Gaia: Time, Space, and Knowledge - Integral TSK

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:08:20 GMT

Hey Tom, great post! We are in agreement. I'm very familiar with Byron Katie and her work. I just happen to resonate better with TSK, but have several friends in recovery that are avid participants of her method.

While much of my pain has been physical, from injuries that were beyond my control (I mean I suppose you could say that I did climb that tree I fell 20 feet from when I was 5 years old, and I did go swimming in that pool where some guy pushed another guy in that just happened to fall on my head...LOL...), the first two years of my sobriety I was an emotional mess and did a lot of that 'inner' work...I can see how not knowing how to deal with physical pain, or reality for that matter (b/c of the drugs and the way I was raised), and not knowing how to allow and encourage my body to heal through more holistic methods, in turn allowed for the emotional conditioning that followed in many ways...which led to my life and addiction...which has now led to recovery...

Where I was the victim of traumatic accidents and injuries, I do not have to allow myself to continue to be victimized by those accidents. While I may still feel pain, and I do, I do not have to feel divided within my being b/c of that pain. I can own the pain, and continue to find healthy ways of dealing with it. Pain is a good thing. It makes you aware that something is not right. Today, I pay attention to it instead of running from it. I am learning to listen to what my body is telling me, and in doing so, am strengthening the areas that are weak, and I am aware of my body...healing.

As far as getting 'beyond' conditioning, where once I was conditioned to take drugs and drink for escape, or use various religious beliefs to try and do the same thing...and behaved in insane ways to get what I wanted...instead, today I face it. In facing it, accepting what I cannot change, taking responsibility for what I can change, my conditioned reactions and behavior has changed. Whether we qualify that as 'going beyond' or not, might just be semantics really...lol...I do understand though, what I think you are getting at, b/c my unhealthy conditioning did not magically disappear...it has taken a lot of rigorous honesty and inner looking, and then just doing what is in front of me to do...

thnx for your reply; I totally enjoyed reading it...always, star...

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:14:33 GMT

Free Byron Katie audios.

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:53:20 GMT

Hey star, I think that's great what you're doing. Let me share a little of my own orientation and work my way around to the notion I stated earlier, which is that my conditioning is my friend.

I find with anything painful in my life, if I look carefully, I see I am or was wanting to buy something with that pain, or buy something in that painful circumstance, from this person or that, or from life. By inquiring in this manner, the pain tells me about areas in my life where I'm not in the position of full responsibility---full responsiveness---in whatever kind of circumstance the pain appears.

This stance, for me, a 100%-responsibility stance, sees me as an active participant in anything that has happened to me. When I say "active participant," I am not discounting actions of other people, or discounting the necessary slow pathway of learning and growth for myself. I'm but taking a view of the circumstance from the vantage point of my feelings about it, and looking into those feelings for information about me vis a vis another person, vis a vis, a life situation or condition, etc. Those feelings reveal my attitude, and that attitude, if other than 100% responsive in an embodied, integrated responsibility, will show pain of some sort. Pain thus gives me information about base attitudes underlying my interactions with other people and life itself. Precious information.

And just like a baby needs to go through XYZ stages of learning and growth to be independent, so too, IMO, do we need to go through XYZ stages of learning and growth in our emotional/relational worlds to achieve standpoint-independence, as it were---to not only live life on its own terms, as you say, but to be life in the very way life shows up and is on this planet and in my life. This latter is a very long road of inner depth.

For me, the best guide on this road is the notion of pain as indicating <100% responsibility. A positive way of saying this is: I am what is. If I have a problem with what is, I'm split somewhere inside, this splitness, IME, generating a very specific feeling, however subtle, of painful divide, one part fighting another.

From this perspective, I am therefore very careful around notions of "my conditioning," as if "I" can ever be separated from "my conditioning"---what a fiction! Most spiritual traditions, so far as I can see, attempt to "get beyond" "one's conditioning," an activity that, to me, entrains a habit of inner division. To me, inviting and enacting inner division limits, to the extent of the divide, freedom, flexibility, openness, love, accountability, etc. To the extent of that divide will I be a victim of some or another inevitable sort. One might say, then, that pain shows victimage.

As an antidote to this conditioning-beyondism, so called, I like to say, we are 100% conditioning: there is no beyond.

If we are conditioning, so called, we might as well be it, ey? If I have a problem with my conditioning, I have a problem with me, am divided in that problematizing, feel pain from the divide, will feel "this person did X to me," or that "life did X to me," etc.

One of the few people I've encountered to take full responsibility in life in this manner is Byron Katie. I recommend her audio presentations and her method of self-inquiry for the deep surgery it represents.

