Gaia: Time, Space, and Knowledge - TSK Book Study

Re: Love of Knowledge...Knowing Through Polarity...

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:14:10 GMT

Love of Knowledge (pg. 102~107)

The Self and the World...

There remain some underlying questions. Why is there a temporal movement toward knowing at all, instead of the unchanging, static condition of not-knowing? What motivates the act of knowing~~the drive to bridge the ‘knowledge gap’? How does the perceiver arise as perceiver, and the perceived as perceived?

The source of this movement lies in another fundamental polarity: that between ‘self’ and ‘world’. The self ‘knows’ a world that takes shape around the self in the act of being known. Only by moving out from the central ‘here/now’ to incorporate as known the content of ‘there/then’ can the self determine the identities and assign the meanings that together make up this ‘known world’. Knowledge in this sense is the outcome of the self’s response to its original isolation. This response can be described as ‘temporal knowing’: action to establish a structure (the known world) within which the self can assign meanings and make sense of its own being. The resulting knowledge, bound to the structure of self and world and to the temporal order within which that structure unfolds, is ‘temporal knowledge’.

Temporal knowledge brings to polar knowledge a dimension that makes the world of conventional reality possible. In the act of polar observation carried out by a ‘perceiver’, knowledge is absolutely momentary. The ‘object’ of observation is simply ‘raw data’, somewhat like the configurations of light and dark that might register on a light-sensitive screen. The knowledge that results, however, gives no access to enduring entities such as trees or human beings. Confined always to the moment, without prior referents, polar knowledge takes as its content a meaningless blur. If this were the only form of knowledge on which they could draw, human beings would be perpetually as innocent of understanding as new-born children, and the identity of the self as the owner of experience would have no chance to form.

We are ‘saved’ from such a perpetual innocence through the link that the self maintains between present and past. As the content of each sensory observation appears in the present, the self identifies it in terms of its previous experience. It looks back in time, making judgments and associations, comparing and contrasting characteristics established through earlier interactions and culturally transmitted constructs. This is not the movement into the just preceding moment entailed in any act of polar knowing (even including, for example, the recording of data by machine). The turn toward the past to identify and label a known world~~a distinctive aspect of temporal knowledge~~is unique to the self.

Although the role played by the self in establishing the ‘time-centered’ understanding upon which conventional knowledge depends is readily understood, the nature of the self remains problematic. For conventional knowledge understands ‘the real’ as being what appears in space. In this ‘space-centered’ view, there is no ‘room’ for the self, which does not seem to occupy space in the usual way, and thus cannot be considered an ordinary object. It has been argued that the self is identical with its embodiment, which does occupy space. But there are facets of the self that do not seem capable of being adequately described i terms of the body. We shall return to this problematic nature of the self below.

A World Described...

The turn toward the past characteristic of the ‘self/world polarity’ is a fundamental aspect of temporal knowledge. We can call it ‘descriptive knowledge’ to distinguish it from the polar knowledge of ‘here/now’ observation. Descriptive knowledge draws on the past to bring essential coherence and order to the direct experience to which polar knowledge gives access. Through reference to established structures, it allows distinction-making and the assigning of meanings. Only through descriptive knowledge can the self know its world as specific objects and events, each with its own distinguishing qualities and characteristics that persist over time.

Yet descriptive knowledge also places severe restrictions on what can be known. The self understands the content given in each new moment of polar knowledge in light of available concepts, prior descriptions, and fixed definitions. Each succeeding definition or description sets in place a ‘fixed perspective’ with its own ‘focal setting’, limiting what can be understood. To define is to be confined within the definition’s narrow range.

Because the self perceives by reference to the past, it is invariable drawn outside experience, which occurs only in the present. For example, if the eye sees the moon reflected in the waters of a river, the ‘present’ experience is the continuously changing flow of water illuminated by the light of the moon. Descriptive knowing, however, leads the self to identify the content of the experience, naming it ‘the reflection of the moon’. That definition is then verified in succeeding moments (aided by a characteristic shortcut that ‘makes sense’ of each new moment by assimilating it to the previous one except for specifically noted differences). Repeatedly confirming the echo of its initial perception, the self perceives a steady image of the moon, while the ‘present’ play of light on water recedes from view.

