2.5
It’s almost as though, when we undergo this transformation, the outline of things acts as a fulcrum or hinge on which the world transforms into this other world that also fits the outlines just so.
I say “almost” because world and things are intricately and intimately connected. They’re both part of a mutual gathering of being,[1] which means that things are always determined as things from within their context that is the world. The world is the way all things hang together; and the world is never to be found except in things.
World is not only sets of pragmatic relations (§2.4), for different engagements with things in a total context entail different understandings of things more generally. I’ll call this the ontological gathering of beings: things are gathered in a world as ready-to-hand within particular understandings of being, Dasein, and so on, which are based on how being appears. Pragmatic engagement entails an understanding of what a thing is, and how it relates to oneself and other beings. It entails a particular way we are immersed in beings and a particular way that they get taken up.
And so, I say “almost” because, if we’re speaking of transforming the world, this makes sense only if we’re also thinking of transforming things; a transformation of things wouldn’t leave their outlines intact, not in the way we currently understand them. There may not be a consistency of things between gatherings, for a thing in one world may not be a thing in another. Another way to put this is that the outlines are part of the world that undergoes transformation.
“The experience of understanding something is always the experience of a gestalt — the dawning of an aspect that is simultaneously a perception or reperception of the whole.”[2]
“The fundamental ‘formula’ of Gestalt theory might be expressed in this way: There are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole.”[3]
The transformation seems to require concentration and stilled breath, and is easier in particular forests or on particular blocks, in part, because of their familiarity. But what does this mean? It has to do with a certain way that a space, an environment, certain relations have opened up and cleared a space for you to be in; familiarity involves a deepening of relations. But there are plenty of familiar environments within which the transformation doesn’t occur, and I can undergo the transformation in unfamiliar places. It has something to do with the particular relations offered and opened by the particular place.
One is touched by things in their particularity when one is touched: this isn’t simply tautological. We pass by things all the time without paying them attention or noticing them, or, noticing them only as example of a general or universal phenomenon. It’s less common for us to encounter things in their raw particularity. When we’re touched by them, when we notice them, we’re touched by them: we can be opened to them and drawn into their particularity.
The exposure of particularity can enable a space to grow within which a transformation becomes possible. As though we’re opened to a whole through particularity. As though opening to a particular thing can cause a transformation in our world.
For instance, there are particular trees, more expressive trees, that enable this transformation more readily than others.
[1] Martin Heidegger, “Language,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2001), p. 197–200, 203–4. While Heidegger arrives at this conclusion through the lens of language, I’m setting language aside for now.
[2] Zwicky, W&M, LH2.
[3] Max Wertheimer, “Gestalt Theory,” in A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology, ed. and trans. Willis D. Ellis (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1938), p. 2, quoted in Zwicky, W&M, RH78.