Preface: Towards a New Conception of the Nature of Matter

1. Introduction

2. Background

3. The Personal

4. That Exists In Me, and Before Me, and After Me

5. Changes in Our Idea of Matter

Part One

1. Our Present Picture of the Universe

1. Cosmology

2. The Strength of the Present Scientific World-Picture

3. The Weakness of the Present World-Picture

4. The Needs of Architecture

5. Scientific Efforts to Build an Improved World-Picture

6. The Continuing Lack of a Unifying Cosmology

7. Ten Tacit Assumptions Which Underlie Our Present Picture of the Universe

8. Inspiration for a Future Physics

9. The Confrontation of Art and Science

10. A Fusion of Self and Matter

2. Clues From the History of Art

1. Introduction

2. An Observation

3. Relatedness

4. A Possible Explanation

5. A Connection to the Self

6. What of Out Modern Works?

7. More on the Problem of our Era

8. The Black Plater

9. Footnote

3. The Existence of an "I"

1. A Dewdrop

2. Relatedness

3. The Mirror-of-the-Self Experiments

4. The Real Relatedness Existing Underneath the Skin

5. The Ancient and Eternal Truth of the Relatedness

6. The Numinous Experience

7. True Meaning of Relatedness

8. A Jump to Speaking About the Existence of an "I"

9. An Experiment to Determine the Extension of the I

10. The I of Our Experience Originating with the I in Things

11. A Hypothesis

12. Mobilizing the Storm

4. The Ten Thousand Beings

1. Introduction

2. Consider the Possibility of Viewing All Living Centers as Being

3. The Jewel Net of Indra

4. What it Means for a Center to be Being-Like

5. A Corner of a Farmer's Field

6. A Shipyard

7. Looking at Chartres

8. Each Living Center is a Being

9. Pure Unity

10. The Fundamental Process

11. The Difficulty of the Task

12. Innocence

13. The Vision of Matisse and Bonnard

14. In Our Own Era

15. A New Vision of Building: Making Living Structure in Our Brutal World

16. The Life of the Environment

5. The Practical Matter of Forging a Living Center

1. Intensifying Shape

2. Unity Achieved in a Great Blossom

3. Emergence of a "Being" From The Field of Centers

4. Beings in Arches, Spaces, and Columns: The Example of West Dean

5. Emergence of the Arches

6. Detailed Design of the Structural Columns

7. A Wall

8. Catching a Being in Color

9. The Haunting Melody

Mid-Book Appendix: Recapitulation of the Argument

1. Introduction

2. The Possibility of a Coherent Verifiable Theory

3. The Argument from Verifiable Details

4. The Argument From Coherence

Part Two

What I have presented in these four books is intended to become a part of a new science - a first sketch of a new kind of scientific theory.

Since the creation of a work of building must always be, at root, creation of living structure, I have built to the best of my ability a picture of living structure and of the processes that can generate living structure. The picture is sifficient, I belive, for working architects to carry in our minds, a vision of our task.

But this picture necessarily touches physics. The existence of living structure, as I have defined it, requires modifications in our physical picture of the world, not only in the picture which we have of architecture. And, in the most subtle phases of this work, we are forced - I believe - by the arguments presented in Book 4, to go still further. It is not enough merely to have a picture of living structure, but necessary, also, to recognize that there is something ineffable, a mystical core in things, that is deeply related to our own individual self, and that THIS -- not something else -- is the true both of matter and of architecture. That, too, must find expression.

6. The Blazing One

The Unity that Speaks of I

1. The Faintly Glowing Quality which Can be Seen in a Thing Which has Life

2. Psychological Explanation

3. Possible Existence of a Single Underlying Substance

4. The Blazing one

5. What, Then, Is a Center?

6. Though a Strange Model, It Provides a Viable Explanation

7. Which I-Hypothesis is True?

8. A Non-Material View of Matter

7. Color and Inner Light

1. Introduction: A Direct Glimpse of the I

2. Color as an Essential Feature of Reality

3. Inner Light

4. The Unfolding Which Produces Inner Light

5. The Eleven Color Properties

6. Hierarchy of Colors (Levels of Scale)

7. Colors Create Light Together (Positive Space, Alternative Repetition)

8. Contrast of Dark and Light (Contrast)

9. Mutual Embedding (Deep Interlock and Ambiguity)

10. Sequence of Linked Color Pairs (Gradients and the Void)

11. Boundaries and Hairlines (Boundaries)

12. Families of Color (Echoes)

13. Color Variation (Roughness)

14. Intensity and Clarity of Individual Colors (Strong Centers, Good Shape)

15. Subdues Brilliance (Inner Calm and Not-Separatedness)

16. Color Depends on Geometry (Strong Centers, Local Symmetries)

17. Color and the Field of Centers

18. Inner Light as a Glimpse of the I Which Lies Behind the Field of Centers

19. The Hint of a Transcendent Unity

20. Transcendent Wholeness as a Kind of Light

21. Conclusion

8. The Goal of Tears

1. Why Unity and Sadness are Connected

2. Sadness

3. Getting Sadness in the Flesh of the Building

4. Sadness of Color and Geometry

5. Unity and Sadness in a Group of Buildings

6. Unity and Sadness of Life in a Back yard

7. The Ground

8. Concluding Section

9. Making Wholeness Heals the Maker

1. Introduction

2. The Impact of Making Beauty on the Maker's Life

3. The Healing Process

4. Making Wholeness Heals the Maker

5. Life Made Creates Life in the Maker

6. The Source of the Healing Effect

7. Human Growth: The Movement of the Self Towards its Origin

8. Towards Full Knowledge of the Self Which Can Arise in Us

9. Drawing Sadness from Your Most Vulnerable Self

10. Do Not Ask for Whom the Bell Tolls

10. Pleasing Yourself

1. Introduction

2. Recaptulation of Books 1 to 4 as "Pleasing Yourself"

3. Veronica's blue Chair

4. The Heart-Stopping Quality

5. The Thought Police

6. Not Pleasing Yourself

7. A Group of Architecture Students Who Were Not Pleasing Themselves

8. A Mexicali Story About the Thought Police

9. Pleasing Yourself

10. The Effort it Took to Get the Stark Geometry of West Dean to a State Where it Really Pleases Me

11. Emil Nolde's Sunset and Paul Gauguin's Cow

12. A Significantly Large Structure

13. Being Modern and Being True

14. The Childlike

15. There is Nothing Greater

16. Pure Innocence and Deep Order the Message of St. Francis

11. The Face of God

1. This is God

2. Spirit Made Manifest

3. The Practical Results of This Knowledge

4. A Necessary State of Mind

5. The World Beyond a Given Thing

6. Not-Separatedness

7. Making a Gift for God

8. The Face of God

Conclusion to the Four Books

A Modified Picture of the Universe

1. Introduction

2. The Nature of Space and Matter

3. Wholeness as a Physical Structure in the Universe

4. Consciousness as a Physical Feature of the Universe

5. A Modified Physics

6. Summary of the Modified Physics

7. A New Picture of the World

8. A Physical Basis for Religious Awe

9. Essential Awe

Epilogue: Empirical Certainty and Enduring Doubt

1. An Extension of the Scientific Idea of What Can be Known

2. A New Method of Observation at the Core of the World-Picture

3. Enduring Skepticism as a Source of Certainty