Although the move toward descriptive knowing is necessary to give form to the content of polar knowledge, something vital is lost in the move away from immediate experience. In seeing something for the first time, before ‘accustomed’ ways of knowing have a chance to form, there is often an intensity and intimacy that later vanishes. Such ‘first moments’ draw on other, prior experiences, yet they hint at what descriptive knowing ‘un-knows’. This original intensity may at times spontaneously reappear, but descriptive knowledge as such cannot recapture the ‘first-moment experience’, which is accessible only as a memory.

The implicit model we have for how knowledge arises thus proves rather complex. To summarize, it appears that the direct content of experience is given through a polar knowledge confined to a particular location in time and space. The polarities of ‘perceiver/perceived’, ‘here/there’, and ‘now/then’ mark the various aspects of this ‘micro-level’ knowing, which seems to have special reference to the sensory realm.

In themselves, however, these polarities are inadequate to account for conventional ‘objective’ reality. This ‘reality’ forms the basis of descriptive temporal knowledge, which is referred to a ‘self existing over time’, whose ‘nature’ is unclear. But descriptive knowledge directs the self away from what it seeks to know. It assures that the unknown will remain unknown even while it is being defined, classified, and positioned. It is a knowing that is equally a not-knowing.

Chapter Thirteen...

Polarity in space and time and knowledge; distance and the knowledge gap; polarity of self and world; the self’s motive for knowing; confining structure of descriptive knowledge.

Inventing the Past...(Exercise Thirteen).

Focus on the memory of a specific event, either ‘routine’ or emotionally charged. Trace the future that developed out of that remembered event. Experiment with ways to ‘strip away’ this future, for example, by ‘transporting yourself’ directly to the past event, or by making the same journey sequentially, ‘dropping’ subsequent memories as you go. In doing the exercise, also pay attention to the evidence meant to validate the accuracy of what is remembered.

Re: Lower Knowledge...

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:20:38 GMT

it's a little tricky inquiring into our actual model for knowing...gol...sometimes it feels as if you are looking both ways at Sunday...*

Re: Lower Knowledge...

http://Davidu.gaia.com — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:18:20 GMT

I think you're on to it Star. :-)

Re: Lower Knowledge...

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:24:12 GMT

David,

Thnx for that response.

Is it also referring to what Tarthang Tulku refers to in chapter 5 LOK as 'technological knowledge' as well? Our scientific models and ways of 'knowling'? This is what came to my mind when I was reading it, maybe b/c it has been on my mind, but I immediately connected it to LOK chapter 5.

Re: Lower Knowledge...

http://Davidu.gaia.com — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:46:46 GMT

Hi Star,
Thanks for posting this. I've been thinking about knowing and the 'self' lately, and this quote says a lot: Pointing out that directly recognizing the knowing capacity need not be "a nonordinary state, such as an ‘altered state of consciousness’", and that we need not take a position in order to question, and when we question consistently we begin to experience "an emergent and powerfully critical faculty", and then the 'dawning' – "it is all just ‘lower knowledge’."

The term 'lower knowledge' had me thinking in terms of the 'self', and I remembered the definition of the term 'read-out' that Jack Petranker gave us in class:

“The definition of 'read-out' from LOK (the glossary) is: 'The informing, communicative output by time of a particular focal setting on space, based on a certain way of knowing being in place.'

So let me put that a little differently. We operate with a certain understanding of time and space, and these make a certain knowledge available. Based on this way of knowing, we have a certain view of what is real and what is not. Our view of what is real is the 'read-out.'

