The Center of the Central Topic (Part 2)

[Cleric K]

Abstracting concepts from thinking gestures

In our language we have nouns and verbs. Nouns are usually easier to grasp. When we think 'apple' it is something concrete that comes to mind. Verbs are trickier. If we say 'falling' we may find it quite impossible to experience something concrete unless we visualize it with something else - for example an apple. When we use the word 'falling', we use it as a token, we know that it anchors the meaning of 'falling' but in itself, as a sound perception, it has nothing to do with falling.

How do we originally learn what 'falling' is? When we observe sensory perceptions of a falling apple, for example. We have succession of images, similarly to the fly, and the image of the apple entrains our attention (movement of attention is also an elementary act of our spiritual activity). This movement forces us to experience certain thinking gesture. Imagine that we're dancing and we let our partner lead. She initiates the movements while we simply follow in suit and as a result we experience sensory movement. If we pay attention we can later replicate the same movements with our own will. Something similar happens in thinking. If after we've seen the apple we close our eyes and replicate the process, now we don't have attention dragged by perception but thinking gesture moving an imaginary perception. This gesture has its recognizable feel to it. Just like moving our hand horizontally vs. vertically feels differently, so moving an imagined object from top to bottom in accelerating pace, feels as something recognizable. We can distinguish it from moving our focus horizontally, for example. Any such inner gesture has its unique meaningful fingerprint, so to speak. Each thinking gesture expresses a 'shape' of meaning. Thinking lives in meaningful time-patterns. The patterns are not something that we perceive externally and then interpret with thinking. They are the geometry of meaning itself. This is not something that we can understand intellectually. We can only grasp it in intuition when the hysteresis process has been brought to unity, when we experience how willed temporal meaning shapes the flow of thought-perception.

The meaningful fingerprint of a single thinking gesture can never be experienced in complete isolation. There's always implicit context which supports the concrete meaning of a thinking gesture. We'll return to that context later.

We can recognize that we perform quite similar thinking gesture even if we imagine not apples but falling stones or tomatoes, just as we can move our hand in the same way with different objects in it. This common gesture is what is labeled 'falling'. So the word 'falling' is a token, something like a reminder. Sometimes when I don't want to forget to do something before leaving home, I place some object at the door step. In this way on my way out I see it and it reminds me why it is there. The object may have nothing to do with what I had to remember, it only serves as a link. Similarly, the sound of the word 'falling' has nothing to do with the thinking gesture of falling (the movement of attention from top to bottom), yet it reminds us of it (the word has no similarity to the gesture in most of our modern languages but it can be argued that it wasn't so in the proto languages).

The important thing is that when initially perceiving the falling apple, it is no different from the fly. We don't know from the start that apples fall. But when we think about the falling apple, when we summon a memory image of it and move it through our own thinking, we experience it as (T) and we know the 'law' through which the imaginary apple (not the perceived) is falling because it is really the meaning that we think and which temporally glues together the apple 'frames'.

Thinking gestures vs. the laws of Nature

All this is not something new. Maybe it's not usually looked at in such details but it's what we do nevertheless. The thing is that we feel clear distinction between the thinking gesture and the actual sensory perceptions of the apple. That's why naturally we're inclined to speak of a dualism. This distinction is completely natural, it is really there. But we do something unnatural when we declare that we can ever know only our thinking about the 'apple-in-itself' supposed to be the hidden reality behind the perceptions. This is not something that the given forces us to do.

So we established that we have perceptions and by being stimulated by them, we can discover thinking gestures which mimic their temporal dynamics. In simple words, it means that we can imagine ourselves the phenomenon in question. Then we can even extract (abstract) a symbol for that gesture and use it as a placeholder. It's simply easier for the intellect to operate with word symbols than having to imagine a falling apple every time it wants to think about 'falling'. Unfortunately, when this process goes too far we begin to exchange only the words while we forget the living activity of which they are only symbols. This is what I've called elsewhere 'the phantom layer' - it is thinking bouncing within floating words completely cut off from their origins. Similarly, our modern money had its origin as symbols of physical value but today only the symbol has remained. Yet the whole world is entangled in this game of empty symbols. In a similar way modern thinking has become a game of empty words, completely cut off from the living processes which they used to symbolize.

