Thinking Is the Best Way to Travel

The American philosopher Charles Hartshorne once remarked, "The great adventures of my life have been books." The adventures of ideas lasts for a lifetime, even for someone who enjoys exceptional longevity, as did Hartshorne, who lived to the age of 103. These essays express some of the adventures I've enjoyed with books, ideas, and the thinkers behind them. The division into four sections, symbolized by the four elements-Air, Earth, Water, and Fire-is perhaps more intuitive than cerebral, but there is method nonetheless. In Part One, the clear air of reason provides room, and ground, for adventurous flights of imagination and, especially in the Goethe piece, a cleansing, or better, a transformation of the windows of perception. Part Two is more down-to-earth and invites participation in several practical adventures or techniques for cultivating mental and spiritual faculties and growing in consciousness. Water is one of our richest metaphors that finds protean expression in the path of spirituality, explored in Part Three, as well as in all great literature and in the other arts. Part Four concerns the liberating and refining fire of philosophy, namely the adventurous frontier of process philosophy, as first conceived and clearly formulated by Alfred North Whitehead, further developed by Charles Hartshorne, and now carried robustly forward by the worldwide community of process thinkers and scholars.