tradition, in the Pirke Avot -- I think it means the "Sayings of Our Fathers," or the "Proverbs of Our Fathers," or something like that -- it says somewhere, it's written:

If there is no reverence, there is no wisdom.^[4]

If there is no reverence, there is no wisdom. With all these things, there's a mutual dependency, so we could also flip it around and say, "If there's no wisdom, there's no reverence." Where there's wisdom, there's reverence. Where there's reverence, wisdom -- at least, wisdom will come.

So there's something about speaking, I mentioned. It's interesting, when we conceive of speaking (we spoke a little bit about that, about language and communication and sound last night), typically we believe that when we speak or share or voice something, we're expressing something that already exists as something that's, for instance, true to me. So there's a truth in me or for me which is then somehow expressed in speech. Sometimes I feel like I'm not even aware of or clear about what's true for me until I start speaking and express it, and then I kind of discover. Some people, their minds work that way. But even if we chose not to express it, if we wanted to hide it or to mute it or to speak contrarily, etc., opposite to what was true for us, we typically assume the truth, my truth, pre-exists the expression.

But if we are open, if we are sensitive, or when we are open, sensitive, and attentive, we can also notice that what we voice poetically, let's say, can become a 'truth,' so to speak, for us. What we voice poetically can become a kind of truth for me. The verbalization, the writing or sounding or gesturing, comes first sometimes. And then, through that, the creation and the elevation of its value and status as true for me, for us. It's like, in the speaking, we're creating something, and we create then what becomes a kind of truth for us. There is a way that this can happen in the poetry of things.

As I said, ideation and attitude and poise here is crucial. I'm picking up again. I'm repeating. And I think it's so important, it's worth repeating something I must have said. I think it was probably the Re-enchanting the Cosmos retreat, but I'll say it again. We talked there, and also at the beginning of this course, we talked about fullness of intention being one of the necessary aspects for the fully imaginal or genuinely imaginal, authentically imaginal. And fullness of intention, part of what that meant was that I am engaging with this image, I'm seeking it out, I'm practising with it, I'm sensing with soul in this way not primarily for myself (even for my spiritual growth, psychological process, etc.). The emphasis and the intention is more for the sake of the divine, for the sake of God, for the sake of the divinity. It's not that it's not for myself, but there's a relative weighting towards, "It's for that. It's for the divine. It's for divinity. It's for God. It's for soulmaking, not for me." This applies also when we're talking about the enchantment of things and objects, as well as the enchantment of self.

But if we stay with the enchantment of objects and things in the world (like trees or whatever): if the intention, conception, aspiration, etc., is more about self, then the enchantment of things, of objects, can tend very easily to go into, for example, a kind of infatuation or superstition, for example with lucky charms or amulets. We're talking now about sensing with soul, and the enchantment of things that comes through that kind of perception. There is what we could call, what we did call, an 'immature enchantment': "I believe if I hang onto this (whatever it is) piece of stone or bracelet or necklace, it's a lucky charm, and it will mean I will be lucky, and I'll be safe, and I'll be rich," or whatever it is. The whole thing, that kind of immature enchantment, is partly immature (A) because it's reified in too narrow a way, and (B) because it's about self; it's for my sake. So we're enchanted with this amulet or little statue or whatever it is because we're seeking good luck for the self or protection or something.

Compare that with seeing things as theophanies, opening up a sense of beauty, of meaningfulness, of divinity, of sacralization. And the whole soulmaking dynamic, the mutual insemination, widening, enrichening, deepening, complicating of eros-psyche-logos. That whole dynamic of soulmaking, that's involved, which it very rarely is with something like an amulet. Or, you know, I've read about someone suggesting approaching trees in order to get the sustenance of their energy, or for them to heal us, etc. All of which may happen in the encounter, as I'll touch on, but there's something about the intention, and the emphasis of the attention, and what's primary there.

As I just mentioned, we may feel like we receive, for example, from this stone, from this rock, when I'm sensing it with soul, from this tree when I approach it in that manner, and sense with soul, and interact with soul. We may well receive something there. But I would still say, primarily, that in order to receive energy healing or whatever from a tree, I would say focusing more on the tree in appreciation and love, rather than on what I can get, what I can receive, and me focusing even on trying to open my energy body so I can receive something there -- that's going to be more helpful, when the emphasis is on the appreciation and love of the tree. That opens something automatically in me (as well as the sensitivity; also just the energy body), and then I may receive. So in attending with love, reverence, and appreciation, we open ourselves naturally to receive. And in seeing and appreciating the beauty, opens us, opens the soul.

