Mm, transjective is a new word for me and I really like it. I always think of those spaces as emergent phenomena, and that's pretty central to my personal religion if I have one. It makes sense to me that God emerges from humanity as the mind emerges from the interaction of neurons, as the relationship emerges from the interactions of the people.
I'm a couple therapist and I tend to think of my "client" as that third thing, the emergent thing, that's the focus of treatment. And I'm thinking about what you said about memory here, because I certainly see that reconstructed contextual aspect of it on a daily basis. Memory is far, far from the videotape it often feels like it is, and is always reliant on co-creation with the reality around us, as well as state-dependent, emotion-dependent, both in terms of formation and retrieval. Which is why, I think, it is so distressing to people when we each remember the same event very differently. It makes me very curious what the emergent relationship remembers.
Wow, there is so much here that resonates with me! Thank you. Thus, I just wanted to join the conversation… my apologies in advance for the long response.
First of all, from what we know of the physiology of the Heart, as a mechanical, electrochemical organ--it generates an electrochemical magnetic field both inside the body and beyond. (Similar to the Earth's poles and stronger than the brain's) That energetic field surrounding the heart has been measured at a distance of up to 10 ft from the body. It is this field that first encounters and interacts with other life. (humans, plants, trees, forests, and oceans while grieving). You don't have to even touch another person to sense these fields--part of it is just attention. So, in addition to being a mechanical pump that moves the blood around our bodies, the heart is also an organ of perception, specifically of the feeling and intuitive sense. It is how we feel and sense the world. When your heart’s force field interacts with someone else’s heart field, there is a unique, sometimes ongoing exchange of energy. Sometimes that interaction of one’s energy with another’s can feel all sorts of different ways. For example, when you have a “negative vibe” about someone, it might be that the way those energies interact creates dissonance. On the other hand, when you meet someone and feel an almost instant connection or as though you’ve known them for years, it might be that your heart fields together have an affinity for one another and create resonance. There’s way more down this rabbit hole but I just wanted to bring this idea to the table.
And now while I’m not familiar with the term, transjective, itself, in Naturopathic and botanical medicine, we have a similar concept, though alas no good word to specifically describe it. Stephen Harrod Buhner has written about it widely, most substantially in The Lost Language of Plants and in The Secret Teachings of Plants where he exposes the dominant “universe as machine” mentality infecting most Western minds vs older epistemologies that saw the “universe as living breathing dynamic entity” that we all participate in together. He makes the case for why this split in ourselves, our minds, and our world and the accompanying indoctrination into universe-as-machine has wounded us and our world so deeply. It has become a driving force in much of the destruction we inflict upon all life.
“For the past five hundred years the trend has been, increasingly, to view matter as devoid of spirit, intelligence, soul, or purpose. A lump of rock—merely inanimate matter, a resource or something on which to stub your toe, certainly not something filled with soul.”
In Buhner’s understanding (and most Native American and Eastern traditions), this concept of the space between flows naturally from an understanding of the sacred in all. “In earlier times, it was commonly understood, irrespective of culture or historical period, that the world was alive, that all things possessed souls, that human beings were only one of a multitude of ensouled beings, and that there was a constant soul energy going out of and into our bodies as we traveled through the world.” In these older epistemologies they all held remarkably similar ideas spanning many cultures and time. Again according to Buhner,
“Most asserted the following:
1. At the center of all things is spirit. In other words, there is a central underlying unifying force in the Universe that is sacred in nature.
2. All matter is made from this substance. In other words, the sacred manifests itself in physical form.
3. Because all matter is made from the sacred, all things possess a soul, a sacred intelligence, or logos.
4. Because human beings are generated out of this same substance, it is possible for human beings to communicate with the soul or intelligence in all other matter and for those intelligences to communicated with human beings.
5. Human beings were ignorant when they arrived here, and the powers of the Earth and the various intelligences in all things began to teach them how to be human. This is still true.
6. Parts of the Earth can manifest more or less sacredness, just like human beings. A human being can never know when some part of the Earth might begin expressing deep levels of sacredness or begin talking to him or her. Therefore it is important to cultivate attentiveness of mind.
