The McGilchrist Manoeuvre in the Immanent Metaphysics

The following is from Artem Zen’s interview with Forrest Landry on June 10, 2022. Artem Zen asks Landry what he has discovered and how this understanding has transformed him? Forrest Landry answers:

The what part is the Axioms and the Modalities [in the Immanent Metaphysics].

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/irvASRWTyuo?feature=shared&t=4432

Forrest Landry goes on describing how this discovery has transformed him:

When we’re looking at the relationship between the subjective and the objective, the relationship is a kind of interaction. I can talk about perceiver, perceived, and perceiving.

At first these are held as if they are concepts. … Instead of calling it metaphysics, I could have called it metaconcepts. … There’s a sense in which at first we experience the metaphysics, the Axioms, and the Modalities, as if they’re abstractions. We have these triples, and there’s all sorts of them, and they all connect together. And we can sort of use the understanding of one triple, in one domain, to better understand another triple, in another domain. The Axioms sort of characterize those patterns, and so on.

But at a certain point…you come to notice that you can’t regard the concepts of the subjective and the objective [as abstractions]—it’s your subjective and the now objective, and the relationship of perception as a process. … There is no such thing as a thing. All is process!

The process itself is essentially characterized by Axiom II, thinking about it is essentially characterized by Axiom I, and the transfusiveness of it, the sense in which it is at the ground of all things, is Axiom III. … And so, in a sense, these are no longer abstractions. You discover them to be very, very real in the very notion of your experience of the here and now. The concept of process as being, connecting doing and becoming. The being is more fundamental than doing and becoming.

We can think about and talk about doing. It’s observable [in] the same sort of sense that that which we perceive is observable, but the perceiver and the perceiving [are] not observable. I can’t perceive the perceiving, and I can’t perceive the perceiver. So of the totality of what is, only one third…is discussable,…is objective enough to be constructed in the forms and shapes, and therefore the content of dialogue. … The only things I can study in the library is the kind of stuff that can be written down in books. …

There’s a certain kind of knowing, a certain kind of knowledge that just doesn’t have enough structure. … It just can’t be described in language at all.

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/irvASRWTyuo?feature=shared&t=4452

Forrest Landry then describes what happens when we really take in these ideas and work with them:

When we start to make corrections and really start to take in these ideas—and work with…some degree of carefulness, some degree of real discernment, and real discipline—we begin to notice that these aren’t just concepts. They are things that are living, the very perception of the perceptions I’m having right now. I cannot not see them. … It’s not the abstract notion of being, it is the actual notion of being. It’s not the abstract notion of how do I know, it’s the process of knowing itself. … There’s a sense of connectedness in that, and wanting to maintain integrity around the process of perception that is emerging out of that process—not some sort of integrity from the outside-in, but from the inside-out. … The notion of meaningfulness, the notion of knowing, the notion of being are all the same.

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/irvASRWTyuo?feature=shared&t=4879

I am struck by how similar the movement Forrest Landry describes is to the McGilchrist manoeuver¹:

It’s like everything is exactly the way it has always been… except the way in which we’re holding those experiences completely change the context of how I bring myself into myself. Life is not at all the same.

—Forrest Landry https://youtu.be/irvASRWTyuo?feature=shared&t=5133

Note:
1. The McGilchrist manoeuvre refers to the hemispheric hypothesis developed by Iain McGilchrist in The Master and His Emissary. The manoeuvre is expressed as a “right, left, right” movement from 1) the presencing (right hemisphere) to 2) the re-presentation and analysis (left hemisphere), and then 3) back into an enriched and enhanced transcended perception.

Update 2024-04-24:
Quote added (the what part).

Related post:
Retrospective 2024-16