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Subtle Agroecologies
perception. Our thinking in that mode is too static to live into the phenomenon and experience it
as changing and growing. Something of the phenomenon has to live in us if we are to make a connection between, for example, the sapling and the tree. Our thinking has to be mobilised to grasp
the becoming of nature and the way nature is constantly creating. Although we know plants grow
and change in ordinary consciousness, here we experience it afresh and understand it in a new way.
It is imagination that makes this mobilisation of our thinking possible. In this mode of perception, we are living in the phenomenon as a process. We are imaginatively engaged in those same
processes. We need to enter this not by bringing in human meanings but by living in the phenomenon as the being it is. Although we cannot leave our humanity out of the picture, as this is the
source of our imaginative ability, in this and the stages that follow we are placing our faculties in the
service of the phenomenon. Exact sensorial imagination leads us to a holistic apprehending where
we understand, for example, the plant as a metamorphosing possibility, connected to its place and
to the plant realm.
Exact sensorial imagination exercises to help here include imaginatively growing your plant
through a whole life cycle or imaginatively taking your plant through the seasons. The richer the
pictures you can build, for example, the changing light, the changing insect visitors and so on, the
more you will be sensing into the plant. Growing the plant in your imagination before sleep can be
very helpful for continuing your study the following day. It seems to connect you with that dreamlike realm that is needed here and it facilitates the later stages.
You could also try, with care, ‘imagining it otherwise’ (Brook, 1998: 55). This is where you
purposely misuse your imaginative faculty to impose something on the plant, for example, imagining an ash tree is evergreen. The purpose here is to feel for a response. By now, you will be in a
relationship with the plant and will feel (perhaps viscerally or emotionally) the wrongness of your
imaginative fancy. Such a response kick helps to get you listening in to what is really there and tuning into where insightful responses might come from in your own body.
It is the plant realm that gives us a clear picture of the need for this shift in our thinking if we are
to understand a plant as a plant and not just as a marker in our system of classifcation or an entity
to be utilised. This is where we can frst detect that the empiricism, which in the frst stage seemed
exacting and pedantic, is now on a path to what Goethe termed a delicate empiricism. Delicate
because it does not impose a theory, and neither does it deny the human faculties their role in coming to know the world. Rather, the faculties have to treat the world with delicacy in order to fnd it,
rather than just fnd humanness refected in it.
Ensure you have felt the shift in consciousness into this dreamy, watery style of thinking and
feeling before moving on. You should now be able to move freely into and out of the phenomenon
and carry something of its being in your consciousness.
STAGE THREE: SEEING-IN–BEHOLDING
Once you can shift your thinking into that fuid mode you can build up the phenomenon imaginatively through its changing forms. However, this still feels somewhat attenuated. It provides
the training of the imagination so that you can now move on to tuning in to the phenomenon as
it is, as a living whole, rather than as parts you bring together imaginatively. The element here is
air. For this, you need to move even further back from your ordinary way of engaging with the
world; you must even quiet your imaginative activity in order to make space for the phenomenon
to present itself.
You need to be like air, not fowing through the forms like water, but making them visible. Using
elemental language to describe these stages does not mean that we are looking for particular characteristics in a thing. You are not looking for airy aspects of the phenomenon; instead what you need
to do is to be airy in your own consciousness. Bockemühl describes the way the observer must be:
It is characteristic of air to expand in all directions, offering its own being and activity in order that the
being and activity of another can appear. Insofar as we move inwardly in accordance with this image
Subtle Agroecologies
perception. Our thinking in that mode is too static to live into the phenomenon and experience it
as changing and growing. Something of the phenomenon has to live in us if we are to make a connection between, for example, the sapling and the tree. Our thinking has to be mobilised to grasp
the becoming of nature and the way nature is constantly creating. Although we know plants grow
and change in ordinary consciousness, here we experience it afresh and understand it in a new way.
It is imagination that makes this mobilisation of our thinking possible. In this mode of perception, we are living in the phenomenon as a process. We are imaginatively engaged in those same
processes. We need to enter this not by bringing in human meanings but by living in the phenomenon as the being it is. Although we cannot leave our humanity out of the picture, as this is the
source of our imaginative ability, in this and the stages that follow we are placing our faculties in the
service of the phenomenon. Exact sensorial imagination leads us to a holistic apprehending where
we understand, for example, the plant as a metamorphosing possibility, connected to its place and
to the plant realm.
Exact sensorial imagination exercises to help here include imaginatively growing your plant
through a whole life cycle or imaginatively taking your plant through the seasons. The richer the
pictures you can build, for example, the changing light, the changing insect visitors and so on, the
more you will be sensing into the plant. Growing the plant in your imagination before sleep can be
very helpful for continuing your study the following day. It seems to connect you with that dreamlike realm that is needed here and it facilitates the later stages.
You could also try, with care, ‘imagining it otherwise’ (Brook, 1998: 55). This is where you
purposely misuse your imaginative faculty to impose something on the plant, for example, imagining an ash tree is evergreen. The purpose here is to feel for a response. By now, you will be in a
relationship with the plant and will feel (perhaps viscerally or emotionally) the wrongness of your
imaginative fancy. Such a response kick helps to get you listening in to what is really there and tuning into where insightful responses might come from in your own body.
It is the plant realm that gives us a clear picture of the need for this shift in our thinking if we are
to understand a plant as a plant and not just as a marker in our system of classifcation or an entity
to be utilised. This is where we can frst detect that the empiricism, which in the frst stage seemed
exacting and pedantic, is now on a path to what Goethe termed a delicate empiricism. Delicate
because it does not impose a theory, and neither does it deny the human faculties their role in coming to know the world. Rather, the faculties have to treat the world with delicacy in order to fnd it,
rather than just fnd humanness refected in it.
Ensure you have felt the shift in consciousness into this dreamy, watery style of thinking and
feeling before moving on. You should now be able to move freely into and out of the phenomenon
and carry something of its being in your consciousness.
STAGE THREE: SEEING-IN–BEHOLDING
Once you can shift your thinking into that fuid mode you can build up the phenomenon imaginatively through its changing forms. However, this still feels somewhat attenuated. It provides
the training of the imagination so that you can now move on to tuning in to the phenomenon as
it is, as a living whole, rather than as parts you bring together imaginatively. The element here is
air. For this, you need to move even further back from your ordinary way of engaging with the
world; you must even quiet your imaginative activity in order to make space for the phenomenon
to present itself.
You need to be like air, not fowing through the forms like water, but making them visible. Using
elemental language to describe these stages does not mean that we are looking for particular characteristics in a thing. You are not looking for airy aspects of the phenomenon; instead what you need
to do is to be airy in your own consciousness. Bockemühl describes the way the observer must be:
It is characteristic of air to expand in all directions, offering its own being and activity in order that the
being and activity of another can appear. Insofar as we move inwardly in accordance with this image