Leap

The Seba library treats Leap in 7 passages, across 4 authors (including McGilchrist, Iain, Signell, Karen A., Cooper, Seiso Paul).

In the library

all the 'building blocks' of the experiential world – space, time, depth, and, I would add, consciousness – are clearly different in kind from anything else, are irreducible, and therefore require a leap: they cannot be approached incrementally.

McGilchrist argues that the most fundamental dimensions of experience are ontologically discontinuous and thus demand a leap rather than any gradual, cumulative approach.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

all the 'building blocks' of the experiential world – space, time, depth, and, I would add, consciousness – are clearly different in kind from anything else, are irreducible, and therefore require a leap: they cannot be approached incrementally.

A near-duplicate passage reinforcing McGilchrist's central thesis that irreducibility necessitates a qualitative leap across experiential and philosophical domains.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

to take the risk to do something dramatic, take the impulsive leap forward, dare to be inspired without being inflated. The dream hauntingly illustrates the archetypal theme of the three dimensions of reality and the leap of faith into the fourth dimension, the realm of imagination and spirit.

Signell presents the leap of faith as the archetypal act of entering the fourth dimension of imagination and spirit, healing relational wounds and realizing the potential of the Self.

Signell, Karen A., Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Both practices exert their challenges, but they can render the existential leap more approachable. We might not notice the leap except in retrospect. So, talking and practicing are the leap.

Cooper reframes the existential leap not as a singular heroic crossing but as the cumulative practice of psychoanalysis and Zen itself, recognized only after the fact.

Cooper, Seiso Paul, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!

Bloom cites Ahab's ecstatic address to elemental fire as an instantiation of the American Sublime, in which the leap becomes an act of Gnostic identification and defiant self-assertion.

Bloom, Harold, The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime, 2015supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Then turning—the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm, he stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.

Bloom's analysis of Ahab's confrontation with the corposants contextualizes the leap within a broader pattern of Gnostic heresy and sublime self-elevation in Melville's tragic vision.

Bloom, Harold, The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime, 2015aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Can we recognize this ongoing process, first note then relinquish the retrospective conceptualization, and return to the immediacy of the ongoing emerging moment?

Cooper frames the return to immediacy as the precondition for the experiential leap, situating it within both Zen and psychoanalytic dropping of theoretical mediation.

Cooper, Seiso Paul, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →