Part 3 - SPONTANEOUS EXPERIENCES

Tvergastein, Hardangervidda, Norway, June 1995
Interviewer: Jan van Boeckel, ReRun Producties
This interview was made for the documentary film The Call of the Mountain.

Let’s talk about the mountain Andersnatten. You once said that the troll... people experience it as being a troll. You said that was an appropriate gestalt for that mountain.

There is a mountain in southern Norway which has been used as an object for artists to paint, and it is quite clear that many artists or non-artists find that the shape is that of a troll. A big, big fellow, trees are the hair. And Gestalt thinking is such that this spontaneous perception of a troll is completely on par, is a completely adequate description of reality, as somebody saying: 'It is a heap of stones.' So as long as it is a spontaneous perception of a Gestalt. And a gestalt of course is then not only the shape of a troll but also the being as a troll. That is to say, you get then all the mythology about trolls into what you see. You don't see then a troll in the mountain. But what you see is a tremendously complex, culturally complex, thing.
And when I talk so much about gestalt, it is because I have this opinion that science, and I think especially about natural science, only asserts something about the abstract relations in reality. Things and phenomena, the relations between them. Not about the content of reality. The content of reality, you get directly through spontaneous experience. But the abstract relations which are so important in acting, when you act. If you see a mountain that seems to threaten you, to fall over you. And you start running. Then you have some error in abstract relations of a geographical kind. But the perception of the mountain threatening you, is a perception of reality. Whereas a perception of the physical relations of a mountain - geographical and physical -: they are only expressing relations between things. If you have a relation between two things, we call the relata, that which is such that you have a relation. But science does not talk about that at all. So it is a kind of critique of the place of science in your philosophy, in your life-philosophy. It has nothing to do with the content, except through abstract relations, and that is part of my philosophy, then. Which is: tremendous admiration for contemporary physical science and cosmology, tremendous beauty in this building, but it has to do with abstract relations, and nothing with the content of reality.

Why do you stress so much the spontaneous experience, the immediate experience? What's important about it?

Because, that's what is there. Whereas the reflection then starts to analyze these things. And through analysis, you get to know about the structure. But if there were no spontaneous experiences, you have nothing. What you experience that's... then you have contact, direct, with reality.

Before the analytic mind starts to interfere.

Yes. And not destroy so much as you understand the relations which are absolutely necessary to do anything. But as long as we believed in atoms, we could think of reality being atomic. But then the atoms was like whole, let me say, planet earth systems. You had then something interior there, the electrons, and then you start analyzing the electrons and so you get into something that you don't whether it is mathematics or physics. The quarks, the strange particle. And you have nothing left of physical reality as independent reality.

In your philosophy on ecology, these spontaneous experiences are also quite important, isn't it? The immediate appreciations.

Well, in my work in the relation between ecology and philosophy, has to do also with this concept of spontaneous experience, because people would for instance say: 'We make a road now through this forest, and it's through the centre of the forest. But, the square meters of this road is tremendously small. The square meters of it.' But then I would say: 'It goes through the heart, the heart of this forest. And this is the heart of the forest!' 'That's nonsense. We have a road here and it is so small part of the forest that it makes no difference.' So the spontaneous experience, when you get into the forest, deeper and deeper, you have this feeling of being deep in the forest. And if you then hit the road, this completely disappears. And then people say: 'Well, that's your imagination. There is no heart here.' But if you start this way, saying there is no heart, just certain distances, you get into a worldview which resembles that of Immanuel Kant, the great philosopher. You end up saying: 'Nature is without colours, even without shapes, and even without cause and effect. Because relations of cause and effect is something created by humans. So there is nothing there. In short: there is nothing in nature in itself! You have no access to nature in itself.' You see, you end up in complete nonsense. That's what many people do who are in philosophy.
Even in contemporary so-called post-modernism, nature is something, only a limiting thing, which you never can really see or appreciate. You appreciate only your own ways of thinking and feeling and you are completely determined by your culture, and so on. So, this protection of nature is a sham in a sense. There is something there, but you don't have any access to it. So it is undermining for some people, the believe in protection of nature as a fast undertaking for the next century, for the next two centuries.
So, that's important to see, what you experience spontaneously in a rich natural setting, I call it, not wilderness but free nature, that is to say, where it is not dominated by human presence. What you see there is infinitely complex. Whereas when you look at something you have made, you see the instrumentality; what it is made for, and it's so much poorer in content. So this is how I connect then my philosophy of nature and my general philosophy, through this term gestalt.

A gestalt like 'the heart of the forest', is it wise to articulate that further, what you mean by that, or should you leave it as it is?

Not much can be said, I think. You just say: 'All right, we go into the forest. We go. We now spend a week out in forest country.' And I would say on Wednesday or Thursday, in the week: 'Now, we are in the heart of the forest. Where is the limit, where do you think is the nearest where you get out?' Maybe there, maybe there. It's far away to the borders and there is just forest. Nothing reminds you of anything else. So I say: 'This feeling you have now of distance, of the power of the forest, that you are immersed in the forest and it is something so much greater than yourself. So much greater. You are in the heart of the forest. And here shouldn't be any roads - ha-ha!

The heart of the forest would change, if there was a road nearby?