We think about the perceptual world as space-like percepts transforming through time-laws, which we conceive in thinking. Of course, we keep clear distinction between the 'real' law of falling (gravity) and our imagined thinking gesture moving from top to bottom. In this way, gradually we have objectified and quantified most of our perceptual world and we're mimicking the dynamics of its appearances through our thinking gestures, which most of the time we refer to through the abstracted space-like words.  The 'real' gravity we have only in our imagination. What we really have is sequence of perceptions, which are united through our thinking gesture. The actual reasons for the perception of the falling apple we don't know. We only assume that our thinking tells us something about these reasons. If we must stay fully within the given, we can only say that our thinking gestures (as experienced in mathematical thinking for example) ultimately mimic the dynamics of perceptions. That's all we can say with certainty.

The fact that we try to mimic appearances with thinking is not the trouble in itself. The real trouble is that we neglect something important - our immediate experience of time (T). In the same way we see the fly, everything that we perceive through the senses gives us sequences of pictures but no direct knowledge of the driving forces. For this reason we accept as understanding, the thought gestures which can properly mimic perceptions. For example, if we learn how to move an imaginary fly with our thinking, and this movement happens to match the perceived movement of the fly, we say that we understand how the fly works, we have explained it. But note that the real reasons for the movement of the perceptions of the fly remain in the fly-in-itself. It is generally accepted that these can never be known, they exist as if on the opaque side of our conscious experience.

Also for this reason, the concept of time is very abstract for modern man - simply because he searches for time outside - he seeks the thinking gestures that explain the 'real' time out there. But is there anything in our experience which presents not only sequence of pictures but also the actual law which stands behind their metamorphosis? Yes and we have already designated it with (T). Similarly to the vowels exercise, we can imagine a fly moving erratically. But notice the great difference - this fly can't surprise us because we encompass the temporal law of its movement, we live in its meaning by thinking the movement. This is a very important observation. Our thinking is the only place where we have not only the sequence of pictures but also the living law that transforms them. So we have at least one instance within our conscious experience where the sequence of states of being are completely known because we live in their temporally-extended meaning. We can also appreciate the fact that what for another person is fully holistic thinking experience in time, for us may look unpredictable as the fly.

True Time as the experience of the World Process

Now we arrive at the greatest prejudice of our age. Today's scientists and philosophers say "This is irrelevant. This temporal unity is only in the mind. We must seek the real causes which explain it." OK but how do we proceed to do that? By using the same that thinking which grasps space-like percepts and animates them with time-like thinking gestures, labeled with abstract terms as electricity, gravity, magnetism, etc. We're practically dismissing the only place where we know true time - transformation which contains its own law (T) - and instead resort to building patchwork of space-like concept related through abstract ideas that can be seen in motion only thanks to our own thinking. It's quite obvious that we can never produce the living temporal unity from these fragments. So why do we disregard (T) as mere secondary effect?

Let's take a broader look on man's quest for understanding. The tool science and philosophy use is thinking. As we said, we're replicating perceptual dynamics through our own thinking. If we want to have full picture of reality it wouldn't be wise to disregard gravity and focus entirely on electricity. Yet we do exactly that in regards to knowing itself. We take (T) to have validity only for our subjective life while we seek abstract laws for the 'real' world. If we back up a little we'll discover that we know about time only because we experience it in our spiritual activity. Without it we would have a dream flow of images without logic, without beginning or end, we wouldn't know that we were born, that we had childhood. It is only because we try to grasp the flow of images by correlating them with our own temporal thinking gestures, that they become a 'biography', for example. This is what science and philosophy have always done, even though quite instinctively. We try to understand the world by seeking to recreate it in the flow of our thinking. The trouble is that we've reserved this (T) flow only for ourselves and don't conceive of the possibility that it may be the actual time flow of reality. When we open up for this possibility, (T) becomes something similar to a sense organ for us. Once we begin to think about (T) in wider sense, we begin to sense it everywhere. The world content is being metamorphosed not by mechanical laws on the opaque side of consciousness but by meaningful time flow, just like the flow of sound in the vowels exercise is the expression of our meaningful activity. Note that this doesn't mean that everything in the world should be experienced as proceeding from our own activity. We discover (T) first in our own thinking activity but once we know it, we begin to notice it everywhere. We gradually begin to behold perceptions illuminated by meaning extended in time. In this way we can conceive of our (T) experience not as image of some reality on the opaque side of consciousness but as the actual World Process. Even if we try to imagine some other world-process-in-itself which is responsible for out (T), we can do that only by using the same (T) thinking but by polarizing it in the hysteresis process. Only through the Y axis we can detach from our living (T) experience and imagine something else behind it. And that's once again the reason why this objectification has its spiritual activity (the one which imagines a 'real' world process behind the objectified picture of our thinking) still in the blind spot.

