The Feeling Self
David Lorimer Center for Environmental Structure, 2004, 355 pp., $75 h/b ISBN 0 9726529 4 9 ‘Unless our world-picture itself is changed and replaced by another, more consistent with the felt reality of life in buildings and in our surroundings — the idea of life in buildings itself, even with all the ensuing revisions in architectural practice, will not be enough.’ The idea of the need for a shift in worldview will be familiar to most readers, but that of the felt reality of life in buildings will be less so, especially to those who have not read my reviews of the previous three volumes of this magisterial work. The domination of the mechanistic metaphor, especially in science, cuts us off from life and our feelings. Vitalism is a dirty word in science and the ideal of objective science is the dispassionate observer who does not allow any subjective feelings to get in the way. However, the experimenter effect in parapsychology demonstrates that our feelings – whether positive or negative – do play a part even in scientific experiments. Feelings also tend to run high in assessing evidence that runs contrary to established materialistic assumptions.

At this point it may be helpful to provide a brief recapitulation of the first three volumes. The first one, The Phenomenon of Life, explains the living structure in buildings and artefacts ‘which have life, and which support life, which are themselves alive.’ The second book, The Process of Creating Life, elaborates the nature of living processes and the stages through which living structures are dynamically created as buildings take shape. The third book, A Vision of a Living World, gives illustrated examples of living structures to be found in towns, buildings, gardens, rooms and works of art. The reader is able to develop a felt sense of the degree of life present in the structures, as well as understanding intellectually the foundations of this view. It becomes abundantly clear that there is very little life in many modern buildings. The mechanistic metaphor has been manifest in purely functional buildings in which we feel no sense of belonging, but rather a sense of impersonality and alienation. Moreover, we do not experience much joy if we work in a mechanistic fashion; we do not activate the heart.

The fourth book with its apt title The Luminous Ground, unfolds the innermost process lying behind the creation of living structure by tuning into the Self, which is recognised and reflected in nature and in great art. Alexander explains: ‘it is the living structure of buildings which awakens a connection with this personal feeling. The more that it appears in a building, the more it awakens this feeling in us. Indeed, we may say, truly, that a building has life in it to the extent that it awakens this connection to the personal.’ This feeling is one of wholeness, relatedness and belonging. It is the exact opposite of a feeling engendered by the statement that we live in a meaningless, accidental universe. At the beginning of the book, the author elaborates ten assumptions that underlie our present picture of the universe. He stresses both the strength of the present world picture and its weakness: ‘our present world picture has no place in it for the self. The self does not figure in the present world picture as a real thing. Nor does consciousness, nor does love, nor does the experience of unity.’

He discusses some scientific efforts to build an improved world picture in physics, nonlinear dynamics, systems theory and biology but does not feel that consciousness and the vital relation between self and matter are adequately represented. The rift identified by Whitehead remains: that between the mechanical material picture of the world and our intuitions about self and spirit, a rift that he contends has destroyed our architecture and is destroying us to. I don’t think that the philosophical picture is quite as bleak as he makes out. Goethean science based on developing a felt sense of the world (also the new animism of David Abrams and Stephan Harding). The work of Ravi Ravindra relating science and the sacred helps to integrate knowledge with being, and the notion of participatory reality (not mentioned in this book) is being developed by Chris Clarke, Richard Tarnas, Jorge Ferrer and others. In addition, Ken Wilber has attempted to provide an overall framework within which the various aspects of reality can be understood. At the end of the book, Alexander himself offers a modified cosmology that extends physics and includes the self as an integral element.

In a chapter on clues from the history of art, Alexander observes that many of our greatest works of art and architecture been created within the cultural context and cosmology of some religion. Furthermore, that special quality of life, when it is most profoundly expressed ‘has been done in a mystical-religious context.’ These works elicit in us what he calls ‘a special relatedness within ourselves’ – just think of the numinosity of Chartres Cathedral, for instance. The people who create such works are connected to the Ground of Being and, ‘as this connection occurs, a person becomes connected to all things, and at one and the same time more personal, more human, more transparent, and more peaceful.’ It follows that, in order to make a living structure we need to find ‘a new form of God, a new way of understanding the deepest origins of our experience… a vision of the universe in which meaning exists, in which a vision of relatedness and self have a primary place.’ As Alexander points out, we can immediately sense this spiritual depth in the exquisite Madonnas of Gentile de Fabriano (illustrated in full colour) or Duccio, Mozart’s Requiem or the ecstatic choruses of Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

The next chapter provides something of a tutorial on developing a sense of relatedness or affinity with nature and objects – dewdrops, trees, Korean tea bowls as a ‘mirror of the self’. This is a profound point: ‘the relatedness through which I feel that my own self and the tree in the field are directly connected is the most fundamental relation that there is…..the most vivid way in which I exist as a human being. I experience myself, as I truly am, a child of the universe, a creature which is undivided and a part of everything: a small extension of a greater and infinite self.’ (Mystically, I am of the same substance, ‘the I-like presence in the universe is real’). The opposite also applies, in that buildings lacking in living structure not only destroy our ability to feel relatedness through them but reduce our capacity to feel relatedness at all. This is the disconnected aesthetic and existential situation in which we find ourselves when surrounded by soulless modern buildings reflecting the mechanistic mindset.

