Sensing & Knowing: David Abram in conversation with Dougald Hine
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- Опубліковано 20 жов 2024
- A conversation filmed in Oxford in September 2010.
For more recent writings and conversations, follow my Substack, Writing Home:
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And my book, At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics & All the Other Emergencies is out in February 2023:
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Finally, if you enjoyed this conversation, do check out the Dark Mountain Project (dark-mountain.net) which was how David and I came to meet. He had read the Dark Mountain manifesto and got in touch with us. A text based on this conversation appeared the following year in Dark Mountain: Issue 2.
I am so very glad to see this important conversation available again. I've returned to it many times over the last handful of years and taken something new away each time.
These two people have a beautiful resonance that is a joy to see.....
The best thing here is the connection observed between these two people. They are amusingly completely detached from all the great rustling leaves, the breeze, the color of the skies etc. Layers and layers of words to overanalyze and obscure the experience of just being! It's like watching people with dementia happily chatter away together in their own little world. Being grounded is very simple. Just slow down, take a deep breath and take in everything about the moment you're in.
around 33:00, talking about the examples of watching dogs and babies (so true!) as experiences that go back for many generations and could possibly "ring a bell" or be a route back - after reading Unlearn, Rewild by Miles Olson I finally got the courage to bring home a fresh roadkill rabbit, wanting to feed the meat to my dogs and save the fur hide for myself. I thought it would be emotionally difficult or at least somewhat technically challenging but it was so incredibly intuitive, I had never done something like that yet everything came easily and made sense, the body slipped out of it's skin, and taking the time to carefully "flesh" the skin (the words "skinning" and "fleshing" make it sound horrific but it really wasn't) outside in the weather watching the clouds, doing something our ancestors have done for ages, and really just taking the time to do something slowly, made me feel so much better than I did before. Roadkill has always bothered me immensely, as a child I could never get used to it, and as an adult it's almost a metaphor for modern life: driving along in your own little bubble perfectly suited to your comfort it's possible to kill something you didn't even notice existed.
Intelligent conversation that is attuned to the Universal Intelligence by which their voices are being spoken, is indeed, every bit as resonant with the sensual, emotive frequency as is any more ‘emotive ‘ expression of the ONE. ❣️
Fascinating and important conversation - thanks for sharing
I love this. thank you so much for sharing....
please continue forever
Beautiful!
ps. also wanted to say I've been interested in the Dark Mountain Project for a while, and found this conversation by chance trying to look up David Abram, since his book "The Spell of the Sensuous" was recommended to me after reading "Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing" by Robert Wolff - that book is an amazing example of a culture (the Sng'oi of Malaysia) living in the richness of the present moment (in a nonviolent and ecologically sound way, too).
Beautiful and in the head. - More "male"? I didn't feel that I heard either of them express emotionally or in the imaginal from an animal somatic place in their bodies - in the landscape they are in - as in - "I feel......... this emotion, this color, this temperature, this texture, this imagery - this memory" etc. I like the part where Dougald asks about experiences that are layered deep in our indigenous animal memory - like making fire, telling stories, swimming, hunting, listening to birds, being in awe with new babies. I felt this kind of tracking is critical to rewilding ourselves.
theres another video of just David in Europe called sensing (mindfulness in nature)where David is very expressive
@gaiapalikaji, I understand what you are alluding too, and also noticed it later in the interaction, but I also very much loved their awareness at the beginning of what lies behind the words and the energy field that underlies it and animates everything. In a way, David felt to me like an artist, his way of speaking with closed eyes, connecting with the field and with his inner music and using the voice to speak his inner seeing out into the world.
I mean, the whole "reality" inside which they speak (and which they are part of) is a miracle, isn't it?
After all, all of this (you expressing your thoughts/song regarding a moving image appearing in an ephemeral space called a screen and me replying to your song with my own song), all of this is really an explosion of life, a celebration of life, isn't it?
At the end of the day, their whole interaction is pervaded by love (the substance/ground of everything), isn't it?
By the way, I'd highly recommend checking out Toni Packer and J.Krishnamurti. I never saw a more profound and deep inquiry/insight than their "type" of deep meditative experiential inquiry into our existence here, in this world. See for example, 'Toni Packer interviewed by Joan Tollifson'. Or read "krishnamurti's notebook'. Highly highly recommended.
