80 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
plant any less than leaves and blossoms do? You might
reply that leaves and blossoms are present without a per-
ceiving subject, while the concept appears only when a
human being confronts the plant. Very well. But blos-
soms and leaves arise in the plant only when there is earth
in which the seed can be laid and light and air in which
leaves and blossoms can unfold. Just so, the concept of
the plant arises when thinking consciousness approaches
the plant.”
It is quite arbitrary to consider as a totality, a whole, the
sum of what we experience of a thing through perception
alone, and to regard what results from athinking contem-
plation as something appended, that has nothing to do
with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud today, then
the picture that offers itself to my perception is limited to
the present moment. But if I put the bud in water, then I
will get a completely different picture of my object to-
morrow. And if I can keep my eyes turned toward the
rosebud, then I shall see today’s state change continuous-
ly into tomorrow’s through countless intermediate stages.
The picture offering itself to me in a specific moment is
but an accidental cross-section of an object that is caught
up in a continual process of becoming. If I do not put the
bud in water, then it will fail to develop a whole series of
states lying within it as possibilities. And tomorrow I
might be prevented from observing the blossom further,
and so form an incomplete picture of it.
It is completely unrealistic to grasp at accidental ele-
ments and to declare, of the picture revealed at a particu-
lar time:that is the thing.
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