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The Symphony of Sentience, in Cosmos and Life: In Memoriam A.-T.T.

Olga Louchakova-Schwartz
olouchakova@gmai.com

[Lecture delivered at the 64th World Phenomenology Congress organized by The World
Phenomenology Institute and International Society of Phenomenology and Sciences of Life
(Macerata, Italy) and Catholic University of the Sacred Heart , Milan, Italy, Largo Gemelli
1 October 1-3, 2014]
[Prepublication DRAFT Oct 3 2014, Agathos, DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION]

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.
Tennyson

In this tribute to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, I will examine whether phenomenology, as a
cognitive enterprise of sentience, extends beyond the death of the physical body. In the
First Movement, Allegro, I will set the stage by drawing distinctions between sentience as
viewed in the Phenomenology of Life and intentionality of consciousness as viewed in
cognitive phenomenology, which features a strong legacy of Husserls ideas. In the Second
Movement, Moderato, I will follow the Tymienieckian thread of sentience in the labyrinth
of life in order to show the ontopoietic patterns of complexity and emergence in animate
and inanimate nature. I will establish a link between the Phenomenology of Life and
complexity theory. As the dance of nonlinear complexity of the brain and the so called
qualia of thought unfolds in the Third Movement, Minuet, the informational patterns of
consciousness, cosmos and life are recognized as sentience. Whence, sentience is not a
property of the human brain, but rather, is borrowed from the cosmos and appropriated as
the self in the human condition; inter-subjectivity is a derivative of sentience, and
subjectivity is an instance of inter-subjectivity. Since sentience brings with it intuition of
life, intuition continues in dying and has no reason not to continue beyond. In the Fourth
Movement, Finale Glorioso, I will describe patterns of sentience in the souls final ascent,
and honor the intuitional gifts which proceed from the passage of a great soul.



In her magnificent creation, The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life, Book II, Christo-
Logos, Metaphysical Rhapsodies of Faith, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka takes a turn from the
Phenomenology of Life to the Philosophy of Life. In this book, she brings up the theme of
creativity, and the theme of the sacred. These Metaphysical Rhapsodies of Faith are a

soliloquy. The following next book of the Analecta Husserliana series, Art, Literature and
the Passion of the Skies, the same theme of beauty, creativity and the sacred is developed by
a whole group of writers; now, this themes are treated in dialogue, in relationship. Why
does the theme of beauty and creativity emerges with persistence in the last writings of
this philosopher, and what kind of meaning does it carry with regard to renaming the
Phenomenology of Life as the Philosophy of Life?

In the existential, psychological contexts, beauty is the agent which lifts the veils of

conventional ego, and permits to see beyond the habits of perception. Likewise, creativity
serves the same purpose of transcendence of the ordinary boudaries,. Creativity breaks
down the cultural consensus trance. According to Sufism, beauty is an alchemical agent
which transforms the soul, and prepares it for the apprehension of the most beautiful of all
conditions available to human beings. Against all expectations, this condition, according to
Sufism, is death. In the all-encompassing expanse of Tymienieckas writing, until recently
the matter of death remained sort of veiled from her illuminating intuition. Now, in the
context of her recent departure, this question is in the front lines of our inquiry. And
especially, we want to ask what kind of value does the death of a philosopher-saint bring
our knowledge, and to the overall unfolding of life? Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka indicated
many times that the logos of philosophical interrogation is not contained within the reason
alone, nor is such logos of the carnal human making. The Interrogation follows much
deeper, much more foundational logos in the unfolding of life. This leaves us questioning
whether this upsurge of the beauty and the sacred in her writings, and the shift from the
Phenomenology of life to the Philosophy of Life, is a separate standing philosophical insight,
or whether it should be considered in context of Anna-Teresa Tymienieckas imminent

departure? Is this change of the name a simple re-naming, a mere re-categorization of an

already completed philosophical project: or, does the change of the name signify a new
development of philosophy, and what kind of development this is?