This is something like an old computer term: 'Garbage in, Garbage out.' In other words, the end result depends on what we bring to the system. So 'read-out' suggests that our understanding of reality is like any kind of system. We start with an orientation ('our' time and 'our' space), or what time and space are like for us. And the outcome is a world. That world of course claims to be real, to be 'the way things are'. But the read-out principle suggests that any particular version of reality is just a read-out of the starting assumptions, where those assumptions are related to the T-S-K triad.”

Terms like conducting time, and the communiqué also have me following this process of carrying forward the stories of self and world, the way I am, the way it is. As content – "it is all just ‘lower knowledge’."

Lower Knowledge...

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:59:08 GMT

Lower Knowledge~a Hindrance and an Opportunity (chapter 12 (pg. 233-235) Time, Space, and Knowledge; Tarthang Tulku).

Though a different approach to knowledge is clearly necessary for genuine fulfillment, such an approach often runs into many difficulties. This fact serves to point our, from among the various criticisms made of ordinary knowledge, the most objectionable feature of the ‘minding’ and ‘belief structure’ trend~it does not allow a meaningful and positive critique of itself to be made. Therefore, it does not readily allow new perspectives to shine through.

Although there may be nothing wrong with beliefs and concepts in themselves, if they constitute the only way we know of being, they become a trap. They proliferate and interlock until no alternative to them is even visible. They amount to massive solicitations of our attention, keeping us ‘tuned in’ in a very constrictive way.

The overall effect of this is that in order to know reality, it usually seems that we must take it on the level where it presents itself, where there is clearly something to know. This, however, always turns out to be the same type of attending and knowing. So we become unconsciously convinced that even if we could look elsewhere or in a different way, there would be nothing to see. And certainly there would be nothing that would bear in a relevant way on this, the ordinary world. So it seems.

Since ordinary viewpoints are so protectionistic, before we can break free from their limitations we must make a special effort to openly challenge them. However, precisely because they embody so much resistance to change, we will also have to deal with objections deriving from our old perspectives. We may find ourselves internally divided~discontented with the old views while still being influenced by their cautions and conservatism. We may even have doubts about the validity of our own criticisms of ordinary knowledge, doubts which keep us from looking further: How can we say that it is faulty simply because it is only a mental functioning or only what we know? How can we know that there is a different way to know? How can we presume to be capable of a new way of knowing? How can we be sure that such knowing is important to us, relevant to our familiar experience? How can nonordinary states of consciousness bear in a significant, much less a critical, way on the ordinary one?

The way to resolve these doubts both philosophically and existentially is to criticize the old approach (and thereby hint at the nature of the new way of ‘knowing’) without preserving any of the basic terms or presuppositions of ordinary knowledge. We need not take the ‘mind’, psycho-physical organism, or subject as fundamental. Nor do we need to preserve the conventional emphasis on our ordinary knowledge as being a particular functioning or state (and by relaxing this emphasis we can clear away the idea that a better ‘knowing’ need be a variation~a nonordinary state, such as an ‘altered state of consciousness’). By using such a fundamental challenge as a guide in refining our experience, we will find a different type of knowingness to appear of itself, at first taking on the character of an emergent and powerfully critical faculty. This faculty is already close at hand, and just needs a thorough housecleaning to expose it.

It is precisely because this ‘knowing’ is so close to us that we can say that it and its critical evaluation of our condition are truly relevant and that it is not itself a new state. It is not set apart from ordinary knowing by some state-specific boundary; it is relevant because it actually apprehends the same content that we know. The point is that it does so without reinforcing ordinary evaluations and preferences regarding what is given in that content. This different approach to ‘knowing’ can question the content of ordinary knowledge, and even the status of ‘the world’, without rejecting anything or claiming that ordinary things do not exist. The emergent ‘knowing’ is simply able to review the familiar world and human experience and to see that:

it is all just ‘lower knowledge’.

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:10:36 GMT

Si Senor...gol*

Love of Knowledge...Knowing Through Polarity...

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:09:48 GMT

Knowing Through Polarity (LOK, chapter 13 pg. 99-102)

The model we use to account for how we know is fairly well-established, even if we seldom reflect on its details. Wholly apart from what the latest scientific findings or contemporary philosophical theory might suggest, we operate with a basic model of how knowledge arises, drawing on analogies from the physical world, well-known scientific principles, and the ‘evidence’ presented by shared experiences...Examining this model (without concern for establishing or disputing its accuracy in each detail) allows us to see how far our knowledge of knowledge can take us and how bound we are by its conclusions.

The world we know is made up of objects appearing in space and events occurring in time. To understand the structure of conventional knowledge, space and time themselves will make a good starting point, for the structures that space allows and the patterns that time presents appear to be decisive for all knowing.
Physical objects appear in space, and it seems that without space they could neither appear nor exist. As absence of what ‘exists’, space might be considered ‘non-existent’, and yet if space did not exist in some sense, objects could not exist either. This paradox however, is not an issue for conventional understanding, for from the ordinary perspective space is simply irrelevant, and so ‘disappears’ from view.

Just as space is the empty container for what is real, so time is the domain within which events occur. ‘Time’ ‘measures out’ or ‘distributes’, separating on event from another and making it possible to establish order.

For human being, which establishes itself as real through occupying space and taking up time, knowledge is based on the senses. It arises as the sensory faculties make contact with the things that appear in space and the events that occur in time. The resulting sensory data provide the basis upon which interpretation and other forms of knowing can then be constructed.

The individual relying on sense knowledge can know only the exterior surfaces of objects present before him, and only as observed from a specific perspective. His knowledge will be ‘temporal’~~linked to a specific time and place and to his ‘position’ as an observer~~and thus also temporary, for it arises under specific conditions that are constantly shifting. Common sense insists on the reliability of such temporarily valid knowledge, asserting that what is true now was (in the vast majority of cases) also true in the immediate past and will remain true in the immediate future. But only inference and assumptions based on previous experience support this seemingly self-evident conclusion.

In the act of observing on which temporally situated knowledge depends, the possible modes of being appear to be divided into two aspects or poles. At one pole is the ‘perceiver’, who has the capacity for knowing and experiencing. At the other pole is ‘objective reality’, which has the capacity for being known ‘as an object’. Since the ‘perceiver’ can know only ‘objects’ and ‘objects’ can appear only to a ‘perceiver’, the two poles are linked, yet each remains separate and distinct. The knowledge afforded by the interaction of these two poles can be called ‘polar knowledge’.

The structure of division and polarity that operates in polar knowledge means that for the perceiver, ‘isolation’ and ‘no-knowledge’ take priority over knowing. At the outset, nothing is known. A ‘knowledge gap’ separates ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘perceiver’ and ‘perceived’. Knowing arises when knowledge is somehow transported across this ‘gap’, ending the original isolation of the two poles.

The dualistic structure of observation inherent in ‘subject’ and ‘object’ finds further expression in the distinction between ‘here’ and ‘there’. The knowing capacity resides ‘here’; the known content resides ‘there’. (The more inclusive ‘here’ sometimes used in speech or thought is not the kind of ‘here’ that makes the knowing activity an issue.)

In the same way, the perceiver appears ‘now’, in the present, whereas the content of perception manifests ‘then’, in the past. This distinction is often overlooked, but it follows naturally from the recognition that perception is not instantaneous. (At the most the content of perception is communicated from ‘there’ to ‘here’ at the speed of light, so that it will take a discrete amount of time to arrive.) Thus, what is perceived is at best the object as it was in the previous moment. The ‘then’ of a more distant past or a hypothetical future figures only indirectly in this more immediate knowing.

The polarities ‘here/there’ and ‘now/then’ are basic to standard observation. The separation between here and there~~the expression of the ‘knowledge gap’ in conventional, extended space~~exhibits itself as distance. The separation between ‘now’ and ‘then’~~the expression in conventional, linear time of the primacy of ‘no-knowledge’~~presents itself as the distinction separating ‘perceived’ past from ‘experienced’ present.