Recently, I was having an interview with someone, and she was talking about working with an image that she had been a little bit apprehensive about. I won't go into details; it's actually not important. But she was apprehensive of this image. We talked a little bit, and she was able to approach it after that. Then she came back, and she said a lot of things, because it opened up as she found a way kind of through or around her apprehension. One of the things she reported back I thought really captured very well and succinctly one thread of what goes on in sensing with soul and imaginal practice. And she said, and to her surprise, it wasn't that she was looking for this, and that's one of my main points right now. This angel -- it was an image of an angel; it was fearsome in some ways, and that's why she was apprehensive. But it wasn't only fearsome. It also had a lot of very lovely qualities. She said when she was enabled to approach it more easily and more openly, "I noticed this angel approves of me. And in approving of me, somehow it gives me something of itself." This angel approves of me, so it somehow gives me something of itself. I would say that's so neatly captured. This, I would say, is an inevitable and true movement or perception, knowing, in any evolution of the relationship with any imaginal figure, or any sensing with soul (so also, for example, with a tree).

This angel, this being, this imaginal figure, this thing that I'm sensing with soul, this tree, approves of me. I somehow feel that. How do I know that? It approves of me, and in approving of me, somehow, in loving me, it gives me something of itself. But it may not work if I'm going to it demanding or primarily wanting something. It may, but I think when it does, it's already in a context of much more openness and reverence and a kind of soulmaking perception.

Phenomenologically, if we use that word -- in other words, in terms of experience -- how do I know, how do I recognize, how do I perceive the love this tree has for me and communicates to me? It's a tricky question to answer. There might be a huge variation in the possibilities of how we know that, how we recognize and perceive that. But it may be, as I said, that there's a certain wavelength or bandwidth of the psychic and energy body awareness, and it takes a little training to hang out there. Relatively speaking, it's more dense, or more murky, or more solid, or more subtle, or all of that. And then this tree, for example, has a certain shape. It has a certain form, doesn't it? Trees have a form, with their branches and the beauty of that. Is the love somehow perceived in the form or any aspect of the object? Somehow, yeah, it seems to be. It seems that the kind of energetic field of the love conforms, at least sometimes, to the visible form of the tree, which is our usual sense of where someone's energy is coming from, where their love is coming from. But again, it might be through touch. There are all kinds of possibilities.

Basically, what I want to say is: if you want to try this sort of thing -- and I'm going on about trees, but it could be stones, or groups of trees, forests, whatever -- the importance of being open, daring to experiment, being lightly playful, as we've emphasized right from the beginning. Being also persistent and patient, and being willing to enter into that field and play of creation and discovery, which is the tenor and the substance of sensing with soul, of soulmaking perception. You know, to amplify what we said earlier, Goethe wrote,

[A human being] does not [begin to] learn to understand anything unless he loves it.

A human being does not begin to understand anything unless he loves it, unless she loves it. But the love here, again -- we've touched on this before -- is not just mettā. It's not just that universal love. It's a love for the particular, and through the particular, and directed at the particular and at the seeing of the particular. Mettā, we've emphasized before, like all the brahmavihāras, it well tend towards kind of dissolving the perception of particulars and particular personhoods. With a lot of mettā, everything becomes equal. There's an equality of beings. It's not so relevant, the particulars of this or that being. Indeed, with a lot of mettā, with a lot of compassion and the other brahmavihāras, the perception of particulars and uniquenesses begins to fade. There's a universal oneness of love, and perhaps the recipients of love, and then everything gets mixed up. We're talking here about mettā, yes, but also, with the mettā, a personal love. Personal love, a love of this particular person -- and by 'person,' I mean any imaginal figure, any being, any thing sensed with soul becomes a person in its autonomy, and in and through its particulars.

There's a philosopher I mentioned the other day that I've just recently started reading, Nicolai Hartmann. One of the things he talks about is personal love. In personal love, what he calls 'personal love,' which we've just been talking about, unlike what he [author/philosopher Predrag Cicovacki, writing about Hartmann's views] calls "the person who radiates goodness and spirituality around himself" (the person who is radiating mettā; let's translate it into our language), unlike that,

in personal love, affirmative devotion is directed from one individual toward another. More precisely, [personal love] is directed toward the ideal of that unique individual.^[5]

Now, here I have to explain something. This word, 'ideal,' is used in an almost Platonic sense, really, meaning it kind of exists as somehow a real essence that is ideal, somehow the essence of that person. But that essence is particular to that person. In other words, I have, in this view, an ideal personhood of my unique individuality. It's not like the ideal of everyone is just generic Buddha-nature, or generic love, or generic kindness, or generic humanity or whatever; the particular ideal, a particular essence, you might say, of a person.

Now, that ideal is not always visible. It doesn't always manifest. But

in every existing ... and limited person, there is an individual ideal of that person.

So it's a slightly different ontology involved here than what we've been emphasizing, but it's close, and I think it's important to bring this other kind of ontology out as well, the ideal of -- he calls it 'personality,' but it's like the person, the ideal of the person. And personal love, he [Hartmann] says,

brings to light the otherwise hidden and neglected essence of one's individuality.^[6]

Personal love, what he calls 'personal love,' what we're talking about here, brings to light the otherwise hidden and neglected essence of one's individuality.