7. Human beings are only one of the many life-forms of the Earth, neither more nor less important than the others. Failure to remember this can be catastrophic for individuals, nations, and peoples.”
(All quotes Buhner, from The Transformational Power of Fasting). That’s all for now, hello all, I’m Jenn, new around these parts…
Actually, Martin Buber discussed his concept called "the between" about 100 years ago in his classic book "I and Thou". Maurice Friedman, his close friend and disciple wrote a book in 1955 titled "Martin Buber:The life of dialogue". In that book he applies Buber's thought to a variety of subjects including epistemology, psychology, ethics, social philosophy anthropology, the problem of evil and much more. I have been teaching and also learning this as well for decades now. This is the true mystery of Christ which ultimately reveals how the two become one flesh, a very heavenly, and a very earthly realization at once. I refer to myself as an "organic mystic".
Oh how timely! You might enjoy listening to the recording of my livestream with Emily Rapp Black yesterday about her book I WOULD DIE IF I WERE YOU; we talk about betweenity as well as an entire chapter Horizons of Meaning and I just think you’d love it as well as the book. Thank you for giving me even more food for thought about these spaces and how they interact and are foundational to creating on all levels of being.
I never heard of the concept of transjectivity before, or of Bracha Ettinger, so I found this essay very illuminating - thank you so much!
Transjectivity - the space between - reminds me of K.E. Løgstrup, a Danish theologian-philosopher, who interprets the space between two people as full of trust, mistrust, love, requests, and demands. He says that we hold each other's lives in our hands, and with this follows the demand to care for it. This demand is spontaneous and situational, and often unworded. It requires trained attention ("skøn") to what the other person may need. The space between, thus, is a space of ethical confrontations.
A lot to unpack here. It was interesting to me how many faces crossed my mind as I read this who are no long with us. And, the faces that remain who were impacted by their presence.
Impermanence is a fast moving beast. I have often wondered how technology has sped its pace up.
Mm, transjective is a new word for me and I really like it. I always think of those spaces as emergent phenomena, and that's pretty central to my personal religion if I have one. It makes sense to me that God emerges from humanity as the mind emerges from the interaction of neurons, as the relationship emerges from the interactions of the people.
I'm a couple therapist and I tend to think of my "client" as that third thing, the emergent thing, that's the focus of treatment. And I'm thinking about what you said about memory here, because I certainly see that reconstructed contextual aspect of it on a daily basis. Memory is far, far from the videotape it often feels like it is, and is always reliant on co-creation with the reality around us, as well as state-dependent, emotion-dependent, both in terms of formation and retrieval. Which is why, I think, it is so distressing to people when we each remember the same event very differently. It makes me very curious what the emergent relationship remembers.
I saw the word ”transjective” the other day in an also interesting essay by Böhme:
https://substack.com/@jessicaboehme/note/p-208290270?r=5qpszc&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Ooh, thank you!
Transjective is liminal space??
Wow, there is so much here that resonates with me! Thank you. Thus, I just wanted to join the conversation… my apologies in advance for the long response.
First of all, from what we know of the physiology of the Heart, as a mechanical, electrochemical organ--it generates an electrochemical magnetic field both inside the body and beyond. (Similar to the Earth's poles and stronger than the brain's) That energetic field surrounding the heart has been measured at a distance of up to 10 ft from the body. It is this field that first encounters and interacts with other life. (humans, plants, trees, forests, and oceans while grieving). You don't have to even touch another person to sense these fields--part of it is just attention. So, in addition to being a mechanical pump that moves the blood around our bodies, the heart is also an organ of perception, specifically of the feeling and intuitive sense. It is how we feel and sense the world. When your heart’s force field interacts with someone else’s heart field, there is a unique, sometimes ongoing exchange of energy. Sometimes that interaction of one’s energy with another’s can feel all sorts of different ways. For example, when you have a “negative vibe” about someone, it might be that the way those energies interact creates dissonance. On the other hand, when you meet someone and feel an almost instant connection or as though you’ve known them for years, it might be that your heart fields together have an affinity for one another and create resonance. There’s way more down this rabbit hole but I just wanted to bring this idea to the table.