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:02:55 GMT

Hi Tom, thank you for your reply...

I don't mind sharing it here...I will have three years sober on May 7, so much of what I have had to face about myself and my life has not been pretty. I did a lot of work with the 12 steps of recovery, and continue to do so. I suppose that is why TSK inquiry appeals so much to me, b/c it is a continuation of looking within at a deeper level. It allows me to unwrap those 'frozen' things of my past, and learn from them in a more open way. While the memories may appear to be 'solid' in many ways, my perspective on them has changed and continues to do so. While I cannot re-write or re-live the actual past, I can open it up and look at it in new ways so that I am not 'bound' by it in this here and now so rigidly.

You mentioned acceptance; that is one of the main keys to recovery, but I am realizing that I only have to accept the things I cannot change, like if it is raining outside, I cannot make it stop raining, but I do not have to look upon it as a 'bad' thing...while I might have made plans to go to the beach and therefore be a little disappointed, there are literally a zillion other things I can do instead, and enjoy doing them. On a more personal level, I have to accept and take responsibility for my actions and behavior, but until I became 'emotionally sober', I was unable to do so. When the drinks and drugs were gone, I was an emotional mess underneath. I realized that drinking and drugging was not my problem, it had been my solution; it just stopped working for me. The problem was me; I did not have a clue as how to live life on its own terms...today I am learning...

Today I try to do what is in front of me to do, and not fight with the universe unfolding...LOL...when conditioning arises, I try to pay attention...if it is painful, I accept it and feel it, and I look beneath its surface to see what knowledge is there to understand. I don't know how my life got so tangled really, nor do I know why...I have ideas concerning it, but that is what the TSK exercise we did last week pointed to, that we re-write our stories to justify and make sense of our lives. I suppose what really matters is living free in the here and now, but for me that means unraveling the past still, and uncovering and discovering those burried emotions that I have spent my life running from. For it is only in facing and embracing the past that I can be truly integrated, and present in the here and now, appreciating the wondrous joy of being...

There is a quote from our Big Book, "We will not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it." I always slammed the door on the past as much as possible, and that got me no where but drunk and drugged up again. Today I am learning to live life on its own terms. It is not always easy, and sometimes there is still a lot of fear, but I am learning that fear is courage when willingness walks through it...

Much joy to you Tom...always, star...

Re: Virtualization, Integral Consciousness, and TSK

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:27:26 GMT

Love to get my hands on this vest and software, but then, in a very real sense, the description of VR2 is similar to the results that can inure from a sustained TSK practice. :-)

Hi, David, I agree. Although Ron's essay was primarily about Jean Gebser, I am sure he's noticed that too, given some of his remarks towards the end of the paper.

Re: Virtualization, Integral Consciousness, and TSK

http://Davidu.gaia.com — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:26:02 GMT

Hey Brother,

I'm not much on virtual reality, since Packman is the last game I spent any significant time on at the mall arcade decades ago, betting on each game. I liked this, in the brief discussion of Osmose, to which you referred in your opening: "…in Osmose, rather than encountering a world of solid objects set over and against the one subject who perceives, these rigid dichotomies and distinctions break down."

Love to get my hands on this vest and software, but then, in a very real sense, the description of VR2 is similar to the results that can inure from a sustained TSK practice. :-)

Best,
David

Virtualization, Integral Consciousness, and TSK

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:14:34 GMT

Ron Purser, a professor at San Francisco State University, has written several interesting essays on the potential of emergent virtual technology to impact the development of integral/aperspectival consciousness. Below, I will copy an excerpt from his essay, Cyberspace and Its Limits: Hypermodern Detours in the Evolution of Consciousness, which he wrote for an annual Gebser conference.

Before reading the excerpt below, which explores two modes of virtualization, VR1 and VR2 (which, in the Gebserian sense, have the potential to undergird different modes of conscious engagement with the world), I recommend reading this brief discussion of the nature and potential of a VR2 technology called Osmose.

~*~

Virtualization and Integral Consciousness

Setting aside the hype, pathologies, and crass commercialization associated with cyberspace, we face an unprecedented historical situation. Never before have human inhabitants experienced the capability to instantaneously communicate via a global information network. We are fast approaching a technical capability that could drive home the reality that we actually do live in one world. Given the exponential rate of technological innovation in telecommunications and computing, we can expect to see dramatic advancements and rapid diffusion of technology. In a short time, we can expect more of the earth’s population will gain the ability to connect to global cyberspace. Couple this with advances in language translation programs, and improvements in video conferencing, we will soon be able to easily communicate without barriers to virtually anyone on the globe that has access to the Internet. While I am not one to subscribe to Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of a “noosphere,” the prospect of attaining “oneness” on a technical level of connectivity forces us to ask what it means to be a participant in world where boundaries between nations and differences between cultures are being virtualized. Indeed, we will soon be faced with the question of what it means to embody a planetary consciousness.

