Central to Jiayan thought is the idea that many different systems of understanding, be they faith-driven, epistemological, or scientific, have elucidated vital aspects of the universe’s workings. Whitehead’s elaborate and often enigmatic metaphysical writings on the cosmos are certainly no exception. He rejected the scientific materialist view that was dominant in intellectual circles in his day. Whitehead felt that such mindsets disregarded the universe’s inherent interconnected nature, asserted the universe as purely deterministic and valueless, and championed Cartesian mind-body dualism.

Perhaps most importantly, he resented that scientific materialism ignored the universe’s creative potential; he viewed creativity as the absolute fundamental principle of all existence (analogous to Ji‘s quality of manifestation) and the driving force behind abiogenesis, which he otherwise found perplexing.

Prehension is considered by some to be the most original and important concept put forward in Whitehead’s philosophy. Whitehead’s process philosophy describes an interconnected universe in which previous “occasions of experience” (the phrase he uses for the most fundamental units of reality) are continuously “prehended,” converging into novel occasions, forming a relational web in which each moment is affected by and affects all others. It’s interdependence taken to its most extreme.

Whitehead also sought to use this concept to explain the conundrum of consciousness. Rather than an emergent property from lifeless matter, the basis of the universe itself — the sensational qualities of prehension — is in fact consciousness. Therefore, all entities, from the smallest quantum particles to the most complex living systems and celestial bodies, participate in the ongoing process of feeling and being. In this sense, every existent thing has a capacity for experience, however rudimentary.

I believe that prehension is not a metaphysical speculation but an observation about the continuity of experience through all modes and levels of existence. Ji, the unifying and ordering principle, can be understood as the totality of these experiential relations. Consciousness, as it manifests in animals, represents a higher-order integration of these microphenomenal experiences rather than a mysterious emergence from lifeless matter, thus addressing the hard problem of consciousness.

The notion that all things perceive — not just conscious entities, but rocks, water, and electrons too — is firmly at odds with empiricist philosophical systems; that is, those that claim that all knowledge is derived purely from sense experience (sense in this case meaning sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste, etc.). If something as potentially unconscious as an atom is able to experience, additional definitions are needed.

Thus, Whitehead split his idea of perception in two: causal efficacy, or physical prehension, and presentational immediacy, or conceptual prehension. Causal efficacy is devoid of any sense perception; instead, it describes the feeling of being influenced and affected by the surrounding environment. Presentational immediacy is what most people think of when they think “perception” — that which their senses inform them is there. These two modes of perception combine into “symbolic reference” in a virtually automatic process that masks the true nature of perception. In Jiaya, this distinction illuminates the Causality Principle: every act, whether skillful or unskillful, is carried forward through the felt inheritance of all things. This is the ethical face of prehension — karma as the lived continuity of influence.

Prehension is a crucial addition to the Qualities of Ji. It helps us to better understand the nature of the universe through the realization that every moment matters for each moment consists of innumerable occasions of experience, the outcomes of which are carried into the future. The universe is not static, but an interdependent web of shared inheritance. From this understanding, we should arrive at a reverence and respect for all things. The rocks, rivers, and stars that pulsate with the rhythm of Ji are of no less value than the rest of the cosmos.