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://kabiri.gaia.com — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:42:20 GMT

Star,
If you can't find a snooker table for a game or seven or eight of cowboy billiards, and if you aren't shooting nine ball, you might as well stay home. Nine ball on an eight ball table is the only way to go. So you and I, we understand...que no?

S.

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:25:46 GMT

Steven...uh...that is why sleep is a good thing...gol...but I agree that consciousness cannot be trusted...better enjoy being able to use your mind while you can, at least that is how I see it today...I love my mind, and I am going to try and take care of it as best I can...holdin it on the road is good advice...trying to lose it to become what some call 'enlightened' these days is ridiculous nonsense...(but that's another thread...lol).

Kittens are cute and intelligent...what they know I cannot say, but that they know I feel certain...experiencing different states of consciousness can be interesting, beautiful, and frightening as well...but I am thankful that I have always been able to come back to see the sunset, or the rainbow...that is magical enough for me...there is much mystery and magic in the real...life is an adventure and joy and beauty are always available to experience...I prefer to take advantage of that while I still can...and actually live my life out loud...I think we agree on that...

As to the Knowledge that Tarthang Tulku refers to and our ordinary understanding of knowledge, I think these are two totally different understandings...one has been structured, and one has no limits...however, even the structured knowledge can be opened up and inquired into...and understood at deeper levels...

But I have only had a taste of it, and I can tell you that it IS an amazing taste...

I love pool...nine ball is my favorite. I use to hang out with some pretty interesting characters at a place called The Mouse Trap, in Memphis...we were a troubled lot...but we loved our nine ball...and our drugs and whiskey...lol...I don't how I survived all the things I did...lmao

Thnx again for sharing Steven...*

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://kabiri.gaia.com — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:40:09 GMT

To continue,

But then somewhere in the night I realized I am not so sure either about space and time because I recalled playing cards too long, 35 - 40 hours of no sleep and wandering through some strange part of town where the sun is coming up and I'm trying to find my presuppositions; an exercise in shredded presuppositions. How can anyone trust consciousness?

And then it all goes by and I'm drafting a sci-fi short story and have the unbidden opportunity to flash on a scene where the presupposed qualities of time and space are reversed and it becomes clear that everything happens at once where dissolved into an infinite timescape I push the dimensionless membrane of space around on the front edge of my perception. Now that's a kundalini moment. Why think any thing about either one except for what is minimally required to hold it on the road toward all one's other needs?

Bruní, this tortoise shell kitten sits on the Linksus gadget on the end of my desk and looks out at the Altos Mirandinos and I have been advised that she doesn't see what I see and for some irrational reason that puts all this presupposition about knowledge in doubt for me. There is an overwhelming amount of information in whatever solution is the stuff in which we are dissolved but to say that any of it can coagulate as knowledge (at least in my understanding of that word) is a little bit presumptuous. Does Bruní know that she knows anything and would she be bothered by the fact that she doesn't--if she doesn't? And for an aeluroic like me, do I need to suppose that I am any different than her?

In this delicious free fall through the abyss even one makes a surfeit of headlights.

With that I think I have exhausted what I have to wonder about time and space and knowledge, so thanks for the invitation Star, and I'll see you around the pool hall.

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:46:56 GMT

Steven thank you...you always make laugh, and I think the reason being, is that you do enjoy life in the moment you are living, and it shows in your writing...

Very beautiful, and very TSK...gol*

p.s. I suppose you don't have to worry anymore about writing a blog, it seems it wrote itself...lol*

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://kabiri.gaia.com — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:52:24 GMT

I was invited here by Starlight Dancing 'cause she said there might be some resonance here with me...that's what she said. That's what she said...if you fond reader are North American, and Native American, is there anything more but to laugh all around?

And I said, "Well, I'll study up on this TSK stuff and get back to you."