Levels of spiritual activity

So now we're open for the possibility that Time has spiritual nature and we find tiny aperture of it in (T). This hints at us that this aperture may grow and we can eventually find the true spiritual reasons behind the metamorphoses of phenomena, just as we know the reasons for the morphing sound. Clearly, our intellectual thoughts can only mimic perceptions as we know them. Our Earthly consciousness perceives flux of metamorphosing perceptions and that's why our thinking can mimic them through its gestures and further abstract them in words/concepts. We shouldn't naively extend this and imagine that the real force of gravity would be experienced as some spiritual activity which perceives objects and wills their movement as we do with the imagined apple. This is unjustified and fully anthropomorphic. We need to be open for quite different spiritual gestures which would explain the phenomena of the physical world and life from within. Unfortunately, these are actually the most difficult for us to grasp because they are furthest removed from our familiar intellectual cognition. The natural world shows a clear gradient. We have mineral world, plant world which introduces the concept of life, then animal world which adds sentience, pain and pleasure, and then man where the spirit meets its meaningful reflection. These are layers within which the spark of the spirit is embedded. We're awake in our intellectual cognition where we make sense of perceptions through thinking gestures. To understand the animal layer from its inner perspective we must gain consciousness of the spiritual activity which constitutes instinct, desire, sympathies, antipathies. To experience the inner reality of life and the mineral world we must continue even further but then we arrive at forms of spiritual activity which are so far removed from what we know in today's consciousness that it is very difficult to speak of them without preparing the context sufficiently. We need to build a gradual bridge of spiritual activity which can lead us to these deeper layers.

What we imagine as physical world today is very different from what that physical world is when it is experienced from within the spiritual activity which constitutes it. What we call today physical world is only a patchwork of fragmentary perceptions. We can only gain proper insight in these things if we begin expanding consciousness towards the layer that is closest to us. If we understand something of this, we'll also have a richer palette of experiences which through analogies would give us intuition even for the deeper layers.

We'll continue in Part 3 (final).

[AshvinP]

...

Thanks Ashvin!
Things are really spiraling towards a core here. It turned out I'm writing about quite the same thing, from another angle. Check out the new TCOTCT. The post can be seen as an illustration of everything that is spoken of here.

Cleric,

Yes I can see that spiral clearly now with this Part 2 of TCOTCT. It is fascinating to see how the abstraction process is related to [lack of] Time-consciousness in this manner. This really highlights the difference between simply thinking about these concepts as abstract theory and experiencing them vividly in our concrete Thinking experience. Even if we try to do something as simple as visualizing 4-D 'space', it practically forces us to unite the three dimensions which are normally easy to keep separate from each other with abstract intellect. Of course that visualization is still
product of intellect, i.e. an abstract spatial picture removed from our immanent Thinking experience, but it hints in the direction of how this dynamic plays out. While the physical (abstract space) eliminates Time for reduction and limited analysis, the spiritual (concrete Time i.e. "duration") integrates and redeems space through its lawful essence.

Thanks!

[mikekatz]

Hi Cleric
Thanks again! Eagerly looking forward to part 3.

[Eugene I.]

And this is the Center of the Center of the Central Topic:

All that is known of a mind, body or world are thoughts, sensations and perceptions. All that is known of thoughts, sensations and perceptions are thinking, sensing and perceiving. All that is known of thinking, sensing and perceiving is the knowing of them. Thus, all that is ever known is Knowing, and it is Knowing that knows itself alone. ... There is no knower of the experience and no experience that is known; there is just the knowing of it. In fact, not the knowing "of it". We never find the "it", we know just Knowing, and it is Knowing that Knows only Knowing.