Our cultural response to such a fundamental historical question, I believe, is not predetermined or inevitable. One possible response to virtualization is simply to continue down the current path of mindless consumption, in which case cyberspace becomes nothing more than a sophisticated globalized shopping mall. In this McWorld-like scenario, planetary consciousness is homogenized by the flattening effects of consumption. We will recognize that we live in the same world– not because of some deep appreciation for the universality of human consciousness– but because people will identify with global brand images. Anyone, no matter where they are on the planet, will recognize a pair of Levis or Nikes. Unfortunately, this scenario already has a great deal of cultural momentum behind it.

Virtualization, in principle, has the potentiality of either dimming or intensifying human consciousness. Paul Levy (1998) defines virtualization as a dynamic that leads to a “…change in identity, a displacement of the center of ontological gravity of the object being considered” (p.26). But Levy’s definition, while helpful, is deceptively neutral in its tone. The potential of virtualization to alter identity and its capacity to fluidize spatial and temporal reference points, warrants further analysis into how virtualization is manifesting itself in culture, and it potential import in the evolution of consciousness. I am particularly interested in examining how the dynamic of virtualization will unfold with the advent of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, which has the potential of becoming a new mode of aesthetic expression. While Virtual Reality technology is in a very embryonic stage of development, its potential can be discerned in how it is already being used commercially in rudimentary applications, but also, and perhaps more significantly, in how VR has been equated to being an emblematic symbol of postmodern culture, likened to a new form of postmodern art.

In this last section, I differentiate between two modes of virtualization, which are mirrored in the design and conception of different trajectories of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, what I refer to as VR1 and VR2. The first mode, VR1, as we shall see, is a further amplification of the hyperreal trajectory of cyberspace which I have discussed at length in this paper. In this mode, VR1 accelerates the dynamic of virtualization, but in a direction which spirals downward, into further chaos and fragmentation. This trajectory will leads us further astray into a hyperreal world-into the depthless and nihilistic void of pure simulacra. In fact, I argue that with VR1, we enter a closed world with a proliferation of commodified images, while human consciousness becomes even more fixated and one-sided. The very meaning of human intelligence descends to a functionary level, ruled by the hyperrational logic of algorithmic reasoning. What emerges is an image of the human subject that is colonized by cyborg and artificial intelligence “anti-consciounsess” discourse, and metaphors of the brain as a cybernetic information processing device. Indeed, science fiction images of cyborg brain implants and the like may even come to pass. In sum, the human being becomes an extension of the Digital Nervous System-a dutiful consumer of images.

Rather than helping us to evolve into integral consciousness, VR1 results in the virtualization of consciousness. In effect, a hyerrational structure dominates, while our consciousness contracts into a solipsistic, disembodied subject, and compliant instruction follower. In other words, consciousness is progressively automatized. In many respects, what emerges is a mentality that operates and acts very much like the sort of “bi-cameral mind” that Julian Jaynes (1990) describes. Only in the new millennium, people don’t hear the voices of the Gods telling them what to do, but the instructions are now ubiquitously present by the computers that surrounds their lifeworld. In this hyperreal world, where human beings find solace in visual hallucinations-the world of simulacra–difficult decisions of the “real world” are “delegated” and entrusted to the agency of computers.

The other alternative, VR2, is a trajectory which has the potential for bringing about a new collective aesthetic and liberating forms of cultural expression, a new conscious figuration, or trans-figuration, a fundamental change in meaning of being a participant in the world. The narrow view of rationality that has ordered how we represent the world, as a privileged viewpoint, is opened up, or transparentized. If VR2 develops momentum, it could potentially trigger a new renaissance movement, a mutation, that stimulates a personal and collective inquiry into the nature of appearance. Ratio becomes re-balanced, allowing for the emergence of integral consciousness to come to the fore. If this movement takes hold, the integral, consciousness-raising potential of the VR2 path will result in the rebirth of the collective imagination, where society at large, in different fields and domains, radically shifts to considering how human beings are implicated in the creation of “the world.” This shift in consciousness will legitimize and support a new form of discourse, fostering a collective inquiry into the processes by which we construct and call the world (and self) into being.

