Those who have arrived at Henri Bortoft's new book, Taking Appearance Seriously, must accept the risk that after reading it, they will never "see" things quite the same ever again. The book is a challenge, arising from Goethean thought and so-called continental philosophy, to all our neuronally embedded habits and "attractors" -- to invoke Allan Combs' nice mapping of chaos theory on to psychology. For a start, once you have read the book, you will probably before too long, once the floodwaters have receded, want to read it again.
Floodwaters? Yes, water played a significant part in the emergence of Henri's thought and teaching. A key image lies in the phrase "upstream". He uses this notion vividly in his exposition of how to dissolve our clotted habits of thought in perceiving events and language, nearly all of which arise in our consciousness as if "downstream", that is, already formed, patterned, without doubt or challenge. His own vision of "upstream" thinking came upon him as he was about to give a course for which, he suddenly realised, he was totally unprepared. He was standing on a bridge over a stream, lost in dismal thought about what he was to do, looking down the flow of the river. Then he turned and faced towards the descending waters for a few moments and then, suddenly, in a flash of inspiration saw how different was the experience of looking "upstream" at the waters not yet arrived but already arriving. With this single insight, he realised he could explain the difference between perceiving events and language as they come to us, and accepting them as already givens.
With this beautiful philosophical insight, poetic in its force, we have a tool with which to begin to become aware of our own habits of thought, our own tame acceptance of language and concepts which we have perhaps never questioned, and our own lack of real dialogue in communicating with others. These are all themes which I explore through the questing figure of young Prince Fion in my book King Abba. Fion starts from the problem in his mind, inspired by looking around him at the vast palace library, that, although we speak of "knowledge", we have no real idea of what it is or where it comes from. Surely it must have existed somewhere before it arrived in all these volumes, he says to himself.
This is the starting point for a hugely important journey, one that beckons to all of us.
CJM, December 10, 2012