There's this phrase, "Love is blind." But Hartmann wants to turn that around and say: actually, love is blind to the surface of personality and its general human aspects. But maybe because of that, maybe in spite of that,

personal love is capable of taking us much deeper toward the essence of [a person, this] personality, toward its individual ideal [the individual ideal of that person], than any other form of cognition, [and] than any other form of love.^[7]

Can you hear the different ontologies? It's like there is a reality here that's underneath the surface of what most people see, because they're not looking with this personal love of this person that I love, or this, whatever it is that I'm erotically involved in, that I love in that personal way.

[55:19] As we said, mettā, or the Greek agapē, will bring this kind of universal equality and oneness and the perception of that. There's a quietening, or a kind of discarding, and then a fading of the perception of individuality and particulars, etc. Hartmann goes on to say:

He who loves [in this way] is the only one who sees.^[8]

Now, we could say someone loving with mettā sees a different kind of essence, a universal essence, an essence of oneness of love or compassion or whatever. And also emptiness, because mettā is one way to go into emptiness: one realizes the dependent arising and dependent fading of the perception of the thing. But Hartmann wants to say:

He who loves [in this personal way] is the only one who sees; while he who is without love, is blind.

He turns it round.

So again, it's echoing what Goethe says: a human does not begin to understand anything unless she loves it, unless he loves it. This is actually quoting someone called Cicovacki, who wrote a small book on Hartmann which is quite nice. So we don't see this idea that, we don't understand or we don't recognize this idea that the one who loves is the only one who sees, while he/she who is without love is blind. They who are without love are blind, this personal love. And we don't recognize that's the case, Cicovacki says, because we have too narrow a conception of knowledge.

So it's wrong, in this larger view of knowledge, it's wrong "to limit knowledge to a thinking, reflective, or rational consciousness of an object."^[9] Hartmann calls it 'valuational knowledge': "knowledge of the individual and unique, and it is based [Cicovacki says] on feeling, on [a] sharpened and sensitive intuition for the richness of values." I'll come back to this business about values.

Personal love makes possible the participation in each other's souls. It makes possible the intuitive vision of the best and the highest [in another, as another].

In that connection, I think I said this as an aside in a previous talk, but I would say that skill in human relationships -- you know, we talk a lot about bringing kindness, and I've talked about Right Speech, and how to speak what's difficult, and negotiate, and all that, or just the ability to empathize emotionally with what's happening. But I would say, as well, that our skill and capacity in our human relationship needs our sensing with soul. For the fullness of human relationship, I need to see you, I need to sense you with soul. We need in our relationship to have a -- if you like, the imaginal perception there, the sensing with soul, has to be connected on a level, has to meet somehow. There will be times when we feel I haven't been fully humanly related to, fully related to as a human being, because this person is not sensing me with soul, is not seeing the dimensionality, my dimensionality, my divinity even; is not seeing me imaginally.

So we can have all kinds of -- and there are all kinds of -- theoretical frameworks about what is involved in the skill and the capacity of human relationships, and what it means for there to be a fullness there. But I would, in slightly different words, echo Hartmann. The human is not other than the imaginal for me. The imaginal includes the human. The human includes the imaginal. And sometimes it's the image, it's tuning in or speaking or recognizing or including the imaginal sense of the other, or of oneself, or of the relationship, that, at certain points, allows the relationship between two human beings to open up, to flourish, to be healthy, and, I would say, to be fully human.

When we talk about sensing with soul, just sensing anything with soul, there's a nice -- I found very beautiful -- teaching from Abraham Abulafia, the Kabbalist that I mentioned the other day. He does something with some gematria. Remember this numerical manipulation, and playing with the numerical equivalents of the letters that make up words, to generate other connections of idea, of meaning, and to generate (in our language) the soulmaking or the perception of divinity, senses and ideas of divinity. I want to differ with him a little bit, but I'll explain what he says. He says that in Hebrew, the word for love is ahava. And when you write out the letters there and count them up, it adds up to 13. If you know Hebrew a little bit, this is pretty elementary, but 'love' in Hebrew is ahava, and that adds up to 13. 13 plus 13 -- in other words, two 'loves' -- is 26. And 26, as I briefly mentioned the other day, is the numerical equivalent for the name of God, for one name of God, Yahweh. So two loves make up God. In this love for this tree, in this love for this beloved erotic-imaginal other, and in the love that I feel from and I know and I sense and receive from this beloved erotic-imaginal other, these two loves make up, give us, or are -- we could say are -- divinity, are God somehow, are Buddha-nature. What I want to say is they make that. They make divinity, these two. The reciprocity of love that we have there makes divinity.