Similar to Gebser’s notion of “transparency” and “diaphany,” VR2 inspires a “transparentizing” aesthetic in culture that provides evocative spaces and unleashes a creative temporal dynamic that leads to a concretion of the spiritual. VR2 intensifies human intelligence and our capacity for aperspectival vision by challenging the nature of reality as substance. VR2 technologies and art forms stimulate the collective imagination, open up our capacity for verition, rendering appearance diaphanous. I use the word imagination in the Barfieldian/Coleridgian sense, which “in its deepest sense signifies that very faculty of apprehending the outward form as the image or symbol of an inner meaning” (Barfield, 1977; p.19). Ultimately, the evolutionary path of VR2 presentiates conscious virtualization, whereby we enter, through the space-time freedom of “verition” and “waring,” the virtual reality that is already present in the truth of Being.

The characteristic differences between these two modes of virtualization, and their technological correlates (VR1 vs. VR2), are reflective of the cultural tensions that signify the transition between perspectival and aperspectival consciousness. Similar to the transitional crisis periods during paradigmatic shifts in science that Thomas Kuhn has described, the movement toward and emergence of a new era is usually uneven and full of contradictory developments. Clearly, the transition to a new era is far from smooth. VR1 appears as a technological extension or continuation of perspectivism, while VR2 offers the possibility of a discontinuous break from the mental-rational structure.

VR1: Virtualization of Consciousness

This pathway toward virtualization scatters human awareness across the surfaces of images. Rather than serving to intensify awareness inwardly into the greater depth available in space and the freedom that time offers, VR1 plunges culture into the manifold distractions and seductions of simulacra. VR1 breeds confusion, an outcome of a fusion of mere fancy with the real. Imagination is subverted to constructing images that exploit the self’s insecurity and desire for recognition, along with its insatiable appetite for more stimulation. The whole spatially fixed sense of a separate, on-looker consciousness, the whole proprioceptive structure of embodied experience, is left untouched by the VR1 aesthetic. In fact, VR1 depends on a collective representation of the self as a fixed and permanent entity that “has experiences.” The whole movement and momentum is inexorably driven toward the consumption of more experience. This mode of consciousness, which is exploited by VR1 type technologies, is intentionally directed toward generating not just images, but experiences as mass commodities. VR1 technologies are simply a means of procuring the unlimited desires of an isolated consumer self.

The commercial promise of VR1 is to offer the consumer a self-contained realm of unencumbered and sanitary enjoyment. The whole meaning of “safe sex” will be taken to whole different order as VR1 technologies become more advanced with body suits, allowing its users to enjoy simulated sexual sensations and encounters. This is actually a hideous path of how our imaginative capacities could collectively devolve to the level of mere fancy. VR1 positions us to be passive consumers of technologically constructed and packaged experiences. Over time, as VR1 proliferates, it eventually could lead to a progressive displacement of imagination in culture. The seductive attraction of VR1 as a sophisticated form of sensory escape, essentially privatizes human experience, and virtualizes what remains of our public spaces. With VR1, the user does not simply view the simulation from a distance, but enters into the image, and participates in what appears as a self-contained world.

The technological marvel of VR1 is that it can literally substitute information for reality. What appears in VR1 has brilliance, vividness, and a “separate reality” that seems more real than reality itself. However the “separate reality” experienced in VR1 does not have any likeness in quality to the sort Carlos Casteneda describes, but is a heightened manifestation of our modern idolatry (Barfield, 1988). The VR1 experience is, at heart, a postmodern form of “radical idolatry.” By radical idolatry, I refer to Owen Barfield’s notion that images, which are in effect our own creation, in the course of time, can soon be perceived as completely separate objects and things. As Barfield (1988) states, idolatry “…results when man begins to take his models—his representations—literally” (p.51).

VR2: A Tool for Conscious Virtualization

We can think of VR2 as an enabling technology, which can provide civilization a new aesthetic expression that fundamentally alters our identity and calls into question the ontological status of reality. However, I want to stress that an enabling technology, in this case, VR2, does not automatically guarantee or cause integral consciousness to arise. The convention of linear perspective art was not the “cause” of the mental structure of consciousness, but it certainly was a critical precursor to a new way of representing the world, which provided the cultural context for the emergence of the scientific worldview. Similarly, VR2 technology has the potential of stimulating a collective dialogue around in a new art form that in turn could lead to a fundamental change in the epistemic order of society. The introduction of VR2 into society could be a critical trigger, on par in magnitude to that of the linear perspectival art. Indeed, I believe VR2 could potentially become an emblematic cultural symbol of aperspectival consciousness.