Emilo, my golpador, (my striker...the young guy who wields the hammer twice as heavy as mine) and I are both suffering from a bit of heat exhaustion (agotomiento por el calor) the cumulative effect of four days in the forge in a time of unusual heat and he asks me if it is dangerous (peligroso) and I say only if you start getting bad headaches and begin to vomit and that is when you want to find your way to a hospital. (I write this part because TT says TSK is all about ordinary everyday experience, and if one works with me heat exhaustion is a regular everyday part of life.) So we took it easy today and I had the chance to read Bruce Alderman's blog on TSK and AQAL...

I want to put all that follows in perspective--God, it has been too long ago but my step-daughter bought her mother and me tickets to The Pit where the Wallflowers opened for Counting Crows. And we hear this. Attend the chorus ye of the middle way, ye of AQAL. Or anyone who discounts the regular and the everyday.

I read Bruce's thing while I am listening to a bunch of iTunes...

So, I have to pause here and mention that years ago back in the days of Integral Naked and Liz was matching songs with people and I said this is my the song for Marianthi. And it just came up and it is about the everydayness of it all..."ask me of her...she's the girl that I want!" TT should understand, and the rest is history. Songs are about the everydayness of Time and Space and Knowledge. If it ends up cerebral it just doesn't count.

Space...I look out the window above the desk, look out on the Altos Mirandinos...I pause here because my daughter 1200 miles away just wrote on my wall, "Hi Dad, Love Ya!"

Space...I look out the window above the desk, look out on the Altos Mirandinos and see the easternmost tail of the Andes Mountain chain pile up against whatever and below my window there are wrinkles in the earth deeper than the Grand Canyon and there are people living there, bottom to top...living there in space and time...knowledge is provisional, assumed but not for sure.

I am not for sure if I am too bright or too stupid to get this stuff--AQAL and TSK. There is solid objective evidence that could tip either one of those propositions into confirmation.

Space...Christ! Its a cakewalk into town.

In this space, in this space of living that counts more than anything else, there is a port town named Carupano and it is the closest place in the Americas to Europe, the place where the first telegraph line from Marseilles touched down in the new world, the only place on the new American continent where Columbus put ashore and Marianthi tells me that it is such a port town for she knows port towns because her father once engineered so many ports from Salonika to El Salvador, it is dirty and corrupt and its streets are too narrow to navigate and while the cathedral is beautiful you don't go out in the dark. I say, "Taste a little of this Carupano rum...has a taste like no other rum..."

My mother used to bake Burned Sugar cake...

M's mother used to bake Burned Sugar cake.

Carupano rum tastes like our mothers' Burned Sugar cakes. This is the everyday of TSK's phenomenology...for those not hiding in an ashram, for those not struggling toward higher pretensions.

And then here we go with time. Too many months ago I asked a question on Michael D's "Heartmind Forum:" If I were time instead of me, what would I be?"

And the final post I reserved for my own and it follows:

If I were Time instead of me and
      universally
(the full solid out there,
all of it, all of it,
all of it everywhere, and in
the dumb and thunderous out-
             there   too   and including
the spacious waltzing vacuum in this
wondrous forbidding in

                     in

                within

here)

the string runs out,
Slick shoots his seven,
and then the well fails,
the show closes for that is all she's got

Full Stop

           (.)

I would cease

          being

too and including the illusion
I was anything at all

                to begin with

                        ~~~

Maybe I will write more in the morning.

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:22:44 GMT

Celebration of Knowledge...

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:15:41 GMT

Knowledge of Freedom (pg. 306~309)

The ‘I’ as King...

As individual human beings, what do we really know about ourselves? However we came into being, do we question the fact that we exist? Form, feelings, perceptions, conceptualizing abilities, and consciousness verify our existence as living beings. Our own experience appears to confirm our existence.

We appear to exist, but how do we know we exist? We think, we remember, we have a body, we have a mind, personality, and something we call ‘I’; we have knowledge; we have skills; we have needs and wants; we have aspirations, hopes and dreams; we have emotions, views, and attitudes; we are happy, sad, loving, or angry. We are the center of our experience. We are the decision-maker, the judge of what has value. Can we even conceive of not existing?