But he adds something else, Abulafia. And for him, it all goes towards a kind of melting into unity. But he says the word for 'one' in Hebrew is echad, and that, too, when you add it up, makes 13, when you add up the simple numerical equivalents of each of the letters there, three letters. They add up to 13. So again, two 13s, 2 x 13 is 26, the same name of God, Yahweh, the numerical equivalent. So two 'ones' is God, makes God, make the divine. Two ones and two lovings, in the mutual autonomy, and in the autonomy that we talked about as a necessary aspect of the imaginal, the autonomy of the beloved erotically imagined other, and the autonomy of my self in that interaction, those two 'ones' loving, with two 'loves' back and forth, that eros there, the two 'ones' and the two autonomies of eros -- remember, eros needs that autonomy; it needs the twoness -- they, we could say, make God. There's a different interpretation I'm giving to that than Abulafia, a different direction in terms of the numerology there.

But this is part of what's happening when we sense with soul. We're, if you like, making the divine. And 'making' is to do with that 'create/discover.' The 'create,' the affinities are with art. We've touched on this before over the years. Art has the truth of art. In our making, we are participating in art. We're making art. And art has a certain kind of truth, artistic truth, poetic truth, powerful still. So we said earlier that we somehow create what's true for us in speaking, in verbalizing, whether we write it or articulate it with our voice. So there's a creation, an artistic creation, in speaking.

[1:06:44] There are also parallels, again, just dwelling a little bit on ontology here and epistemology. When we talk about, let's say, appreciating art, or even studying art, it's inevitably true that what we perceive when we study a piece of art or a piece of music or literature, we discover something in it that's really there. It's a kind of deep structure to the art or to the symphony or whatever it is, or the novel. We perceive deep structures. But some of those, we can't be certain that they're kind of 'true,' if you like. We create them through our study, through our interpretation that matters, that matters to us. We can't be sure that they're significant. We can't be sure that the author/composer/artist actually even knew about them, that it didn't come out unconsciously, that it was their intention. As I said, we can't be sure that the author also felt that they were significant, or how significant. And yet, they still might be difficult to uncover, difficult to perceive. They might be so-called 'deep structures' in a piece of art, a novel, a symphony or whatever.

But we can look at this, and this claim of depth -- I can't remember if I've mentioned this before -- as less an ontological claim: "This really is there, deeper, at some other dimension." We could just be more kind of cautious, more conservative, and say it's just an epistemological claim. In other words, it's hard to see. It's hard to sense this stuff. It's hard to notice. It's hard to recognize these structures. They're not obvious. They're a little more hidden in the deeper texture of things, in the larger framework of the art, of the trajectory of the art, or the scope of it or whatever, the novel, the symphony. We could also say they're deep epistemologically because they need a certain kind of attention and a certain kind of training. Not everyone can even hear those things in a symphony without a lot of training, and a certain kind of training of the attention and the ear, for example. Or in a piece of visual art, for instance. So there's a way of thinking about what we perceive in art that's more, as I said, not making a truth claim, but just recognizing epistemological distinctions or a spectrum there. The same also with the hermeneutics of existence. We could be a little cautious and say that. Talking now about the parallels of making -- we're making divinity; we're creating God in some way when we're soulmaking. We touched on that before. And then taking that word, 'making,' and saying, "Yeah, it's an art." We're making all this. And acknowledging the parallels, or looking at some of the parallels between art and soulmaking, soulmaking and art or as art.

So we recognize that, and we also recognize we could just make distinctions that are epistemic, epistemological: this is harder to see without a certain sensitivity of training, but we still don't know, are they 'true' structures, so to speak? Do they have the composer, the artist, the author's intent, or even awareness? Are they significant or not? Can we trust our sense of the significant? Do we know they're significant, or is it just our interpretation that they're significant? So all this applies to our hermeneutics in regards to art, any kind of art, and also in relation to the hermeneutics of existence, just the same. Many people these days recognize that the audience, the viewer, the reader, is kind of granted or allowed, in the thinking about art these days, is granted a degree, and maybe even an equal creative status, equal to the artist, to the writer, to the creator, whatever. It's their participation together, of composer and audience, of player and audience, of artist and viewer or whatever. That participation together is creative. It's co-creative. Again, just opening up the ideas about epistemology and ontology here. We can take quite a cautious position, or a relatively cautious position, and we can take other positions that are a little more bold.

There's also a parallel between the difficulties epistemologically in regard to art and the difficulties in regard to sensing with soul. I may have briefly touched on this in an earlier talk on this course. It relates to actually a larger issue of the epistemological difficulty, the difficulty saying "I know" with regard to values, whether those values are aesthetic, like beauty or whatever, or moral, where we're talking about moral values. This, to me, is quite an interesting parallel. We're in a similar situation in terms of the epistemology and ontology regarding sensing with soul as we are regarding the epistemology and ontology with regard to aesthetics, and also with regard to moral values. There's not an overlap so much as a similarity. There are parallels there.