One of the unique features of VR2 technology is that it would provide the capability for ordinary people to program their own software, allowing an individual, or even groups of people, to project their own imagination into a collective space. Essentially, VR2 technology would empower the average individual to be an artist in virtual reality. According to Jaron Lanier, a pioneer of Virtual Reality technology:

The result will be a mass theatre of spontaneous shared imagination and dreaming. My fond hope is that it will take the form of networked VR with inspirational authoring tools that are capable of quick, improvisatory creation. But whatever the specific form, what we are building will encourage people to share interior vision and treat it as a tangible, worthy thing, even into adulthood.

As Lanier suggests, VR2 would be an empowering, interactive art form, allowing the average user to invent the contents of a virtual world. Not only this, VR2 would, according to Lanier, come with a shared virtual world interface, allowing users to share and co-mingle with their imaginative creations in a collective virtual space. Whereas VR1 is a con-fusion of fancy with the real, VR2 is a jazz-fusion of participation with imagination. It alllows the user to consciously participate, and experience in real-time, what it means to invent and co-construct a reality with others. The architecture and software design assumptions of VR2 are epistemologically aligned with radical constructivism. The observer in VR2 can experience directly the simulated world as a product of their own interiority, an admixture of collective representations and a dynamic mosaic of their own mental constructs.

Certainly the most radical feature of VR2 is the capacity for users to directly share the contents of their imaginative experiences directly with others. Lanier predicts that this new media could give rise to a “post-symbolic order,” transcending the limits associated with the narrative structure of language. In a VR2 world, images can be projected and experienced directly, without the mediation of words or language. In many respects, a VR2 environment is analogous to our dream world, where we encounter and experience events that are projected by our own imagination. As Lanier elaborates:

It’s really different than language. It’s a new way to communicate, where people would directly create a shared world by programming it, by modeling it in real time, as opposed to merely using words, the intermediaries that we have to describe things. So it’s like cutting out the middleman of words, and finding a new form of communication where you directly create shared reality—real-time, waking-state, improvised dreaming.

If VR2 technology evolves to the point that Lanier envisions, I believe it could provide the necessary aesthetic mutation for the evolution of consciousness. Just as linear perspectival art was a catalyst for the mutation into the mental structure, VR2 could do the same for the integral structure. Linear perspectival art was also a symbolic order, which intensified consciousness to the point that it could break from the mythical structure. Consciousness was able to mutate to a rational structure, whereby it could see itself as a separate and independent observer of the phenomena—a distant on-looker. VR2 technology creates a new aesthetic that is akin to a state of lucid dreaming. It stimulates an ecstatic experience, an intensification of consciousness, which opens ratio into the whole of appearance. What appears in a VR2 world appears as a magical display, co-arising with participation-as-observer. In VR2, the cone of perspectivism is rendered transparent.

“World as Spectacle” versus “World as Shared Lucid Dream”

Whereas VR1 technology posits the world as a distant spectacle, VR2 technology presents the world as a shared dream. Virtual Reality technology (whether VR1 or VR2), relies on sophisticated sensors—typically head-goggles and hand-gloves—which are donned by the user to enter a virtual world. These sensors track the changes and movements in the user’s sense organs, and then digitally represent these changes as visual and kinesthetic outputs that then again feedback to the user’s senses. The user becomes part of the cybernetic circuit. From a hardware standpoint, VR1 and VR2 are not far apart. Rather, it is the software, and the design assumptions that determine the user interface, where these two technological variants part company.

Within a VR1 world, the depths of user’s imagination, the source of figuration, is not incorporated into the experience. Instead, the user of VR1 enters into a pre-programmed world, perhaps rich in the variety and range of interactive experiences that can be accessed, but it is by design, limited to experiencing artificial worlds that will be packaged for mass consumption. In addition, since a VR1 user cannot actively participate in creating a shared virtual world with others, this limitation is compensated by injecting content that is designed to shock the senses. VR1 presents imagery in such a way that it forces the user to stay within a perspectival posture, albeit in a so-called interactive mode. Participation within a VR1 world is primarily vicarious in nature. One feels the thrills and exhilaration of the simulation through immersion in a world designed to titillate and over-excite the senses. We already see indicators of this in the rise of shock TV, docu-dramas depicting “ER” victims with blood and guts, “COPS,” and the fascination with the suffering of others—as spectacle. VR1 dazzles the user through both sensory overload, and by presenting an array of images which can be explored interactively in succession. Clearly, the allure of VR1 will be the intensity of experience that it offers. However, like recreational drug addiction, as the threshold of excitation shifts after prolonged drug use, higher dosages are required to secure the desired effect or “high”. We can expect VR1 will have a similar mass appeal, and hence the need for more novelty, more shocking experiences, and a continuous upstaging of previous narratives.