And now while I’m not familiar with the term, transjective, itself, in Naturopathic and botanical medicine, we have a similar concept, though alas no good word to specifically describe it. Stephen Harrod Buhner has written about it widely, most substantially in The Lost Language of Plants and in The Secret Teachings of Plants where he exposes the dominant “universe as machine” mentality infecting most Western minds vs older epistemologies that saw the “universe as living breathing dynamic entity” that we all participate in together. He makes the case for why this split in ourselves, our minds, and our world and the accompanying indoctrination into universe-as-machine has wounded us and our world so deeply. It has become a driving force in much of the destruction we inflict upon all life.
“For the past five hundred years the trend has been, increasingly, to view matter as devoid of spirit, intelligence, soul, or purpose. A lump of rock—merely inanimate matter, a resource or something on which to stub your toe, certainly not something filled with soul.”
In Buhner’s understanding (and most Native American and Eastern traditions), this concept of the space between flows naturally from an understanding of the sacred in all. “In earlier times, it was commonly understood, irrespective of culture or historical period, that the world was alive, that all things possessed souls, that human beings were only one of a multitude of ensouled beings, and that there was a constant soul energy going out of and into our bodies as we traveled through the world.” In these older epistemologies they all held remarkably similar ideas spanning many cultures and time. Again according to Buhner,
“Most asserted the following:
1. At the center of all things is spirit. In other words, there is a central underlying unifying force in the Universe that is sacred in nature.
2. All matter is made from this substance. In other words, the sacred manifests itself in physical form.
3. Because all matter is made from the sacred, all things possess a soul, a sacred intelligence, or logos.
4. Because human beings are generated out of this same substance, it is possible for human beings to communicate with the soul or intelligence in all other matter and for those intelligences to communicated with human beings.
5. Human beings were ignorant when they arrived here, and the powers of the Earth and the various intelligences in all things began to teach them how to be human. This is still true.
6. Parts of the Earth can manifest more or less sacredness, just like human beings. A human being can never know when some part of the Earth might begin expressing deep levels of sacredness or begin talking to him or her. Therefore it is important to cultivate attentiveness of mind.
7. Human beings are only one of the many life-forms of the Earth, neither more nor less important than the others. Failure to remember this can be catastrophic for individuals, nations, and peoples.”
(All quotes Buhner, from The Transformational Power of Fasting). That’s all for now, hello all, I’m Jenn, new around these parts…
Coincidentally, I re-published an essay here the other day touching on the ”realm between”:
https://saraekenstierna.substack.com/p/life-as-a-flow?r=5qpszc&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
Actually, Martin Buber discussed his concept called "the between" about 100 years ago in his classic book "I and Thou". Maurice Friedman, his close friend and disciple wrote a book in 1955 titled "Martin Buber:The life of dialogue". In that book he applies Buber's thought to a variety of subjects including epistemology, psychology, ethics, social philosophy anthropology, the problem of evil and much more. I have been teaching and also learning this as well for decades now. This is the true mystery of Christ which ultimately reveals how the two become one flesh, a very heavenly, and a very earthly realization at once. I refer to myself as an "organic mystic".
Oh how timely! You might enjoy listening to the recording of my livestream with Emily Rapp Black yesterday about her book I WOULD DIE IF I WERE YOU; we talk about betweenity as well as an entire chapter Horizons of Meaning and I just think you’d love it as well as the book. Thank you for giving me even more food for thought about these spaces and how they interact and are foundational to creating on all levels of being.
I never heard of the concept of transjectivity before, or of Bracha Ettinger, so I found this essay very illuminating - thank you so much!
Transjectivity - the space between - reminds me of K.E. Løgstrup, a Danish theologian-philosopher, who interprets the space between two people as full of trust, mistrust, love, requests, and demands. He says that we hold each other's lives in our hands, and with this follows the demand to care for it. This demand is spontaneous and situational, and often unworded. It requires trained attention ("skøn") to what the other person may need. The space between, thus, is a space of ethical confrontations.
A lot to unpack here. It was interesting to me how many faces crossed my mind as I read this who are no long with us. And, the faces that remain who were impacted by their presence.
Impermanence is a fast moving beast. I have often wondered how technology has sped its pace up.