Obviously, dying radically changes ones capability of subjective self-reporting. As a

phenomenologist of life, is there a way to understand not just the meaning of mortality, but
the event itself? Can death be considered as a subjectively lived phenomenon? Can
intuition grasp deaths representation in consciousness in the same manner it grasps life
per se, in presentive intuition, as opposed to the meaning of life or eidetic intuition of life?
To what degree, one may ask, dying or death is available to the subjective self-reporting,
and to the phenomenological investigations? Or are we in a paradox of terms because life,
and with it, the phenomenology of life, ends up where death begins?

It do appears to the natural attitude that death is available only in the analysis of its

meaning. The matter of death brings up inevitable speculation, meaning-bestowal,

ciphering. Perhaps, death is not visible in itself, but only in relation, i.e. with relative to life.
Death is not self-subsistent; its facticity evaporates in the context of larger unfolding of life
whereby emergence of new stages depends on the removal of preexisting conditions. To
address death in a phenomenological study, it has to be a particularized and placed in the
existential contexts of specific human life. Then, perhaps, we can zoom into it, we can
phenomenologize death. The overarching lofty vistas of the Phenomenology of Life are
humanized for us by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka; she translates her insights into the
existential contexts, places them in a psychospiritual horizon. In life as the human life, and
especially for a phenomenologist, death is tantalizing; one wishes to interrogate death

directly, and not only to meet the great horrible Yama of Indo-Iranian legends face-to face
(as that will certainly happen), but to describe his appearance . Like Shvetaketu in Katha
Upanishad, the Philosopher-Phenomenologist draws from this impending final act of her
phenomenological interrogations the understanding of life, of human predicament, of the
logos of the soul. Like Ibn Arabis Jesus, she witnesses and she testifies; and akin to Savitri
of the Indian legend by the same name, she rectifies human condition from its enduring
illusions of finality. Her message is of the souls transcendence of the carnal beginnings;
and of the brotherhood of those who turn to their internal ontopoietic source to find the
truth. The phenomenology of Life takes an existential-transcendental turn to become the
Philosophy of Life. In this turn, the discussion of beauty, creativity and souls
transcendental destiny are tied together. The transcendental-existential turn has to be
contextualized in the light of Tymienieckas departure. We have here not a Hadot-ian
philosophy as a way of life, abut rather, way of lifend death as philosophy. The temporal
extension of philosophical inquiry combines the recorded phenomenological investigations,
an intuitional switch of the living horizons of inquiry, and an actual life event, which is
death. In this case, this death should be considered as an act of phenomenal consciousness
in which communicological acts and the acts of living are indivisible as a crystal of salt.
Anna-Teresa Tymienieckas philosophical expression is one with the events of her life; and
therefore the difference between the written and the lived disappears.
This new direction, this existential-humanistic-transcendental- transnatural turn,
what place does it occupy in the overall Phenomenology of Life? Like many philosophers of
direct intuition, both Husserl and Tymieniecka began their philosophical inquiry with the
psychologically charged, introspectionist agendas. Now, an expert in phenomenological

investigations and the Master-Philosopher herself, Tymieniecka revisits her intellectual

beginnings. The grounds for this completing round of inquiry are ready: direct intuition is
freed from the shackles of assumptions; the ontopoiesis of life is articulated and visible in
its temporal extension; the process of inquiry is aligned with the ontopoietic expressions;
the dialogical logos creates the scaffolding of inquiry, and the guiding thread of sentience is
firmly grasped by the mind in the labyrinth of life. Where the metaphysical definitions of
human condition showed through the glass, darkly, we see them clearly; where there was a
sense of constraint and limitation, there open the vistas of far reaching phenomenal field.
The Philosopher discovered the kind of metaphysics which underlies and contains
seemingly fragile, specifically human expression of life. She knows the place of human
condition in lifes networks and in its subterranean currents. Therefore, she allows herself
to bounce back, out of the pristine phenomenological refinement into the messiness of
existential commitment and stickiness of human relationship. From this glass menagerie,
this human bestiarium of the heart, she rescues the metaphysical gems of extreme
importance. An adept in following lifes shifting horizons, she traces the foundational
ontological principles as they continue in all manifestations of life. In what manner is the
logos of life ciphered within the human, existential horizon? She discovers the missing link
between the metaphysical Imaginatio Creatrix, and particular expression of human artistry:
spontaneity enters the scene of philosophical discource. Further, this leads Tymieniecka to
the main logoic expression in existential horizon, which is destiny. The destiny of the soul
extends beyond the natural level. The imminence of death stands out now as a positive
value, as a background against which the figures of the destiny can be seen, and its trans-
natural terminus can be discerned.