The emphasis on pure sensory stimulation suggests that VR1 has an empirical bias. Its design assumptions and architecture seems to reflect a belief that our only form of contact with phenomena—is through our senses. The interiority and imagination of the user is simply not part of the VR1 equation. VR2, on the other hand, is used as a tool that can extend and display the user’s imagination. The connection between the phenomena and the user goes deeper than simply what meets the eye (or other senses). The link between the user and the phenomena in a VR2 world has a non-material, imaginative connection, which goes beyond mere passive sensory stimulation.

VR1 confines the user to a structure of interactivity that is preordained by the software, with the purpose of defining the user as a consumer of commercialized VR experiences. In other words, in VR1 the user has the experience of being active, interacting with vivid images in real-time, but all the while maintaining a cognitively passive receptive stance-not unlike a highly engaged teenager engrossed in a video game. VR2, on the other hand, puts the user into an active mode of configuring the software so as to be able to project and share their imagination with others in a virtual world. To summarize: VR1 merely copies experiences and makes them available for mass consumption, whereas VR2 is a tool for tapping one’s own creative imagination, and sharing it with others, providing a real-time experience of co-creating a virtual world.

The integral potentialities of VR2 are apparent in several respects. The VR2 user, in constructing and interacting within a highly imaginative virtual world, draws upon long repressed magical and mythical dimensions of human consciousness. The richness and depth of the virtual world can inspire awe and appreciation for the myriad dimensions of consciousness that are co-present all at once. Virtual worlds in VR2 are evocative, requiring the user to consciously become aware of their participation in the figuration of appearances. Rather than repressing or disengaging the user’s consciousness, VR2 turns the lights on, intensifying verition and active imagination. In other words, VR2 could open up human experience to a simulation of integral consciousness, providing a technologically mediated glimpse of a new vision, a new way of seeing the self in relation to the whole.

This is an exciting possibility, since it could potentially provide the capacity for people to express and participate in the creation of aperspectival virtual worlds. However, VR2 differs from VR1 in that it does not simply provide more surfaces to interact with, or a greater span of visuality. Rather, VR2 offers the possibility for entering into the interiority of space, of expanding inwardly into the depth of the image. In VR2, the user can, for example, see how a rainbow arises as an active construction or collective representation, involving both the user’s perception, the image that is apparently distant, and the meaning-giving process that flows between percipient and the phenomena. In other words, the user would have the opportunity to actually experience what a participatory consciousness feels like in a VR2 environment. Experience within VR2 would evoke a meta-awareness of participation-as-observer. What I mean by this is that in a VR2 environment, the user feels and experiences that his or her presence arises together with the appearances. There is a dynamic feel as the presencing of appearance comes into being. In VR2 one experiences, through immediate feedback, how one’s figuration of appearance is implicated in what appears.

The capacity to share and exchange interior images in VR2 shifts the center of gravity away from a fixed vantage point. Indeed, the whole meaning of what it means to be an observer, with a “point-of-view” is radically decentered and transparentized in VR2. This technology actually would allow one to virtually get inside another person’s shoes, to feel and experience the other’s perspective. Not only could a user try on for size another person’s mental models, we can expect that more sophisticated versions of VR2 technology would provide multiple users shared interfaces that would allow any one user to see from any perspective. In what would amount to a collective, improvisational virtual world, it would quickly become difficult to know who was the subject and who was the object. Entering a virtual world of subject-object reversals would be somewhat dizzying and disorienting at first. But the intensity of subject/object blurring experiences would generate a sort of ecstasy, a Sufi dervish-like whirl, and a sense that one was everywhere and nowhere at once.

The most radical implication of VR2 is, I believe, its evocative power to simulate a mode of consciousness in which appearances become virtualized. Apperances within a VR2 world would appear and be experienced as projections of light, as phantoms, including the appearance of the observer that is watching. That which appears to the observer in a VR2 world is recognized as not being the ultimate reality, but as having virtual substance, vivid but transparent, like an apparition, like a mirage, like an echo, like a dream object. It is this transparentizing aesthetic that could potentially open vision into aperspectival knowing by open the viewing angle to the whole.