Moral knowing: "I know this is good. I know that is bad." Despite all the relativity of postmodern blah blah blah, something in me, something in you, says, "I know that is good, and I know that is bad," whatever the 'that' is. Similarly with aesthetics. I talked about the Smurfs, and compared the Smurfs to, let's say, Beethoven, or John Coltrane, or whatever it is, Keith Jarrett or whatever, Rothko. Moral knowing and aesthetic knowing are participatory -- much more so, let's say, and unlike, in that sense, our conventional knowledge of material facts: "I know the lamp is on the table. I know the microphone is on."

The moral knowing and aesthetic knowing involves much more participation. We usually don't think of our conventional knowledge of material facts as participatory. That whole theory of knowing established with the scientific method that I talked about in an earlier talk on this course, that conventional knowledge of material facts is not supposed to be participatory. But when we come to aesthetic knowing, we say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There's a parallel there with moral knowing. It shares that participatory nature. So our souls resonate with goodness. We resonate with goodness. That resonance is part of how we know. And we need to participate in that to know, with a moral value like kindness, and also with beauty. We resonate, so to speak, with beauty. We participate in the perception of beauty. We participate in the perception of goodness, in the knowing of goodness. The knowing and the actuality of the object is created and discovered in the subject/object interaction, whereas classical scientific method presumes and actually strives for a kind of independence and non-participation of the subject in the object or with the object.

So this participatory knowing is a fact of aesthetic knowing, so to speak, and moral knowing. And yet, as I pointed out when I talked about this some days ago, at the beginning of this course, and just now, to say it's all in the eye of the beholder -- like there really is no difference of aesthetic value between the Smurfs and whatever it is, John Coltrane or whatever, Messiaen -- that sits wrong in the soul. And I think that's true of everyone. No one really believes that statement that it's all completely just [in the eye of the beholder]. It's participatory; both are involved. And similarly with moral knowing. It's participatory. Both subject and object are involved. There's a resonance there. So values are part and parcel, are included, are woven into sensing with soul. When we sense with soul, we also sense and attune to values. I can't remember if I said that before.

We talked about meanings being wrapped up in and implicated in images, etc., but we can't reduce this imaginal figure, or what I've sensed with soul here, to one specific meaning. Similarly with values. Values are wrapped up in and implicated in an imaginal figure, in images, but an image is not reducible to that value or those values. Or if we do reduce an image to a certain meaning, or even a few meanings, or certain values, it will kill and truncate the depth and the vitality of an image -- remember, we talked about this; we've talked about this from the beginning -- when we try and reduce them in that way. So they do include values, and they do include individual meanings, but when we reduce them to those, we will kill something in the image, it will flatten it, or it will die -- let's say that. I think it's important to recognize that when I am in erotic-imaginal relationship with an image, that image is shot through with values for me, values that are alive and meaningful and important. But it's also that there's a plurality of values, and also meanings, as we said, implicated, wrapped up in an image. And sometimes the values in an image are kind of opposite, 'antinomic' it's called. I'll talk about that in a second.

[1:20:39] The difficulty we have epistemologically and ontologically with values is replicated in sensing with soul, and part of the reason is because wrapped up in sensing with soul is a sense of values. Values are often multiple. They're wrapped up in this image, and there are multiple values. Sometimes they're contradictory values. And there's something about values that I'll come back to in a second, that they're always beyond what could possibly be instantiated or brought to bear in manifestation as an example. So any example of goodness could always be more good. The value of goodness has always got this 'beyond' to it. Always beyond any instantiation of goodness is just goodness, kind of the value of goodness. That's an important fact here to recognize and to understand something.

So we can't reduce an image to a representing of this and that value, or this and that meaning. But it may be that values -- which are ideas; the idea of goodness, the idea of beauty, etc., the idea of love -- such values are kind of a different perspective on something than looking at it imaginally. So there's a kind of ideational perspective and an imaginal perspective. Images include ideas. They're woven together. And we can focus on one, on the ideas in the image -- part of which will be the values, the moral and aesthetic values wrapped up in this image, that this image somehow expresses, that this image channels. And another perspective on something is the purely imaginal, where that sense of value is not so much brought to the fore. We're still tuning to it, but we're not reducing something to those values. Both ideas as values, or values as ideas, and images, have always a beyondness, a mystery, an unfathomability. That's why we can have eros and soulmaking with respect to ideas as well.

Let's try and expand this and explain it a little better. I mentioned this word, 'antinomies.' Part of the reason why clear knowledge or truth claims -- "I know this. This is true" -- are difficult to justify with respect to soulmaking perceptions of the world, with sensing with soul, is just exactly the same reason why such claims are also difficult to establish with respect to moral and aesthetic values and virtues. The set of values that we actually value involve ultimately irreconcilable antinomies, contradictions, principles that are in opposition, or contradict each other, or are paradoxical with each other, if you like, when it comes to any thing or instantiation or example of anything. So courage and prudence, for example, you could say, are antinomical. In other words, the fullness of courage is kind of in opposition, perhaps, to a fullness of prudence in any situation. Or a kind of sharp, discriminating discernment, that kind of prajñā, compared with or in opposition to a kind of accepting inclusivity. Or simplicity and complexity in an aesthetic object.