And one other person the currently jumps to mind for me, is Jeff Foster (life without a centre), who takes deep awareness, sensitivity and compassion to a whole new level. Connecting to and deeply allowing (and loving) our innate wildness and innocence.
the wind and the leaves in the tree rise and fall with the dialogue. a multilogue :-)
Yes I was longing for them to bring in the talk of the trees and birds rather than talk over them. Do they really want to listen or or do their voices remain the final authority?
glorious
heavy and light
integrating senses: hearing (listening) and looking (at art). Fuller's portrait of Sir William Petty.
www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw04969/Sir-William-Petty
Beautiful stuff. I'd be interested to know if either David or Dougald has read any Bergson.I'm currently writing my MA dissertation on Bergson, and it strikes me that many of the ideas in this interview are pertinent to. A non-dualistic universe, an ecological, multiplicitious notion of time, animism, a theory of perception rooted in things rather than minds, a non-mechanistic image of nature, a decentralisation if "the human" ...
Thank you, Nicolas. I haven't read Bergson, though it wouldn't surprise me if David has, as he has a more thorough grounding in philosophy. Is there a particular text (or part of a text) that you would recommend as a route in to Bergson, in relation to the themes we talked about here?
Hi Dougald. The text that makes more sense in this context is probably Creative Evolution and/or Matter and Memory, but there's a thread throughout nearly everything he wrote. Its beautiful stuff once you crack it :)
Spell of the Sensuous cites Merleau-ponty fairly extensively, it's basically the theoretical foundation of the book, so I would also not be surprised if he's read Bergson.
Great discussion. I think psychedelics like psilocybin are a tool we can use for coming to terms with our mortality and opening up our vulnerabilities.
Thanks, Brady. You might enjoy this recent episode of the podcast I've been doing with Ed Gillespie. thegreathumbling.libsyn.com/the-great-humbling-s3e4-do-shrooms
it took a while to come around for me
rock on
masterclass
Does anyone know the name of the band playing at the beginning?
The General Assembly. The track is from their EP, Dark Mountain Music.
Dougald Hine Thanks. Nice track. This talk, by the way, is very refreshing, stimulating and erudite.
wise
I enjoyed this but, it really does have to be said, some of the rambling, waxingly poetic prose can begin to strain and feel...utterly masturbatory. In its own way this conversation feels exceedingly intellectualized, despite the constant, heavy application of strings of sensual adjectives. David Abram's writing can sometimes be a bit hard to follow for the same reason I'm sorry to say. Why do I make this observation? Just that you're going to have a hard time reaching people with this rather rarefied and precious manner of conveying what it is you mean to say. Of course, communicating in plain English might feel less sensual to you and therefore you might balk at the notion that your message could be simplified or made to be more, well, utilitarian, in its delivery. Regardless, I often listened to portions of this and thought to myself, "Ehhhhhh....errrrrr.....what was it I just heard? So, what can be practically taken from this other than the foggy notion that we've just listened in on something profound?"
1000% yes!!
Not totally sure what you mean. He is speaking very plain simple English, isn't he? That's what it sounds like to me. I didn't hear him use any difficult to understand words or expressions. In fact, it seemed to me like he took considerable pains to try to be as clear and precise as possible in his expression.
If you referring to the fact that at times he is pointing our attention to what lies behind the words and to the energy field that underlies it and animates everything, then that to me is simply a natural expression of being a sensitive and attuned human being (who lives in a culture that is programmed to be blind and insensitive, to both the outer and inner worlds)
At the end of the day, it seems to me that the way we perceive someone's expression all depends on what we are used to hearing and listening to, the type of 'cultural atmosphere' we live in. The VAST majority of expressions in our corporate-led culture are profoundly dumbed down, fast and insensitive, where real depth and inquiry is STRONGLY discouraged (both explicitly and mostly implicitly, through people's reactions to anything that has any kind of depth or substance to it).. and so obviously anything a bit more sensitive sounds too complicated when compared to base level the common expressions in our corporate immature idiotic insensitive shallow fast culture .
By the way, if looking for real depth and in-sight (at a level far deeper than what they touch upon here) that is profoundly visceral and intimate (not at all intellectual), I'd highly recommend checking out Toni Packer and J.Krishnamurti. I never saw a more profound and deep inquiry/insight than their "type" of meditative experiential inquiry into our existence here, in all its flavours. See for example the video 'Toni Packer interviewed by Joan Tollifson'. Or read "krishnamurti's notebook' or 'Freedom from the Known' by Krishnamurti. Highly highly recommended.
And one other person the currently jumps to mind for me, is Jeff Foster (life without a centre), who takes deep awareness, sensitivity and compassion to a whole new level. Connecting to and deeply allowing our experience, our innate wildness and innocence. Very NOT intellectual :)
@@Daniel-pr4uk completely. Well said. And also it’s only well said when one can “hear” (reading being an internal hearing) it in a way that translates to them. 5 years ago I may think the same as the first person commenting about the waxing… and through various changes, learnings, unlearning and tons of (unintended) self development can I now read and hear this as the beauty I now take it to be. The words and meanings didn’t change, simply my relation to those words is what shifted. ❤
This all sounds like a lot of meaningless woo.
Yawn