When we say ‘I’ exist, what do we mean by ‘I’? Do we mean the physical body, together with the senses that enable us to perceive our world and experience thoughts and feelings? But we tend to say “I have a body”, not “I am a body”; ‘I’ exert control over ‘it’. ‘I’ also have a mind, although it is open to question how much of this mind is always under ‘my’ control. What is this ‘I’ that organizes, thinks, experiences, and controls? Where is the personality that makes ‘me’ different from all other human beings, from all other forms of life, and from everything else in ‘my’ world?

Is ‘I’ necessary for the body to function? We have no proof that this is so. In fact, the body may well act more efficiently without the interference of ‘I’. ‘I’ seems to have little control over metabolic processes and much of the nervous system; heartbeat and breath, though most vital to our life, do not require monitoring by ‘I’. Direct human responses to emergencies are often most effective when we are not conscious of an ‘I’ at work. Perhaps we know of impossible feats performed under duress, as when a mother has lifted a car to free a child trapped under it. In such cases, it seems we can act before the ‘I’ has a chance to think: “‘I’ cannot do this.” What is it that responds in these instances? Perhaps our notion of ‘I’ is insufficient to describe the whole of our being.

What do we really know about this ‘I’ that is so pervasive, that owns our bodies, feelings, perceptions, ideas, concepts, and possible souls? Can we set aside all our assumptions of what ‘I’ might refer to and ask it to prove its existence? Can we ask it “What are you?” and receive any answer other than “I am”?

We can question every other kind of knowledge, including the nature, even the existence of a divine creator, but we are curiously unable to question this ‘I’. ‘It’ just is~impenetrable, mysteriously inaccessible, unseen. Like a great king protected by his army, the ‘I’ is at home in its castle. The supremely confident ‘I’ can well afford to disregard our questions.

What would happen if we decided to consider ourselves separate from this ‘I’ for a time; if we issued a challenge to the ‘I’? For example, when ‘I’ responds to a desire, we could say no. What happens? Does the desire intensify? What thoughts arise? What anxieties or emotions? Can we maintain our decision, or do we feel driven to respond? How many reasons arise to convince us that we have to respond? What images come to mind, what fears of loss? If we can remain unmoving, perhaps we will note a shifting quality to the thoughts and feelings that play on our desires, uncertainties, and fears. Is there an ‘I’ directing this inner scenario?

At times when we feel hurt or insecure, and our confidence is shattered, we can again set ourselves apart and simply watch what arises. When ‘I’ wants reassurance, we can try depriving it as if it were a child that needed to learn a very important lesson. Whatever happens, we can just be quiet, without response, and simply watch the ‘I’. Listen to it rationalize what happened; note the blame it assigns, the threats, the ‘second thoughts’, the feelings of guilt and fear’ listen to it pick and nag for company; listen to it cajole with promises of a good time; listen to it pity itself; note the sad mourning for what could have been; feel its rage. In this shifting, chaotic inner realm, where is our solid, stable ‘I’?

If we have been able to remain quiet and watch the thoughts that arise, we may have observed that it is possible to separate part of ourselves from what is happening. We can simply observe our thoughts, feelings, mental imagery, and urgings; we do not have to act on them. Who is this observer? Who is exerting influence over whether ‘we’ respond? Perhaps we are more complex beings than we thought.

Tarthang Tulku...

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:20:39 GMT

pg. 368

No position we take will imprison us forever, although no position will ever be able to encompass the natural flexibility and potential of the mind. Yet we can learn to move through experience like a fish through water, an accomplished dancer, or an eagle soaring in the sky. We can pass from understanding to understanding, deepening and broadening our vision until we reach a freedom from all fixed positions, a transparent clarity based on freedom itself.