What we have as human beings is we encounter disputes about value. Partly it's because we focus in on a certain value, and we value it, and then we disagree with someone who values something that is in opposition to that. Both people could say, "Well, this has value," or "This has more value," and the other person says, "No, this has more value." And those two things cannot exist together. We can disagree with each other. We can also disagree with ourselves at different times. This thing, this object, this person, in any instant, cannot exemplify and instantiate both of those contradictory, antinomical values at the same time. It cannot instantiate the fullness. It can instantiate a partial kind of compromise. Or, if it instantiates a fullness of the one, we feel that it's lacking, because it doesn't have the other. So for example, an utter fullness of courage might also be a lack of prudence. Utter simplicity and the value of simplicity might be a lack of complexity, or utter complexity in a work of art might be a lack of simplicity. Or love and justice might be one, or dynamism and stability, or innovation and tradition. Or altruism and self-care, being responsible for caring for oneself: "I'm so altruistic that I neglect myself to the extreme." When it goes to the extreme, it sounds like either it's idiotic or fanatical; there's something wrong. Yet if I make a balance there, then I'm not really living out the fullness of altruism, and perhaps not the fullness of self-care.

Some people make an antinomy of what's called 'brotherly love' -- in other words, love of one's neighbour, so to speak: the people, friends and family that one is in immediate contact with, particularly family -- and, on the other hand, 'love of the remote,' which is such an important value when we talk about mettā and universal love. What happens when we talk about love involving generosity, and it's the remote, and the remote of future generations? That kind of love is one of the issues at stake when we talk about climate change and species extinction and resource depletion, environmental degradation. You could say the absence of that love or that kind of even consciousness of future generations, love of the remote, future generations, and those far away on the globe on the one hand, and love of one's, say, children on the other, some people would say that the fullness of one is antinomical with the other. Maybe pride and humility. I don't know if those are quite the right words, but pride in its good sense, and humility. Change and variety on the one hand, and constancy, steadiness, uniformity on the other. Harmony and conflict, etc.

[1:29:11] So there's a difficulty here, as I said, because cultures as a whole, tend -- of this, what Findlay and Hartmann called the 'value-firmament,' the sort of ideal existences of these different values -- we tend to narrow down on certain values at different times in history, or different times in our individual lives, or we have value disputes with others, we disagree, or we change our opinion all the time. And what that means is that, because these values exist in these antinomies, any instantiation of a value in practical life, or in an image, or in a sensing with soul, is always open to be viewed from the perspective of another value's primacy. That soldier is not a pacifist. You know, the image of the soldier that I shared many times is not a pacifist. If I take non-harm as a primary value, or pacifism -- I mean, it's just an image, but then I lose the value of the courage of the soldier willing to battle and do what it takes, and take affirmative action, etc.

So the problem here with epistemology is that we change our mind, cultures change their mind, and people disagree. It becomes very hard to say, "I know this is valuable" like that. Same in aesthetics and morality. And because values are wrapped up in the perceptions that we have when we're sensing with soul, we have the same issue there. It's hard to have that kind of firm sureness of knowledge that we have in respect to more simple, material things. We can't sometimes even agree with ourselves from one day to the next on the truth or reality of our perceptions of value, let alone agreeing with each other. So when we sense with soul, when we have imaginal perception, values are woven in, and one of the difficulties there is these antinomies, the cultural uncertainty of our epistemology and ontology regarding values, all of that.

Values (goodness, beauty, love, etc.) are essentially transcendent. There's always a 'beyond' to them. One reason is because they're infinitely perfectible, like I said. However much love is possible in this instance, in this person, in this person's doing this, in this moment, it is always possible to have more love. However much goodness, it's possible to have more goodness in any instance. They're infinitely perfectible. Any instantiation, any manifestation of a value, one can always conceive of a 'beyond' to it, of a 'more,' 'better.' And in any instantiation, it calls in this whole field of what some philosophers call 'antinomies': values that are in opposition or contradictory to this one. So we say ideally all of these values (for instance, love of one's immediate family and love of the remote, dynamism and stability, altruism and self-care), ideally they would all be fulfilled, they would all be at their maximum together, but that's actually impossible. It's impossible for them to manifest together that way.

But we have love -- well, let's say most human beings have, somewhere in them, a love for values, a devotedness to values. We have even eros for values. It's the beyondness in values that, again, it forms, it offers itself as a beyondness which is needed by eros. And the eros, again, will create more beyondness. So values, again, they share something in common with the imaginal. There's this dimensionality of beyondness that is so necessary for the pothos in the eros and the whole soulmaking dynamic. Because something in us, something in most human beings, loves -- I have a love, a devotedness to goodness; I have a devotedness to kindness, to beauty, to altruism, whatever; that devotedness we also mentioned the other day when we were talking about bodhicitta -- and the eros there allows us to have soulmaking with respect to values. And values, as I said, are ideas, so there can be soulmaking with respect to the ideas that are values. And, as I said, sensing with soul involves values -- this or that imaginal figure's goodness, or that thing, that being's beauty, love, courage, nobility. Sensing with soul involves a perception of values, even if it's not clearly articulated. And often they're mixed up, and it's mixed in with the sensing. But the love and the eros and the devotion we have to values forms part of, constitutes part of, the eros we have to what we sense with soul.

