Other World – ICA Social Research Center

The Other World in the midst of this world is a metaphor for experiences of transparency which happen in our daily lives: awe experiences of fascination and dread. It may come as a tingle, a shudder, a strange silence, horror or wonder. When awe impacts us, there is an accompanying state of being. And states of being are often expressed best through poetry, song,and metaphor. The Other World imagery breathes awe into our lives. For myth to be effective it needs to anchor time, space and relations in an integrated way that intensifies people’s understanding of their lives as significant. Today for many people there is a disconnect between two-story mythologies and their life experiences.

The Other World uses four poetic arenas to map out how the modern world has slowly awakened to a new dimension of radical consciousness within ordinary life. These four areas are four distinct breakthroughs to help explain a profound shift in human awareness:

The Land of Mystery represents a breakthrough in our awareness of the unknown, which has been rediscovered across the natural, psychological, and mathematical sciences. It is closely tied to the existentialist realization of our “overagainstness of that which is no thing, or nothing”. This marks humanity’s confrontation with the awe-inspiring and terrifying nature of absolute mystery.
The River of Consciousness is defined by a breakthrough in the area of human freedom. Various philosophical frameworks, such as Jean-Paul Sartre’s poetry of being and Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of the self, explore this. In this arena, the self is understood as a relationship that relates to itself and “grounds itself transparently in the power that constituted it”
The Mountain of Careis driven more by social upheavals—such as the youth culture’s search for an authentic dimension of existence. It represents a breakthrough into the concept of authentic engagement and the recovery of agape (love). In this arena, individuals move beyond living solely for themselves and instead take upon their backs the “responsibility for the historical and global journey of humanness”. Crucially, this is an indicative reality rather than a moral imperative; it is not about feeling that you “ought” to pick up the burdens of the world, but rather that an individual simply “shows up with the world on his or her shoulders”.

The Sea of Tranquility is the discovery of a “weird peace right where there is no peace”. This arena points to the realization that the Other World is found right here in the midst of this life. It is the experience of an authentic, non-sentimental peace and joy that exists squarely within our tragic, everyday world.

Ultimately, these four poetic arenas are meant to provide a roadmap for the topography of the Other World, offering a foundation for a new inclusive mythology that can help humanity find the way to swim in the rivers of radical consciousness and become human.

The Other World Charts

The Other World Charts are considered “an entry point to a new mythology”. Reflection on the Other World focuses on universal states of consciousness, or states of being. This work with states of being gives a way to relate our personal experience to a deeper universal wisdom. The charts can tell us where we are and whether or not we are lost, giving guidelines for staying on track, even if the track is rough going. They establish that, even when we’re in unfamiliar territory and wondering about the place, people have been here before and have found this experience good. Many times we experience things in our lives that we don’t know how to handle. There is a need to create models of care for one another during these experiences. These charts help us affirm these experiences instead of passing them off with a shrug. The metaphors used in the charts give us poetic language and enable us to create our own poetry about our experiences.

The Other World’s poetic topography is delineated in four areas: The Land of Mystery, The River of Consciousness, The Mountain of Care and The Sea of Tranquility. Each area is further categorized into 4 treks with descriptions of 4 states of being in each trek, 64 states of being in total.

Other World Charts: Land of Mystery, River of Consciousness, Mountain of Care, Sea of Tranquillity
Other World Charts Illustrations: Religious and Secular

On the way to the play we stopped to look at the stars. And as usual, I felt in awe. And then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have to be in awe about something…. I decided I would set time aside each day to do awe-robics. Jane Wagner

The Other World may be the most crucial key there is for actually turning on the processes that will snowball the arrival of a new web of relationships that define society.” Joseph W. Mathews

Nelson Stover speaking about the Other World