The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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What do we actually experience in the vertical dimension, or existential aspect, of our experience?

We actually experience ourselves as concretes coordinate with others as concretes all included in an inclusive concrete, i.e., we experience ourselves, others, and the whole.

But if we experience ourselves, others, and the whole as concretes, we also experience concrescence as the process of growing together whereby any concrete alone becomes and can become such. Thus we experience—again and again—the many becoming one and being increased by one, even as we experience the one in the two radically different senses of "the one among the many," which applies to ourselves and others, and "the one which is all," which applies uniquely to the whole.

In this sense, our experience in its vertical dimension, or existential aspect, is experience of "the oneness of the universe and the oneness of each element in the universe" endlessly repeating themselves "in the creative advance from creature to creature."

September 2000

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