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The soliloquy grows into a dialogue. Reaching from the beyond, Tymieniecka asks:

Brethren, having covered this complete cycle together are we not truly, at last, Brethren?
As we are tethered to the same Logos, it is up to us now to extend the cycle and to
articulate the phenomenology of life in death. Such articultion would be as much an act of
intuition and reflection in Philosophical Phenomenology, as it would be an act of
spontaneity in human artistry. In Tymienieckas strategy of knowledge, temporal
extension plays an extremely important role. The hidden logos of things is revealed not
through a static what, but in a dynamic how, from primeval the ontopoietic blossoming,
to the developed hierarchies of life. Like rosettes of leafs in a palm tree, rationalities and
virtualities are incubated and nested within the previous, and sprout into the posterior
stages. As always, these are no neologisms, no special terminology: like some kind of
Vedanatic sage, Tymieniecka works with the ordinary language, excavating the primary
meanings tied to the prereflective, intuited reality of life. What is the source, the reason to
be, the impulse for the creative, innate messiness of experience? What word points to
transcendental creativity which manifests in each moment of Life? Spontaneity enters the
stage of humanized phenomenological discourse in the theater of human life.
Examination of spontaneity needs a prelude, which is bracketing. First, we will let
go of assumption that death is annihilation, or a step into nonbeing; the fallacy of this
assumption is based on the identification of consciousness with the body. By now, such
assumption is rejected even by the most materialistic neuroscience. Consciousness is
viewed as something broader, as a product of culture, of praxis, of social engagement. Next
comes another polarity, an assumption that death is a step into the primodial state,

liberation from all impressions, a state of undisturbed, content-less serenity. This

dissolution of individual I into the Ocean of Being is a return to the alleged Ground of
Being, a fundamental ground on which every being resides. There is a tremendous
momentum among the contemporary spiritual seekers of all kinds, to seek a state of non-
duality, to open the beginners mind in order to discover transcendental ground in which
the unity is established between the soul and the absolute. An idea of such return is a
legacy of all spiritual paths concerned with life after death, with enlightenment. Together
with Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, we shall ask: Is such primeval state our destination in
death, or, for that matter, in Enlightenment? In the undifferentiated indivisibility of such
ground, is it where the soul is heading ? Tymieniecka answers: if such ground is assumed
to be a primeval state of man, it cannot be the destination; it would be the mind returning
to the most primitive of its mental states. This assumptions likewise needs to be dismissed.
Hereby, n an invisible yet tangible pirouette of awarenesst, he horizon of enquiry is yet
again reoriented. The source-ness of is rejected as impossible. Creative process cannot
have as its onotological agenda a return to its own primitive state; therefore, we must seek
the source of spontaneity through spontaneity itself:
Experience as basically a spontaneity is obviously strictly individual, unshareable
(Tymieniecka 2012, 1).

From the depth of subjectivity, spontaneity drives the arabesques of experience, the

patterns of awareness, action, creativity, and ultimately, the weave of destiny. Spontaneity
creates the temporally extended patterns; arent this the same patterns that our old friend,
sentience, designs for all manifestation of life? A hand maiden of sentience, spontaneity

unfolds the red carpet that sentience walks in the human condition and existential
expression.
A human face of sentience dawns on us from within. Tymieniecka says:

How often have we forgotten all these acquired means [ meaning the
existential and psychological dimensions of life], and started from a primitive germ
in ourselves, on our own, without a spark of outward light or a word of courage.
We have followed our inner spontaneity wherever it may lead us and thus step by
step have dug into the soil of our being and long the sacred river where our roots
plunge, have retraced the path, the winding path of the genesis of our authentic life.
We have rediscovered the light within ourselves
And we may add, the self-same light shines on us from the outward edges of life. We
recognize life by sentience; sentience is in the breath of a rose, in the self-assembly of
protein molecules of the primodial brine, and in the essence of the spiritual wisdom. She is
us, and she is not us. as Ibn Arabi puts it:

She displayed her front teeth, and a levin flashed,

and I knew not which of the twine rent the gloom.

