Jorge N. Ferrer’s (2002) book, Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality, offers further theoretical foundation and framework for Urreality, Urrealist practice and art in Urrealism. There are three significant corresponding attributes between Urrealism and what he calls participatory knowing. First, when Ferrer states attributes of a new foundation for transpersonal psychology. He writes:

...it became gradually obvious that the revision I was proposing could be more accurately conveyed not so much in terms of an epistemic turn, from experience to knowledge, but of a participatory turn, a shift from intrasubjective experiences to participatory events which can be equally understood in both experiential and epistemic terms. (p.12)

     This shift from intrasubjective to the participatory is a form of the Urrealist (Reynolds, 2002) parable of the dreamers awakening in a conversation already going on while they were sleeping. Awakening in the conversation, in the Urrealist sense, means the realization that the creative and perceptive edge within the creative individual is also guiding the other. The sharing of creation confirms and inspires what is original in each. This is a common experience among Urrealists and there are historical precedents in Breton’s (1952) description of the early days of Surrealism and in the conversation using music and art of Kandinsky and Schoenberg (Reynolds, 2006) (da Costa-Meyer, 2003).

     Second, the transpersonal shift is entry into Urreality. Compare Ferrer’s description and that of the Urrealist Manifesto. Ferrer goes on to write:

Human participation in transpersonal and spiritual phenomenon is a creative, multidimensional event that can involve every aspect of human nature, from somatic transfiguration to the awakening of the heart, from erotic communion to visionary co-creation and from contemplative knowing to moral insight. (p.12)

     The Urrealist Manifesto (Reynolds, 2002) describes this participation as Urpersons in Urreality noting:

...there are always invisible visitations that enter the manifold space. Something divine can come to the table. These emerge as as-if presences, are felt as shifts in time, are perceived when turns of phrase come forth thick like sandwiches, trailing scintillae, are recognizable where the cramped and constricted ease with re-newed life. In Urreality, the full body begins to awaken to the conversation, golden chills wash over the shoulders, warm the heart, draw attention to depth. There is a sense of clarity about the face, a clarity of sensing. One is aroused and even the sensate world unveils herself delighting to be seen and truly appreciated. The heart flutters.

     Third, Ferrer’s goal is to liberate spiritual studies from absolutism and relativism by the middle way of participatory vision. In his words, his way through is emphasis on creative and multidimensional human access to reality and stressing and fostering the inexhaustible creative power of Spirit. His profound ocean of relaxed universalism realized through intimate dialogue and communion with other beings and the world is Urrealism’s Urground Railroad. They are both the liberation and expansion of consciousness by means of sharing the power of creativity and receptivity. The individual creative work, individual poesis, is the intimate language by which the intimate dialogue and communion can take place. Such a language is as multidimensional as the reality shared, necessarily a hieroglyphic language of call and answer.

     This essay is an Urrealist answer, a participation in Ferrer’s participatory knowing. It is intended to further confirm and inspire a growing edge, a probability wave currently sweeping through. I would like to invite those of his circle to express themselves in the language of their own creative and perceptive capacities. This can be done through us of the Urrealist Four of feeding back creativity with creativity. The Urrealist Four are guidelines for responding to what has never been seen before, for responding to the one-of-a-kind. They are:

     I have followed these guidelines myself in this essay. I showed how Ferrer’s description of the participatory shift reminded me of the Urrealist parable of the sleepers awakening in conversation. I showed how his description of participatory vision reminded me of Urreality. His call for intimate dialogue and communion reminded me of the Urrealist conversation using art as the language. What occurred to me as I worked to respond to Jorge’s writings is the music of the harmonically tuned piano of Michael Harrison. Harrison’s tuning uses 24 quarter steps between octaves instead of the usual 12 half steps of the current tuning system. This makes for music that at first seems out of tune when the hammers strike the strings. However, as the notes sustain over time, the harmonics of those notes open to never before heard harmonic regions.

     Jorge, this essay is my art answering your art. We are both focusing in on the emergence at the middle place, where the Eternal merges with the temporal and creates that what has never been. You like the image of the ocean of many shores. I like to use the old teaching image of St. Denys, the saint who holds his head at the level of his heart and to that I add the image of the galactic center. I seek to express a centerless center that is guiding even our sun’s orbit. It is an image of billions of lights to show the capacity for the human heart at this time in our history. May we meet in this ocean, live out the subtle, expansive, galactic heart center. (breath)

Transparent Body of the King (Olin-Hitt, Reynolds, 2004)

Beyond and within the constellation of Cepheus, are three galaxies and one nebula. They are, IC5132, IC5133, IC5134, and NGC7133, respectively. As in the Eagle-headed Harp, what first appears as one becomes fourfold when magnified. For the individual, this means that you will recognize fellow travelers by the knowledge of your heart. There is a mirroring, a spark of awakeness, a heart response of those awake in creation. There is also a heart’s desire to be in community. Knowing your reason for being is incomplete without community where you can give completely and receive completely. The Holy says of this:

In isolation, there is no strength, there is no comfort, there is no stability, there is no safety. But in the family there is all of this and more. For when there is comfort and stability and safety there is expansion. When there is isolation, there is fear. Come into the family, says the stars, into relation.