VR2 can be thought of as ritual technology that not only inspires the collective imagination, but also deepens the intensity of awareness or verition. Instead of vision being refracted and distorted through the cone of perspectivism, instead of only perceiving with the light of reason, ratio opens up into the whole, into the zeroless dimension. What arises is a sort of “a-dimensional” mode of awareness, whose origins are “ever present,” prior to the establishment of a viewpoint, prior to the splitting of the perceptual field into duality, prior to the ratio, “before” measurement takes hold. Vision opens perception into the depth of space, accommodating the observer and the observed simultaneously, in a synaresis. As transparentizing of awareness intensifies, expanding inwardly into greater depth, space becomes more accommodating of multiple modes of consciousness.

Conclusion

The hypertrophied rationality so characteristic of the current Information Age is the virus that no software program can cure. Ratio without grounding in a human matrix of the whole will continue to infect every corpuscle of society, its radiance so brilliant, so piercing, so inexorable that it blinds rather than enlightens. Without the proper antidote of a more balanced, integral consciousness, the ratio virus will proliferate, seeking to maximize and diffuse its power both outwardly in our material affairs, and inwardly, into the information matrix of the biosphere. In whatever domain, ratio, now fused with the powers of information technology and cyberspace, can rapidly spread, altering our sensibilities to a point that we may lose touch with our very sense of humanness. Computation now reigns supreme as the dominant metaphor for modeling our understanding of the world—whether of brain functioning and intelligence, economics, or biology. This hyperrational metaphor promises a world of total calculability and control, where the clarity of rationality supersedes the search for meaning. We have been led to believe that ratio, on its own, could solve all our problems. Computation delivers us to the Promised Land of accuracy, but upon our arrival we discover that it is a rather cold and desolate place, devoid of human meaning.

The colonization of cyberspace by commercial interests, and VR1, are technological developments that simply mirror our progressive decrease in intrinsic awareness. The production of endless simulacra, images, and spectacles never get down to the key issue: to realize the true nature of reality. Instead, these media will keep us preoccupied and entranced which, in reality, simply mimics our “real world” ignorance and state of deception in duality. I am sure that VR1 will no doubt appear at first glance as a technical marvel of the highest order, and why shouldn’t it be an object of awe. This technology has the capacity to project a world that in reality has no substance. Yet, despite this technological feat, our consciousness in VR1 will still be habituated to grasping at experiences that we will predictably judge as either pleasurable or hideous. Our intoxication with consuming novel experiences will perpetuate a way of knowing that remains trapped within a perspectival world. We will continue to be mesmerized and taken in by the proliferation of images—real or virtual—all the while mistaking the image, the appearance, for the thing-in-itself. The modern spell of idolatry will not have been broken.

Whether we are inside or outside VR1, we inevitably remain locked within our own self-made 3-dimensional universe, confined to the cyberspace cave, unable to see through it. Lacking transparency and diaphaneity, lacking the necessary temporal intensity and space-freedom, our knowing will remain dimly aware of the virtual nature of our everyday lived experiences. William Gibson, who coined the term cyberspace, likened it to a “consensual hallucination.” It’s true, cyberspace, but especially VR1, will also appear as a dream, but with a key difference: infected with the ratio virus, the consciousness of the dreamer will continue to be divided against itself. Disjunctive thinking, dominated by a mode of consciousness still caught in subject-object duality, will be bound to a Cyber-Faustian dream—a delusionary state of hubris, where seductive techno-dreams eventually turn into nightmares with real consequences for sentient beings.

In this respect, VR1 stands as a cultural symbol for our hypertrophic rational structure of consciousness. The wizardry of VR1 is a “wizardry of wrong notions,” an entrancement to a magical display which results in a proliferation of spatio-temporal displacements, time-space compression, and a dimming of Being (Guenther/Longchenpa, ). The texture of experience in VR1—excitation, nervousness, and acceleration—is very different in quality from that of VR2. In VR2, we are allowed to enter a world that has become more spacious, where time can be slowed down as well as speeded up. We are granted the ability to exercise our imagination and intelligence, to observe the observer, and to use VR technology to help us witness and pay attention to the subtle process of proprioception, both at the level of our body and our thoughts. In this virtual world, the habitual reflexes of mind can slow down, allowing us to cultivate verition, to deepen our capacity for “waring,” and to seed the ground for insight to grow.

Ultimately, though, even VR2 depends on the intentionality and consciousness of the user. VR2 is not some magical “techno-enlightenment” machine. This technology is not a substitute for active and disciplined inquiry. However, VR2 can serve as a new cultural symbol, functioning as a sort of souped-up bio-feedback device for the perceptual apparatus of mind. Having the power to transport the experiencer into a virtual world where imagination and speculation can alter all the rules and perspectival conventions for space and time holds great potential for the inception of an aperspectival cultural aesthetic. In this connection, VR2 could function as an intermediate and experimental space for the evolution of consciousness. The next great mutation, the leap into the integral structure, will ultimately mean shifting from experiencing the world (and the self) as substance to experiencing the world as one virtual holomovement, as emanating from an ever present origination, an on-gong presencing of the whole, the pure wizardry of Being.