When I said we love and we feel devoted to values, and there can be soulmaking with respect to values, and eros with respect to values, I think that's really important to acknowledge, just psychologically, certainly in terms of soul-work, but also in terms of when we think about ethics. We tend to only consider the question what to do, "What should I do?", and what's the effect or the result or the practical outcome of my action or non-action or whatever it is. But when we consider them as values, as ideas, then we recognize this beyondness that they have. They're always going to transcend any instantiation. And that beyondness, as I said, can constitute an erotically attractive dimension or region or field for the eros, and brings also, constitutes eros and soulmaking in relation to goodness and beauty, etc.

[1:37:43] I can't remember if I've told this story before, but it always touches me. When I talk to people who are in a conundrum about certain ethical situations and what to do, what to not do, or what they should do, and they feel like "even if I do this, it's not going to help" (for example, climate change). I heard that when the Titanic was sinking and they evacuated all the lifeboats, they used all the lifeboats they could, primarily women and children first. I don't quite know the story; it might have been there was some other stuff going on, about who got to get into the lifeboats. I don't know. I didn't see the film, either, so I don't know if this was in the film. Those who didn't get into the lifeboats were on a clearly sinking ship, in freezing cold, arctic waters. They knew they were going to die in moments. And they began singing hymns. You think, "Well, what's the point? You're going to die soon." But there is an orientation there to something greater, to the soulmaking, to the dimensionality, to the beauty, to what is of value. It doesn't make any practical difference.

I think I talked about, in the Ecology of Love talks, you know, we can discern two different kinds of activism, whether it's to do with environment or whatever it is: a kind of instrumental attitude, let's say, which is very focused on achieving certain ends practically, making policy changes. It's so important. Of course that's important. But there's also another kind of activism that has more to do with soulmaking, and, if you like, the health of one's soul as well. It's more to do with a reverence for, an eros for, a devotion for, a love for values. Now, it can't be only that, out of connection with what actually changes in life, and trying to effect changes that are ethical and helpful, etc. We can't only be focused on this kind of transcendent beyond of the ideal values. Goodness, beauty, love need to manifest, and we have to make practical choices in our living. But there can be both, I think. And to me, a fullness of ethical sensitivity includes an attention to both, and an awareness that both are operating. We actually need the impossibility of perfection and completeness of values. There's something about that 'beyond' that we need. There's something about that kind of impossible idealism that the soul needs, the always beyond, always more, the infinite, for the eros and the soulmaking. So just like anything imaginal, there's the immanent, and the beyond that's also sensed through the immanent -- a transcendent that's sensed through the immanent.

One other thing to say about values is something about 'useless values' in soulmaking. Sometimes it's the useless values that feel -- I think I mentioned this in an earlier talk -- that feel for the soul somehow the most important; the highest, let's say, the highest values. So, you know, if we touch again on environmental ethics, oftentimes -- in fact, I saw half of a programme the other day on the BBC about trees, a famous actor trying to share their love of trees, but it was all explained in scientific terms. One sensed that that actually wasn't what she most loved about trees. She was relating to them as persons. But there just wasn't the language and wasn't the conceptual framework to open that up and explain it.

So in the programme that was made, and the explanation, it all got put in terms of photosynthesis, and the way the sap is sucked up, the fluids, the water is drunk up from the roots, etc., and how clever that was. But one really got the sense that that was not to the point of why she actually loved the trees so much. Or, you know, in people making environmental appeals, etc., for the fate of the Amazon, and more generally of trees and forests on the planet, on the earth, they might say, "The trees are the lungs of the planet," in a kind of metaphor to explain and to persuade. "They purify the air. They provide tranquil refuge and a kind of pleasantness." But when all these are regarded as elements, flatly regarded, when those lungs of the planet and the purification of the air, the sort of environmental services that trees provide (and then sometimes that even gets given an economic, fiscal value), but still, it's all being perceived flatly, conceived of as elements of a flatly materialist, interconnected system. It's still a sense of regarding trees, if we're back to trees now, as commodities. It's a commodity somehow. And soulmaking, sensing with soul and eros, depend a lot on the uncommodified and uncommodifiable dimensions of beings and things. And also, as we said before, on its not being for my -- this image, this sensing with soul, this thing that I love, this tree that I love, this forest that I haven't seen but I love, it's not for me. It has a worth independent of what it gives humanity, independent of the economical service, independent even of the tranquillity or pleasantness if we grab them flatly. It's not commodifiable. It's useless, in that sense.

