Star Wheel

Sensing The Round

A.N. Whitehead writes “The many become one and are increased by one” and “No thinker thinks twice”.

The work of Alfred North Whitehead is an “organic” philosophy that affirm the individual as being in the processing-relating world, and the world as process is in the individual. The world in the individual is bound tightly within the instinctual organ that lives as the physical memory. This memory of how to process data and turn it to purposeful action is an inheritance from a very deep lineage of antecedents. The individual in the world is to live as a symbolic “I” made from the realm of concepts, which will be the latest successor of collective experience. Between these “dipolar” extensions of the physical and symbolic there is an appreciation of what is wanting to become. This becoming is what Whitehead described as “prehension”. The physical perception cannot be fully taken from the symbolic, and the conceptual prehension cannot be complete without the physical ground of experience. There is no such view that is taken independently of these. The eternal object at their center is lent to each actual occasion, to give that eternity its own space and time. It could be seen as white light refracting into a full spectrum of perception.

Whitehead’s prehensions are a different attitude to seeing that is a radical departure from measuring the static properties as a stand-alone. The Five Eyes as described below is a complete perceptual cycle that takes different contextual elements of perception, and feeds these back on themselves. They individually compress parts of a perceptual frameworks, but together, they roll back the boundaries of awareness by extending the dipolar physical-symbolic prehension introduced by Whitehead’s organic philosophy. Their apertures open up to the four corners of the processional world. The first four set of eyes all have particular blind spots. The central, fifth eye is all seeing; it brings the many to one, and are increased by one. 

SPIRIT EYE reveals vitality. It appreciates the instinctive curiosity that is inherent to the learning organism. Leaving the invincible mother requires navigating the vast unknown. But vitality is naïve about the frightening power that its curiosity has over anxiety. Testing the softness underfoot requires a diligent root of survivability.

DREAM MIRROR EYE reveals validity. It appreciates that the physical has a sticky affinity with the conceptual. Extending the physical grasp into a conceptual map of the terrain requires empathy as well as abstraction. The mirror between the physical and conceptual is a vicarious recognition, the reflection never fully discloses the withdrawn, inner reality of a deeper program.

KARMIC EYE reveals vacuity. It appreciates the clarity that comes from expelling the socially constructed self. Returning to the diversions of the past, requires finding a large enough receptacle to dispose of the adopted identity. However, in the haste to shed the old suit to see it more clearly, the frayed points of its condition also need to be felt. The thinning at the knee and elbow tells of struggles to assert, and the pain of collapse. The garment can be shed, but the feelings need to be reclaimed.

LIFE PATTERN EYE reveals volition. It appreciates the upstream path is critically narrow, and small changes at the early stages leads to significant pools of experience downstream. An equal measure of criticism and validation leaves room for the relentless will of the Self to progress in its metamorphosis. Without recognizing the “turning points” that the Self has taken, the individual is left to nihilistic beliefs and pointless action.

SOUL EYE reveals vision. It validates as the alien onlooker that is adjacent to what is seen by the other four eyes. It brings its omnidirectional aperture to bear, and curates an autonomy that is grounded in physical and conceptual experience.