The argument is taken one stage further by building on his notion of living structures consisting of a system of centres where each centre has some different degree of life that can be intuitively sensed. These centres are fundamental to the unfolding a vision and manifestation of wholeness. He now asserts that each centre is to some degree a picture of the self, or a being related to the self. This way of understanding is applied to the elements in Chartres Cathedral as sacred presences – sculptures, stained-glass, portals, flying buttresses, the columns in the nave and so on to the overall presence of the great cathedral itself. Each of these is a window through which the Ground can be intuited and invites the person to enter into relationship with it, thus enhancing our aesthetic integration and enabling us to touch eternity. The reason for this, Alexander explains, is that living structure is unified. It is that unity which is the aim of life. It is the unity which is created by living structure. For the artist or craftsman it follows that whatever you make must be a being’ Hence ‘the making of a living world cannot be separated from each person’s search for the true self.’ At a later stage, Alexander adds that creating wholeness is a healing and integrating process for the maker, as he himself has found. The search for wholeness and belonging may go some way towards explaining why people flock to mediaeval towns and cathedrals. Indeed, I read part of this book sitting in a bar in Bruges.

The next major section deals with colour and inner light. Inner light is defined as the colour quality that arises as something comes to life and reveals the I or Ground. The chapter is illustrated with buildings, paintings (especially Bonnard), carpets, ceramics, manuscripts, temples, gardens and living creatures. Just as the fifteen properties for creating living structure were explained in an earlier book, so in this chapter are the eleven colour properties which enable the intensity of the various centres to become more alive and unified. These include such properties as hierarchy, contrast, mutual embedding, variation, geometry and sequence of linked pairs. In this way, great works of art enable us to experience the inner light and give us a glimpse of a more profound and beautiful reality.

Related to the point that making wholeness heals the maker is the contention that ‘in order to create living structure, we must please ourselves.’ Living structure is pleasing by definition. Alexander encouraged his students to make things they really liked. He recounts a revealing incident in which he addressed another group of architecture students on the occasion of a final year review. He asked them if they really liked what they had produced. Students were up in arms at such a statement about the work they had been doing all year.

He went on to explain that the conditions of architecture actually made it very difficult for people to design things they liked. A clever design is not necessarily likeable. An important component of the modern predicament, in Alexander’s view, is that the 20th-century brought in a taboo against seeing true beauty or God. People did not want to see God and had become uncomfortable about the role of religion. For Alexander, true beauty is in touch with the I: ‘a structure with true beauty – the beauty which brings something in touch with the I - is, in effect, something in which we cannot avoid, in some part, seeing God.’

If the phenomenal world is God or spirit made manifest, then buildings, paintings and sculptures are to some degree spirit. The question is what spirit is manifest in the building. The aim of art for Alexander is to make something that does manifest spirit and which elicits a feeling of connection and relatedness (this is a similar philosophy to that of Shakti Maira whose book I reviewed a year ago). This brings Alexander to the necessary state of mind in which sacred art is manifest. The aim is that each building is made in such a way that it is a gift to God: ‘it belongs to God. It does not belong to you. It is made to serve God, to glorify God it is not made to glorify you. Perhaps, if anything it humbles you.’ The state of mind is one of non separateness in which it is possible to create an object with the same quality. It is the ultimate sense of connectedness in which ‘nothing is separate and everything is in harmony.’ And individual ego is set aside in order to realise the mystery and paradox that ‘as things become more unified, less separate, so also they become most individual, and most precious.’ A moment’s thought allows the reader to understand that this ethos is a million miles away from the egotistical self expression of much contemporary art. The intention and motivation are entirely different when the process of creation is consciously spiritual.

All this leads to the final chapter on a modified picture of the universe beyond the contemporary understanding that it is ‘a lifeless mathematical structure without spirit.’ The arguments are set out in some detail and are based on the premises that both wholeness and consciousness our physical structures in the universe. Alexander summarises his view of a modified physics incorporating the insights from these four volumes. This leads on to a statement of eleven new assumptions, corresponding to the ten mechanistic ones at the beginning of the book. Art is not merely pleasant or interesting, but has ‘an importance that goes to the very core of cosmology.’ In this kind of world, the way we shape things is not only fundamental to the spiritual condition of the world but also to our own spiritual development. For science, the self of observers comes back into the picture, as do their feelings.

Does Alexander succeed in his ambition of creating a new world picture? I have no doubt that anyone reading through these four volumes will find their perception and understanding profoundly modified by the process of reading and contemplating the many illustrations. It is as if one acquires a new sense or is put back in contact with a hidden depth of intuitive knowledge. I now use Alexander’s vocabulary of centres and am becoming accustomed to engaging my sense of belonging and wholeness in relation to buildings and the environment. Unless readers allow themselves to be modified in this way, I suspect that it might be possible to miss some of the central points in the book, .which cannot be understood or appreciated with our analytical faculty alone. In a wider cultural sense, I see these books as part of the emergence of a philosophy of participatory reality, as mentioned earlier in this review. The books also provide a theoretical and practical means of overcoming Whitehead’s rift between outer and inner: matter is alive and reflects the Self while the individual is an expression of the Ground and a creative centre of wholeness.