WORLD WITHOUT OPPOSITE

Jeremy D Johnson, host of Mutations Podcast, author of Seeing Through the World and Fragments of an Integral Future proposes a five-week delve into themes of ecology, spiritual transparency and individuation in a time between worlds.

“WORLD WITHOUT OPPOSITE” traces a path of planetary initiation, re-imagining our relationship with the more-than-human world as we learn to embody ecological wisdom and terrestrial homecoming.

We live in the unbearable tension of the liminal: a transitional epoch, where the old worldview is still unraveling—or, we should say, “composting”—but the new worldview, if there is one, is all too nascent. Like the meaning of the word ‘limn,’ the new remains a mere tracing: an outline of a future-possible.

What if we followed these threads of the future-possible? Woven together, might they become a cocoon, leading us on towards a metamorphosis?

In this five-week series, author Jeremy Johnson draws from eco-philosophers, poets, artists, and spiritual teachers to vividly elucidate an emerging ecological worldview.

We live in a world of becoming, and the so-called ‘future,’ as philosophers like Jean Gebser have proposed, already lives in us.

This course asks its participants to embark on a path of self-inquiry: if the future is already present, what are we becoming?

What are the perceptual tools, insights, and practices that embolden us to live in radical relation with the more-than-human world? How might we re-vision the story of human origins in such a way opens, rather than closes, new futures?

Finally, how might we start to live the ‘new’ world view?

Over the past few centuries, scientific knowledge has opened our eyes to the evolutionary wonders of deep time and the astounding fact that Earth—our home—is very much alive. Gaia theory has helped us to understand that life is always “in the making,” shaping and reshaping itself in dazzling multitudes of form and fashion. Life transforms the very conditions of the planet to be suitable for its perpetual becoming.

What does the life of Gaia teach us about our own lives? What can we learn from the ‘metaphysics’ of the microcosm about existing as a self in radical relation? How might the insect’s cocoon instruct us on the nature of our own multiplicity and becoming? Finally, what does the blooming flower—with its exquisite, colorful folds and layered, interspecies mutualisms—teach us about time’s transparency?

Making connections between ecological insight and modernist art, moving from philosophical reflection to indigenous knowledge, this course encourages its participants to perceive the world in which we live as a “world without opposite.” When we learn to ‘look again’ at nature, when our perception strives to becoming transparent, we find there are as many emissaries of the “open world” as there are faces of the self-same life.

The aim of this course, if there is one, is to bring the human being back into “the middle” of relation. If the new worldview lies anywhere, it is there.

Part philosophical storytelling, part myth-making, WORLD WITHOUT OPPOSITE situates its participants as ecological selves “in-the-making,” emboldened—and, one hopes, empowered—by new philosophies of becoming to navigate a time of world view transition. Through the course of five lectures, author Jeremy Johnson, draws from the materials of his forthcoming book (Fragments of an Integral Future: Essays on Ecology, Time, and a New World View), offering a practice of ecological wayfinding, challenging us to recognize those ever-present threads of the new, transparent self.

These threads vibrate and hum with the many voices of tomorrow. They are at once strange and familiar, and seem to tell us something of our own blooming. They show us, as the poet Mallarme understood, that “the star ripens from tomorrow.”

Lectures will occur weekly for five consecutive Sundays, at 9:30 am PT / 12:30 PM ET. Live sessions will conclude with breakout room discussions, and an additional—but optional—office hours session will convene weekly.

No reading will be required for this course, but recommended readings will be suggested throughout the course for the enrichment of student learning.

What to Expect

Five weekly calls, plus an optional weekly Q&A session.

• Lectures will take place on Sundays, starting October 27th. Lectures will convene at 9:30 am PT / 12:30 pm ET, with time allotted for breakout rooms and Q&A.

• All sessions will be recorded and available for later viewing.

• Access to a class forum where participants can post reflections, review course materials, and discuss their explorations and insights together. Students will retain access to the forum after the conclusion of the course.

Schedule

Lectures occur on Sundays: Oct. 27, Nov. 3, Nov. 10, Nov. 17, Nov. 24.

Origins

I - Philosophies of Becoming: Ways of Thinking and Being in an Ecological Worldview

II - We Have Always Been in the Middle of Things

Transformations of Consciousness

III - The World Without Opposite: An Ecological Triptych

IV - Becoming Human, Becoming Animal: Metamorphosis, Spinoza, and Nature’s Nature

Coming to the Roots of the World

V - Holding the Flowers of Transparency

Student Learning Outcomes

Students will:

• Delve into spiritual and metaphysical inquiries concerning our “time between worlds”

• Deepen their understanding of the connections between ecological thought, philosophy, and modern art

• Gain a more coherent sense not only of where we have been, but where we, as a species, may yet go

• Develop their own “integrative” approach to ecological thinking, sensing, and feeling

• Develop both a greater intuitive sense and conceptual understanding of an emerging ecological and integrative paradigm

• Go on to apply an intuitive sense of ecological and integrative thinking to future projects, studies, and applications

• Have opportunities to share and exchange ideas with the instructor and fellow students.

• Join a vibrant online community concerned with the direction of our world and seeking new, transformative ways of seeing.

Registration: $149

Student rates:
Send us a note to receive a pay-what-you-can registration link: info (at) nuralearning (dot) com

Thank you, and see you in class!

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Your Instructor

Jeremy Johnson is an author (Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness), publisher (Integral Imprint), podcaster (Mutations), senior research associate at Perspectiva, and integral philosopher.

His academic research, writing, and publishing advocates new forays into integrative thinking and praxis—aligning the scholastic, poetic, and spiritual—as existentially crucial work for pathfinding in a time of planetary crisis.

Jeremy is attending a doctoral program in Philosophy at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His new book, Fragments of an Integral Future: Essays on Time, Ecology, and a New World View will be published in Spring 2025.