Yes. There would not be a heart. If it is cut into, and it is very big, the two parts would have a heart. But cutting and cutting, there will no heart left. [grins]

A similar gestalt of the Sami people, 'Lat Elva leve'

Yeah, the Sami people, they astonished me; one young men there, a Sami young man, who was caught by the police, standing where they should make a road. It was part of a direct action in favour of the river that should not be used for hydro-electric dams. And the police: 'Why do you stay here? You are not supposed to stay here. Why do you stay here?' 'Well, this here, is part of myself.' It was the area of the river where his reindeer were crossing and he had been since boyhood. And to stay there, and to be there, so close connection with his self, that he could say: 'It is part of my self.' And that is typical of deep ecology movement, that you feel yourself is hurt when they hurt the place with which you identify. You identify with a place in such a sense, that cutting up and destroying, it's like cutting yourself. And it is cutting yourself. Because your self is much more than your ego. The self has to do with that with which you identify. First of all people of course, your nearest. You identify with your nearest. And it is part of yourself, this relation you have to your nearest. If you ask... If I ask you: 'Who are you?' Who are you, basically? Who are you?' You will answer with these close relations. Also with your job, your social status. But you will say something about that with which you identify. And this Sami young man was identifying so much with this place, that, thinking that there was a big road here, would destroy something for him, in here, something in here.
So Self-realization, as I use in ecological philosophy, the self here is not the tiny ego nor the social self, but what I call the ecological self, that is to say, the total reality in which you are immersed, is your self, which you then realize through your identifications and the way you live.

If I ask you: Who is Arne Naess? Where does he identify himself with? What would you say?

Well, in a sense when it gets to nature, I identify with the area here, so that anything that is ruined here affects my self.
When I have, in order to not make stupid tourists fall down the cliffs here, they made a lot of identifications, green big, kind of wooden things, along here. That destroyed a little for me. So I am glad, so I made a lot of noise in order to get them taken away. And insisting that you don't go on top of Hallingskarvet in wintertime, without knowing exactly what you do. So if you are new to Hallingskarvet, you go skiing with somebody else, who knows Hallingskarvet.

But there are not so much big flowers for instance around here, were you can identify with.

Yes, I identify with tiny, tiny flowers, and that has to do probably with my feeling of helplessness, between age four and fourteen. So I liked very much to be together with tiny shrimps. You have, especially before now, there are mostly... pollution has taken away. But tiny shrimps, who would then come to me when I was standing quiet in the water, with the water to my knees, not, well, and get under my foot. I could just do like this and they were killed. Or they would come and pick on my... to find out something about me. They are very curious looking and feeling around you. So I felt I was together with them. And later, I could have something to eat for them. Sometimes I would take them up in my hand and let them then go. So I was together and I identified very much with a shrimp.

Did you feel tiny yourself, at that time?

Oh, yes.

Why was that?

Well, I felt lost in a sense. I had no mother and no father and I had only one friend and he disappeared very soon, because his father were having a job somewhere else. So, I was rather lonely, and found such... I had such a good time, weeks after weeks in the summertime, in shallow water. And I liked the tiny crabs. I said to my real mother, then: 'I have found the world's smallest crab!' But I didn't really have found that, but they were suddenly very small. And the smaller they were, the more I identified. So, then I went to be successful in a social sense, but I was successful with these tiny creatures. And later with the more grand nature.

When you, later-on, went to the sessions of psychoanalysis, did you learn more about this feeling of tinyness?

Yes, we we started with discovering my infantile neurosis, sleeplessness and not being willing to eat, and so on. We started with that, of course. But we... And we found some things of value for who I am. Fourteen months every day, except Sundays. And then I gave up two months earlier. The analyst would like that I should be an analyst myself. He was then at outlook for people who would be good analysts, and he thought I would be a good analyst.
And I had to... and he asked me to study psychiatry and I went to a psychiatric clinic in Vienna. There was such misery that I never got over it. I had two special patients. I had white coat and was introduced as a doctor. But I was no doctor of course, but I was introduced. And I had long, long talks in the evening with an extremely unhappy patient. Extremely unhappy, who tried to commit suicide and had unhappily been caught in Donau, big river, discovered and brought to land. And then, some time after again, they get this terrible kind of anxiety, with shifts, and into the clinic again. And I had to do with the absolute, most miserable human beings that could be found, I think.

What did you learn from that?

That one never should say that life is wonderful. But you could say that your own life is very good. But never say: 'Life is wonderful.' Because there is thousands of people who would like to die as soon as possible. And who are in suffering, not only physical pain, but complete suffering, with a panic. In panic of anxiety such that you have froth around your mouth and just like this for hours. Now they inject... if there is a doctor they would inject something and they just fall asleep. But I have seen too much of... too much probably, of extreme suffering. To say: Life is wonderful. Pfff! 

Did it also teach you something about compassion?

Yes, because when I was sitting near a patient in such terror, just sitting there, within... not even touching, you know, not holding a hand even, after when they get a little better, or get an injection, they were tremendously grateful. So you can do something, it doesn't cost more than just sit with somebody in extreme... and it has... So, compassion, not... need not have strong compassion, even. But just be there. Something relate... relating to something. Now you get injections and so most places, but of course in Third World you have the same going on, people in torture and people in extreme suffering otherwise.

© Jan van Boeckel, ReRun Producties

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