And she said: Is it not enough for him that I am in his heart,

and that he behold me at every moment? Is it not enough?

Sentience we know by direct intuition. But let us push the limits of the mind. Let us can it
be that in the New Enlightenment, it is not enough to know directly, for the direct
knowledge of human mind is still through the glass, darkly. Can we know sentience as it is
known to itself, in what makes it to mark both sides of the of the subject - object equation?
Is there consciousness beyond the enduring presence of subjectivity? In this tribute to
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, I wish to understand whether phenomenology, as a cognitive
enterprise of sentience, extends beyond the death of the body. Another way of this
questioning will be: what is the meaning of resurrection in the New Enlightenment? Out of
the many faces of sentience, which one is revealed in the aberration, or rather,
modification of attitude created by dying? We will now follow the melodic fabric of
Tymienieckas rhapsody of the trans-natural destiny of the soul, into phenomenology of
death as it appears to us, to develop the theme into a complete (full) symphonic cycle.

A contour is outlined for this new round of enquiry, within a trans-natural destiny of

the soul, for knowledge reaching beyond the biological definitions of the human mind. The
trans-natural destiny is a time capsule: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka speaks to us from
beyond the human form or condition, in understanding which needs to be unpacked in
completely new ways within the newly emerging paradigms and technologies in the
revolutionary contexts of the New Enlightenment. The associational fabric of
Tymienieckas discourse creates new das Verstehen. The insight is tapping into the
new forms intuition of life, which is non-sensory, non-intellectual, non-transcendental in

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phenomenological terms. It the intuition of physics and trans-humanism, an intuition of

phase shifts and nonlinear dynamics of complexity. In this intuition, there is the key to the
transcendence of of subject-object dichotomies, of cosuality, determinism and of the
trappings of beginning and end. It opens for us a new reflection on the quality of essential
substance, the mathesis universalis, which is the subject thoroughly avoided by
contemporatry philosophy. Masters departure opens the possibility which she might;ve
anticipated but could not articulate while still in the body.
Her prophetic book overcomes the natural attitude with its ciphering of life and
death; her new voice speaks from the place where the two unite. Christo-Logos is, in fact,
her only esoteric book , esoteric in a sense that it points to a possibility of immortal
substance (for the lack of better term) which is both primeval to the human condition and
to a larger life. It is a bridge to that which is totally invisible, not like the philosophical
invisible, but in its principial new quality. Nor a part of measurable things, nor
immesurable, not the body, and not the flesh, it is in the essence of things, sovereign and
and conditioned at the same time.

Tymieniecka says :

We have discovered the light within ourselves, each coming upon his innumerable
experiences yielding evidence of the eternal precept revealed to the mankind and so
opening our opaque, enfleshed being to the Absolute.

This light, this primeval experience which is so strictly subjective that cannot

possibly be shared, in the transcendental-existential turn of the Phenomenology to

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Philosophy of life is named spontaneity, which is in other contexts sentience. The First
Movement of my symphony, Allegro, is a cadence of sentience. Husserl views sentience is
intentionality, which is structural relations devoid of the specific subjective sense, and
rather, embedded to all of the subjective senses. In analytic philosophy, sentience is less
structural and more existential; the subjective dimension emerges as the famous what its
like, the qualia. In the debate on cognitive phenomenology (e.g. Bayne, Montague, Kriegel,
Stoljar, Smythies) we ask: is there quale to thought? In Tymienieckas Philosophy of Life,
we should ask: is there qualia to sentience? Or, is the sentience at the core of any qualia,
and therefore, is this lived, unsharable, personal dimension of subjectivity. Of so, does this
essence of qualia-ness go away in the moment of death, when all intentional relations seem
to collapse together with sensory data and biologically dependent intentionalities? Are we
something or nothing?