[AshvinP]

And this is the Center of the Center of the Central Topic:

All that is known of a mind, body or world are thoughts, sensations and perceptions. All that is known of thoughts, sensations and perceptions are thinking, sensing and perceiving. All that is known of thinking, sensing and perceiving is the knowing of them. Thus, all that is ever known is Knowing, and it is Knowing that knows itself alone. ... There is no knower of the experience and no experience that is known; there is just the knowing of it. In fact, not the knowing "of it". We never find the "it", we know just Knowing, and it is Knowing that Knows only Knowing.

Yeah, this really explains a lot. I feel like I understand all the riddles of the Cosmos and can stop Thinking now

[Cleric K]

And this is the Center of the Center of the Central Topic:

All that is known of a mind, body or world are thoughts, sensations and perceptions. All that is known of thoughts, sensations and perceptions are thinking, sensing and perceiving. All that is known of thinking, sensing and perceiving is the knowing of them. Thus, all that is ever known is Knowing, and it is Knowing that knows itself alone. ... There is no knower of the experience and no experience that is known; there is just the knowing of it. In fact, not the knowing "of it". We never find the "it", we know just Knowing, and it is Knowing that Knows only Knowing.

Eugene, please take a look at Part 3.

I agree that the above speaks of something generally true but we must realize that it's precisely the polarization along the Y axis. We objectify all existence as "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" but don't ask the further question why this Knowing flows through time in the way it does? It certainly knows that it is flowing but how can it know also from where it comes and where it is going? Not in some abstract theoretical manner but from its own Knowing structure. I hope Part 3 gives some Thinking tools for this.

[Eugene I.]

And this is the Center of the Center of the Central Topic:

All that is known of a mind, body or world are thoughts, sensations and perceptions. All that is known of thoughts, sensations and perceptions are thinking, sensing and perceiving. All that is known of thinking, sensing and perceiving is the knowing of them. Thus, all that is ever known is Knowing, and it is Knowing that knows itself alone. ... There is no knower of the experience and no experience that is known; there is just the knowing of it. In fact, not the knowing "of it". We never find the "it", we know just Knowing, and it is Knowing that Knows only Knowing.

Eugene, please take a look at Part 3.

I agree that the above speaks of something generally true but we must realize that it's precisely the polarization along the Y axis. We objectify all existence as "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" but don't ask the further question why this Knowing flows through time in the way it does? It certainly knows that it is flowing but how can it know also from where it comes and where it is going? Not in some abstract theoretical manner but from its own Knowing structure. I hope Part 3 gives some Thinking tools for this.

OK, a few notes on this subject:

I think the word "objectification" is a misnomer here that creates confusion. "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" is the opposite - it is the ultimate subjectification. You basically melt with reality so that there is no gap between the "knower" and the "known" anymore. You are not "stepping outside" of the phenomena (making them even more abstracted and objectified than they already seem to be), but on the opposite, you are "merging" with them so that they become fully subjectified. That's exactly what Rupert meant when he said "There is no knower of the experience and no experience that is known; there is just the knowing of it." (= merging of the knower with the known). And in such state you can continue to be perfectly active with full and clear thinking activity on all levels, because there is no "detachment" from the thinking activity. It is not a passive and objectified state and it does not preclude us from developing the living understanding on the higher orders and deeper of cognition (whether in human or noncorporeal forms), but on the opposite, can only facilitate it.

Basically, the "stepping out of the movie" is only the first stage of the practice when we dis-identify from the "me" character of the movie and learn to observe it objectively form a noninvolved "witness" perspective. But at the next stage we realize that there is no gap between the "witness" and the "movie", they are the same thing, the witness merges with the movie and the subject-object duality collapses. So, all your criticism is really about the first "stepping out" stage, and you are right, of course it is insufficient and transitory, but it is still a necessary step towards the full merge.