Viewing freedom as intrinsic to our being, we discover that our lives are what we make them. All options are open, our choices unlimited. When we have knowledge, space grants us unbounded opportunity, and time presents us with infinite possibilities for change.

(pages 363-368 from Knowledge of Freedom, Tarthang Tulku)

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:15:35 GMT

pg. 367-368

This freedom belongs naturally to the mind. Shifting and unbounded, the mind, like a vast ocean, has great depth and restorative power. Waves arise on the surface, taking myriad forms~high peaks and white foam, gentle ripples and bubbles, sprays of tiny drops. The boundaries of the droplet of the wave are not rigid; each form is continually changing, ever becoming new in a dynamic continuum of infinite potential. Waves arise ‘into existence’, endure in a changing fluid form, and disappear. Yet every form is water, fluid and transparent, unfixed and ungraspable. Within each tiny droplet is contained the deepest secrets of the ocean.

This magical play of the mind contains all possibilities of growth and change; its very nature is flexible and free. So free perhaps, that we become confused and hasten to stabilize ourselves and our world. But even our solid realm holds a potential that is truly unlimited. Every entity contains worlds within worlds, pulsating with life.

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:06:47 GMT

pg. 366-367

Perhaps eventually we could open wide the eyes of mind, and stretch the limits of our imagination, returning to that zero point of human consciousness, the point of all potentiality. What vistas might we see if we were to understand the full power of the human mind? The human consciousness may prove the most inspiring frontier in our history, an endless well-spring of knowledge, and our means of liberation from all limitations. Every situation, every thought or concept that appears to be stagnant could be a vehicle to a greater knowing. Even pain and confusion can be our doorways to knowledge.

By opening up the closed aspects of our experience to the greater knowing inherent within our minds, we can enter into a love affair with knowledge. With knowledge as our greatest friend, our supporter, and our witness, we can free ourselves from all limitations. We need never reduce the quality of experience to something that is ‘known’. We can appreciate each moment with interest and wonder, in tune with an unfolding that is always new.

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:55:18 GMT

pg. 366

Once we know how to recognize the face of knowledge, we will find knowledge everywhere. Observing, analyzing, and applying what we learn, we can open our minds to knowledge every moment of our lives. The whole pattern of human life, in all of its variations, can be unfolded for us to study and appreciate. Even the experience of others can become a source of knowledge: Those older than we are show us where our lives are leading; those younger can remind us where we ahve been.

After we have loosened the confining patterns of our thinking, we can find a way to open the walls of the cone, and see the full sphere of potentiality afforded us by time and knowledge. All that now seems so crowded and solid~our physical world, our complexities, thoughts, feelings, emotions~can open into a realm of infinite possibilities. Freed from the enervation of repetition, we can find our way to freedom and invite greater knowledge into our world.

Open to the flow of experience and the rhythms of time, we can free ourselves of frustration and pain, and live with a mind that is free. Relying upon our inherent receptivity to knowledge, we can create a new model of freedom and project its image so powerfully that it can overcome the divisive forces at work in the world.

Re: Knowledge of Freedom...pg. 363-364

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:46:10 GMT

pg. 365-366

Grounding ourselves in the knowledge we have, we can awaken determination to never again be caught up in duplication. This determination is the confidence we need to break free of the patterns that bind us. With each effort we loosen the hold of habitual responses and experience a new inflow of knowledge. Although our initial efforts may not succeed, we can encourage ourselves, knowing that knowledge will support us. When we back determination with new knowledge and apply it immediately in our lives, we gain strength from each experience. Remembering and acting upon all we know, we refine our knowledge continually. In time, we can build up a dynamic momentum that will completely overcome the force of our patterning.

Although our present knowledge is limited, it has also created much beauty. It has given us powerful tools to enhance human life: Everything we need for an unparalleled renaissance of human well-being is in place. The whole field of our consciousness lies before us, awaiting exploration. Our knowledge is like a nugget of unwrought gold; on the anvil of our questioning mind we can work it into a golden sphere of unequaled beauty.