A specific contour of our symphonic theme is beginning to emerge. In the Second

Movement, Moderato, I will follow the Tymienieckian thread of sentience in the labyrinth of
animate and inanimate nature. Sentience is an ontological platform for the phenomenality.;
it is also an essence of all qualia, i.e., the quale animating every qualia. That established, we
will now adjust the horizon of our intuition. We proceeded from the human spontaneity to
its ontological ground, sentience; we moved from the shine to living silver itself. In a
reverse pirouette, we will glean the silver itself, by which I mean examine sentience by
itself, not from the standpoint of human condition, but rather, in its cosmic manifestation.
If the traditional Descartes-Vico pendulum of knowledge is between the subject and the
object., the pirouette of our intuition would be in a direction away from either, from the

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outside into the inside, into the substance of what takes the shape of sentience in life, and
manifests as spontaneity in human condition.
What creates that strictly subjective component of experience that we cannot share?
While the qualia of sensory experience are clearly phenomenalistic, the qualia of thought
are a subject of debate on whether thought has a phenomenal representation. The mental
experimentation in nave introspection of the philosophy of mind produces diametrically
opposite opinions. However, In the New Enlightenment, we also have science which is no
longer concerned exclusively by the facticity of objects. It takes a stab at the internal
principles of life in the new ontologies of complexity theory. This kind of science reads to
me as a version of Tymienickas phenomenology of life; the ontopoetic novum is
remarkably reminiscent of the phase shifts and strange attractors emerging in the complex
systems. It was proposed that what subjectively appears as qualia thought, is in essence a
set of informational relationship pertaining to cogntition, i.e. information per se which is
subjectiviatically appropriated as human experience of thought. Information is something
which transcends subject-object relations; subject-object relations themselves can be
viewed as informational relations. We have no evidence that information pertains to the
physical only universe; on the contrary we have an evidence from quantum mechanics and
mathematics that things are quite the oppositve; observer and physical universe are
informationally connected both ways, as in Belavkin equation, Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle. Logically, in Schrdinger's mental cat experiment with Verschrnkun
(entabglement), the cat can be both alive and dead, and no fallacy so far was found in this logic.

Further, information will be the substratum which can be thought of being on both sides of
subject and pbject, noema and noesis, and further, both the conscious self and the material

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world.. IN the history of thought, a similar view was developed by Islamic philosopher
Suhrwardi in his argument concerning the awareness and visible light. Consequently, if we
zoom intuition into sentience in the spectacle of experience, and focus exclusively on the
qualia of the pure subjectivity, we may not be apprehending js not j ust something monadic
and purely qualitative, and even analyzable in structural terms.
The dance of nonlinear complexity unfolds in the Third Movement, Minuet, in which
the informational patterns of consciousness, cosmos and life are recognized as sentience.
In this dance, sentience is not a source or primeval ground into which we can tap into or
return to, but is the very thereness and facticity of both things and consciousness.
To sdummarize, I move forth that subjectively lived, human existential property of
spontaneity springs forth from sentience; that sentience is phenomenal and has qualia
which can be discovered in the introspective experiment with the motion of mind towards
the pure subjectivity; that the pure subjectivity has for its qualia sentience. The self-same
sentience unfolds as a manifestation of comlex relationship , perhaps of the cosmic and
field-like nature, between the primeval waves of information which compile our universe.
Cosmos is an infinitely evolving complex informational pattern whereby information is
sentient. In its downward arc, these sentient informational patterns are given to us as life,
and sponteoeity of sentience as creativity in human condition. These patterns are shown
in upward and downward arcs, and therefore, as a minuet.

We showed that sentience is not a property of the human brain and not even an

emerging property of life. Rather, it is borrowed from the cosmos and appropriated as the
self in the human condition; inter-subjectivity is a derivative of sentience, and subjectivity

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is an instance of inter-subjectivity. Since sentience brings with it intuition of life, this

intuition must extend into dying and has no reason not to continue beyond. In the Fourth
Movement, Finale Glorioso, I will describe the patterns of sentience in the souls final
ascent, and honor the intuitional gifts which proceed from the passage of a great soul.