So, this was just to hopefully clarify what the development along Y actually means and to show that it does not preclude us in any way from doing what you suggested:

The most important step that we should take today is to realize that the actual state and its transformation are to be found in (T). It is not what we objectify and speculate about with abstract laws. It's not what we objectify and detach from. It's the living conscious images in which we feel creatively involved. This is the tip of the World Process. Understanding the laws through which this process unfolds in time requires us to gain consciousness of the deeper arrow rhythms which underlie it. These can't be attained to through abstract models but must become conscious degrees of freedom of our spiritual activity.

[Cleric K]

I think the word "objectification" is a misnomer here that creates confusion. "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" is the opposite - it is the ultimate subjectification. You basically melt with reality so that there is no gap between the "knower" and the "known" anymore. You are not "stepping outside" of the phenomena (making them even more abstracted and objectified than they already seem to be), but on the opposite, you are "merging" with them so that they become fully subjectified. That's exactly what Rupert meant when he said "There is no knower of the experience and no experience that is known; there is just the knowing of it." (= merging of the knower with the known). And in such state you can continue to be perfectly active with full and clear thinking activity on all levels, because there is no "detachment" from the thinking activity. It is not a passive and objectified state and it does not preclude us from developing the living understanding on the higher orders and deeper of cognition (whether in human or noncorporeal forms), but on the opposite, can only facilitate it.

Basically, the "stepping out of the movie" is only the first stage of the practice when we dis-identify from the "me" character of the movie and learn to observe it objectively form a noninvolved "witness" perspective. But at the next stage we realize that there is no gap between the "witness" and the "movie", they are the same thing, the witness merges with the movie and the subject-object duality collapses. So, all your criticism is really about the first "stepping out" stage, and you are right, of course it is insufficient and transitory, but it is still a necessary step towards the full merge.

I understand that and I'm fine with it. My only concern with popular non-dualism is that practically something like "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" is accepted as the final frontier. But it is really only the current way the "I" can express its understanding of itself. If the "I" was at a much higher Divine level it wouldn't reflect itself into verbal words but the Word would be the Stellar arena itself. This is what is generally missing - the evolutionary gradient between the micro- and the Macrocosm.

So when we say "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" it shouldn't feel as the ultimate wisdom because we're still a human perspective on Earth. There's depth structure behind the arrow cascade tip which speaks these words. The funnel is One. Further in the periphery we can find the Word that speaks the funnel and we fill in the details further down the stream.

[Eugene I.]

I understand that and I'm fine with it. My only concern with popular non-dualism is that practically something like "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" is accepted as the final frontier. But it is really only the current way the "I" can express its understanding of itself. If the "I" was at a much higher Divine level it wouldn't reflect itself into verbal words but the Word would be the Stellar arena itself. This is what is generally missing - the evolutionary gradient between the micro- and the Macrocosm.

So when we say "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" it shouldn't feel as the ultimate wisdom because we're still a human perspective on Earth. There's depth structure behind the arrow cascade tip which speaks these words. The funnel is One. Further in the periphery we can find the Word that speaks the funnel and we fill in the details further down the stream.

I agree. Some non-dualist schools indeed teach that their "Knowing" is the final frontier, but I believe it is a distortion. Teachers like Spira or Adyashanti, as well as older traditions like Mahayana schools, don't teach that, but instead teach that such Knowing is only a gate to active developmental path liberated from distorted dualistic perception of reality.

[AshvinP]

I understand that and I'm fine with it. My only concern with popular non-dualism is that practically something like "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" is accepted as the final frontier. But it is really only the current way the "I" can express its understanding of itself. If the "I" was at a much higher Divine level it wouldn't reflect itself into verbal words but the Word would be the Stellar arena itself. This is what is generally missing - the evolutionary gradient between the micro- and the Macrocosm.

So when we say "Knowing that Knows only Knowing" it shouldn't feel as the ultimate wisdom because we're still a human perspective on Earth. There's depth structure behind the arrow cascade tip which speaks these words. The funnel is One. Further in the periphery we can find the Word that speaks the funnel and we fill in the details further down the stream.

I agree. Some non-dualist schools indeed teach that their "Knowing" is the final frontier, but I believe it is a distortion. Teachers like Spira or Adyashanti, as well as older traditions like Mahayana schools, don't teach that, but instead teach that such Knowing is only a gate to active developmental path liberated from distorted dualistic perception of reality.

So it's not the "core of the core of the central topic" anymore? Good to know!