A View on Metamorphosis: How Life operates

Life, contrary to "dead" inorganic physics, operates in metamorphosis.

A machine is built by adding parts to one another, each fixed and complete in itself, to obtain a certain function. Life, on the other hand, does not proceed by adding one part to another, nor even by shaping a part to fit into a whole. Life proceeds in metamorphoses.

In living processes, one form gives birth to the next. The earlier does not remain intact; it transforms. You can see this most clearly in embryogenesis: one cell divides and becomes a cluster, a blastula, which metamorphoses into a gastrula, which folds inward to create cavities from which organs and tissues emerge. At every stage, the earlier form is sacrificed so that the next can appear.

This is not just biology; it is a law of life itself. Wherever life is at work, forms are not fixed but in motion—rising, transforming, dissolving, and reappearing at a higher level of organization.

The gesture of metamorphosis

Dead matter can be forced into function, but living beings cannot be assembled in the same way. They must grow, transform, and find their form from within. This is why every attempt to treat life as a machine eventually fails: life has its own gesture.

Metamorphosis is not about dramatic “death and rebirth” events. These are only the outermost edges, the jumps Goethe sometimes pointed to in plant growth. But if we stop there, we miss the heart of the matter.

The real metamorphosis happens in between—as a continuum of movement. Metamorphosis is all too often seen as "death and rebirth" such as with the caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis. The leaf, the petal, the lizard, the goose, they are all "jumps" as indeed Goethe points "jumps" out as "one of the elements" in plant growth. But underneath, "in between" these two appearances say from leaf to petal, is where metamorphosis lies and operates. There it is not a jump, but a continuum.

This "dying and becoming" is then something that is too much brought forward in today's "self-development culture", while the actual "metamorphosis" as a MOVEMENT disappears.

So for instance, if we want to start seeing metamorphosis, and what it actually really is about, we can look at nature, and the living forms it brings about in the plant-world. There, within the incredible variety of leaves, shapes can be seen as movement and gesture. For instance the leave of a graminea is slender and long, thin; to actually experience and LIVE this form, one has to inwardly DO it.

Take an oak leaf in comparison, there it is something else, one has to move with the rounded edges which move in expansion and contraction: moving out and moving in. THAT is the actual underlying activity that has to be practised and that has to come to the fore, and that is hidden under the an all too obvious "Oh, I have to metamorphose".

It is thus about the inner ability to move into shapes, really moving AS the shape, rather than necessarily being fixated on the caterpillar-butterfly or other process of becoming which can be part of a metamorphosis needed in life, but which as such only form a particular case of "metamorphosis" in general..

So we have to start by observing plant forms. Look at the infinite variety of leaves: each is different. The leaf of a grass is slender, narrow, reaching upward. The leaf of an oak is broad, with rounded edges that alternately expand and contract, moving outward and inward.

To see this is one thing. To do it inwardly is another. Try moving inwardly as the oak leaf: follow the gesture of expansion, then contraction, tracing each rounded lobe. Now try producing inwardly the "movement" of the grass: a long, slender gesture. These are not mental exercises; they are inner movements, and they awaken a faculty we barely know we have.

This is what metamorphosis as the fundamental strata of life as gestures actually demands: the ability to perceive and move with the living gesture that flows through and are active in forms, rather than solely fixating on the forms themselves.

This is then a new kind of exercise, of gymnastics. This inner "moving" precisely into outer forms, such as real forms in the plant world, offer the opportunity to practice. Plant forms, in their great variety of shapes "as gestures" reveal the inner workings of nature –participating in their gestures by bringing oneself into movement with them, reveals nature's formative forces.

This becomes than a "language" of form forces, of constitutional forces within the greater whole in which all things are taken up. Indeed, a long slender leaf will, when experienced through movement, be understood as related to sun and light, whereas a broad and fat rhubarb leaf with rather signify an embeddedness, within the earthly forces. Once such contrast or extremes are revealed, a whole language as nuances reveals itself. This way creation's alphabet can be experienced.

And yes, this is work. It demands we set aside the fixation on our personal drama (“I must metamorphose myself”) and simply begin to practice in the world:

Forget about yourself for a moment—and do the leaves.

Only when we begin to sense the underlying movement can we start to understand how life operates—and how we might one day learn to shape with it, rather than against it.