Having established the under-cover identity of the qualia of sentience, which us

neither subjective, no objective, neither a wave or a field, neither a particle nor idea, but
rather, informational relations with the patterns of self-organizing complexity, we may now
again engage in the upward arc and enquire: can the sentient substratum of the universe
ever seize? Can the informational relationship ever be extinguished? One can fathom their
changing arabesques in this or that configuration of intelligence, as life or as inanimate
nature like a which nail may appear insentient in an otherwise sentient body, but can they
ever seize to be? We do need to inquire into the status of this beingness. What happens in
the seclusion of a burial chamber which, opened later, reveal the flesh and bones of a saint
gone with only nails and hair remaining? Is transfiguration a metaphor, or a description,
and a metaphor and/or description of what?

I wish to switch now to more personal imaginings. Those who witnessed death will

perhaps agree with me that it has a certain empty-ing quality. Not only a person is gone ,
and the body goes breathless and still, in addition, the space changes it metrics. A
strange blazing emptiness, emerges, like a gap or rip in the fabric of existence. This gap
seems to bridge the worlds: traditions claim that the deceased ones can for a while hear
our prayers and even receive the guidance for their transitions. Recently, this process
changed; a few of the close ones died recently, and the gap does not seem to be as present

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as before. Rabbi Zalman Schahter departed in stillness; Professor Eugene Taylor weeped,
another colleague, a very saintly man, departed in glory. His students asked for guidance,
guidance was given. Anna Teresa Tymieniecka also departed in glory. She appeared
welcomed by selestial chorus from ranks of angels. She ascended into light. The echo of
this departure lasted for many days. Like a child in mothers embrace, she turned to the
bosom of life which she faithfully serenaded for so many decade. There was never any gap.

Imagination is a cognitive organ. It reaches beyond the circumcision of the senses. It

metaphorises the invisible. These images of glorious departure of the soul, the absense of
the gap, arent they the arabesques of sentience? They herald the increase of sentience, the
increase of the fullness of Logos, the increase of life. Is spontaneity pushing the limits of
the mind toward further and further frontiers of knowledge in the New Enlightenment?
And doesnt it give us hope that perhaps 2000 after the nascent self-disclosure of Christo-
Logos, the universe is still not a complete creation, we still have a road to travel together
towards the new and new horizons of knowledge, as the mirrors of sentience? As the
Philosophers lyrical character, Thomas the Dispossessed, says ?

The gift of her departure to us, For those who remain in human condition, the gift of

her departure is to see beyond our limitations; to align the spontaneity of sentience in each
of us with our expressions, as did she; and to spread the word. Anna-Teresas visionary
insight will animate the clinical theory and the work of healing professions; it will extend
into physics and astronomy; it will penetrate into computer science, artificial intelligence
and building of the new virtual realities. The cup of sentience is full, and the fullness of it is
increasing; we need to keep spreading the word.

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The coda follows. May the gifts of spontaneity increase; may the new mental

horizons open; may the new angles of intuition follow the self-revelations of sentience.

If phenomenology were a bodily only enterprise, an outcrop of corporeity as is awareness,
or a product of praxis, the end of the body would be the end of any phenomenology. But in
the melody of sentient cosmic information, phenomenology is a quintessential, primeval
self-reflection of sentience, ciphered, as it were, in the symbols of language.
Phenomenology is conceivable as apart of the universe, a pathway in the substratum of
cosmos. Direct intuition apprecepts not just the unity of things, but rather, the material
from which all is made. That flesh, that substance is mere relationships, with sentience on
all ends. This every-lasting sentience can be what Husserl saw on his death bed when he
was reporting on dying, and exclaimed: I see soething beautiful.. write, write! This is what
shines at us from the final passage of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, as her last book prepares
intuition for the final philosophical turn.

References

Tymieniecka, A.-T. 2012. Introduction: The illusion of the return to the source. In A.-T.
Tymieniecka (ed. and author) The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life, Book II, Christo-
Logos, Metaphysical Rhapsodies of Faith, Analecta Husserliana CXI, 1-9.