PARTICIPATORY CONSCIOUSNESS
(an updated essay to address our urgent times).
In this essay, written in 1997 during my years as doctoral candidate, I begin by noting that many disciplines today seem to accept in theory that the forms of the familiar world in which we live depend upon human mental activity; that is to say we participate somehow in bringing the familiar world into existence. I go on to describe an almost impossible obstacle in the way of bringing this knowledge into actual experience. This obstacle is the “fact” of being separate. It seems impossible, on the basis of ordinary experience, to overcome the habit of regarding objects as utterly independent of our mental activity, modern theory notwithstanding. I attempt to show how this obstacle can be overcome in lived experience, and how such an achievement can open us up to the possibility of a transformed relationship to the world, one that may properly be called, “participatory consciousness” or final participation, as Owen Barfield says.
PARTICIPATORY CONSCIOUSNESS