One could make parallels with falling in love: it's full of a sense of value and imaginal perception, unless you really believe that the function of falling in love is, and you conceive of it as, just a biologically driven illusion that creates a tendency to procreation (so this biologically driven illusion is an evolutionary advantage), if you really want to conceive of that soul-opening and movement of falling in love, if you really want to conceive of it that way. But if you conceive it other ways, it's kind of useless. It's a useless value. And there's something about useless values that the soul thrives on, needs, creates even.

I think, I'm not sure, but there's this phrase, 'the age of loneliness.' I'm not sure if it was George Monbiot who coined it, and I'm not sure quite in what connection, but I think he was talking about, for instance, the decline in species, and actual -- not just species, but also animals and birds, for example. Just in the last five years, there's been almost 10 per cent, 9 or 10 per cent -- just in the last five years --of the number of birds; not so much species, but an actual number of birds in Europe. Five years, 10 per cent less. As I mentioned, I think, in one talk, that's actually noticeable at Gaia House, if you've been in one place for a long time. And I notice a lot less birds, a lot less foxes, a lot less deer, a lot less badgers, etc. And George Monbiot, I don't know if it was he that coined the phrase, talked about, wrote about, the age of loneliness: human beings moving towards an absence of other lifeforms, of other species, of friendliness with animals, of connection with animals.

And could it be that the absence of sensing with soul, and the absence of the vocabulary and the conceptuality and the conceptual architecture and frameworks to even support the views that would bring us out of flatness and into deep connection and reverence and care, that actually out of the conceptual structure comes the perception, and out of the perception comes the lack of affect and the lack of connection, and then we don't care? So we make choices prioritizing profit, convenience, comfort, security, whatever, because those are the values that we end up centring on, because we don't have the apparatus to sense the other values and the love of them. We don't have the apparatus to sense with soul, and the much fuller connection and reverence and care that that brings in conception, through conception, through perception, and through action and behaviour, attitude, poise, listening, receiving also.

So the age of loneliness, this disappearing, the disappearing of both species and also just animals and trees, individual animals and trees and other lifeforms, corals. The age of loneliness. I want to add to that: could it also be that, even in the presence of nature -- one could be driving by a forest, or walking somewhere, and because there isn't the openness to sensing with soul, we don't feel the connection? The magnificent, glorious theophany is there, of the trees, of the animals. And we're lonely because we don't have the apparatus to sense the deeper connection, even when it's still there, before we've destroyed it or neglected it so much, prioritized something else, that it disappears. Even when it's still there, there's the loneliness, because we don't have that capacity to connect.

I think it was in the "Awakening" talk, but I talked about that passage from Genesis where God calls Abraham and says, "Lech-lecha. Go. Leave this place, leave your family, leave your father, leave your household, leave the lands that you know. Go to the land that I will show you. Lech-lecha. Go. Go from this country." I would like to, just in the spirit of play and openness, and creation/discovery, add something -- a possible gematria there, a possible amplification of what's involved in that, what I call the perennial call of soul, the perennial call of the divine to the soul: lech-lecha.

Open to the soulmaking dynamic, which will open your soul-landscape. Leave behind what is not soulmaking. Move on. Things may break. Things may stretch. This perennial call, lech-lecha -- reading the Bible that way more timelessly, as a soul-narrative, if you like. So there's a possible gematria here in Hebrew. Lech-lecha, if we take the individual letters there (lamed, kaf, lamed, kaf), it adds up to 100, which is very simple: face value of the letters adds up to 100. Another word whose letters, just the basic letters, adds up to 100, is al. Al can mean 'height,' as in the supernal, the divine, the heavens.^[10] What it can mean in our translation is the dimensionality, the height, the depth, the divinity. Al has the connotation of divinity. And the same letters, but with different vowel inflections, also 100, because it's the same letters, means 'yoke' -- not an egg yolk, but a yoke, as in, as Jesus said, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light,"^[11] what you put around the neck of oxen or a horse or whatever to pull the plough, for example. 'Yoke.'

So in the soulmaking, in the lech-lecha, in the call to the soul to move on, to expand, to make soul, the call of the divine to make soul, there is the opening of the divine, the dimensionality. This we know. But there is also the duty, the yoke that comes with it. What is the yoke now? What is this duty now? What are our duties? In opening up the soulmaking with respect to earth, with respect to trees, with respect to existence, we open up the dimensionality, and we're given, perhaps, it brings duties or duty. We could also say it is a duty. The soulmaking is a duty. Lech-lecha. Go. Go from what you know. Go from the familiar. Go from the stuck places, the small circumference that is no longer soulmaking. Let the dimensions open to your senses. There's a duty in that, and it will bring duty, it will bring duties. What are the duties to that which we sense with soul, to the earth, to the trees, to the animals, to existence?