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:44:52 GMT

Hi Joy, I just now circled back to this pod to notice you posted two posts in address to me. Pardon my oversight! I will reply to your posts a little later when I've better considered what you've said.

To give a generality for the moment, I view the entirety of me as, in a sense, a form of conditioning ... 13 billion years old (the age of the universe) and counting. This statement gives a more theoretical view of conditioning: me as a memory trace of all that went before, and of all the influences radiating into me at each relevant time past.

On a more experiential note, I have found that in going into and through anything that arises---basically, the stuff given to and as me, my conditioning---whether sorrow, fear, anxiety, grief, terror, etc., and going through with as much acceptance, love and open curiosity as I can muster, that those feelings open and reveal, in their being accepted as such, a certain small bit of integration otherwise foregone. My own process of feeling-work, as such, includes all aspects of me, my learning, my ideas, my attitudes, my will, my heart. The outcomes I've experienced---I typically feel stronger, more flexible and more settled, open and loving---tell me that important processes lie in wait of any arising from my conditioning, from my past, from my desires, etc.

Feel free to drop me a PM if you want to share more personally what you're experiencing. I'll be back within a few days to reply more specifically.

: )

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 01:01:42 GMT

hey Tom...just wanted to share something...

conditioning absolutely is a gift...LOL...although it does not seem that way when you are actually experiencing 'going under' the 'knife' of 'truth'...when you can get past the initial experience, with a more balanced and fuller insight...no longer attached to the 'suffering' of the experience...then it can absolutely be seen as a gift as you stated...

here's the thing...when you are actually having to experience the pain of the surgery, i am not sure there is any way to know that...but i am open to the possibility, and have often thought that it would be very advantageous to be able to 'know' that the uncertainty and pain of what you are experiencing is a 'good thing'...but would 'knowing' that, defeat the purpose?

i would love to hear some more of your experiencing of this that can shed any light...and could make for an easier transition...

joy*

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://tlcoriginals.gaia.com — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:33:56 GMT

hi Tom...

i would love to think that going up against conditioning could be a gentle occurance, and i do see how your ideas of it would make for an easier time of it...and i would welcome that...but my experience has not been so...

it is painful...it is lonely...maybe i am just not integrated enough...lol...but every time i seriously face conditioning within my own being...i have to feel to heal, and keep it real...

i seem to be in the middle of one now...hopefully confusion will lead to a more open clarity of awareness and being...dunno...but i'll keep you posted...lol...*

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:43:58 GMT

B: I'm not sure if this is of interest to you, but one of the concerns in Integral thought is to account for the “presence of the past” – something which seems to be subtly (if not overtly) denied in popular (New Age) teachings on the Now, but which I believe the TSK vision handles in a subtle and sophisticated way.

Hi Bruce, this is something I'm interested in, as it bears on integration.

Closely related the notion of past is that of conditioning. I hear subtle unintegration in common statements regarding conditioning, as in, "that's just your conditioning" or "we must transcend our conditioning," etc. Given that I and every thing is in no small measure the present trace of the past---a form of moving, unfolding conditioning---I tend to reply internally to (and to translate) such statements along the line of "that is your conditioning that wants to transcend your conditioning."

Freedom, for me, does not exist opposite (in the sense of against) conditioning, but is a product of conditioning in a deep sense. Freedom is an emergent on earth, and is seen in beings (humans, for instance) whose physical evolved make-up (ie, conditioning type 1) allows for freedom generally, and whose childhood imprinting (conditioning type 2) implies flexibility and openness (freedom).

One might thus say, the more past, the more freedom; the more conditioning, the more freedom. None of these, IMM, are separate.

As to the notion of "past" per se, one can play with the term to say, for instance, that part of the accumulated past, if you will, is accumulated future-in-the-past: the present trace of accumulated and accumulated future-as-it-was. The past, viewed in this sense, would retain an openness, such that the accumulation of "past" could be regarded as a manifesting greater degree of openness, which is pretty much what we see with humans.

Either way, conditioning can be regarded as a gift, not something to fight against: the future infinitive in conditioning. This would IMM represent a much gentler understanding of "me" as relates to time, and particularly the past. I suspect what I'm saying is similarly or analogously expressed in TSK.

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:25:07 GMT

Hi, Tom,

You wrote: Bruce, there was always for me something "good first step" feeling about Eckhart's perspective-irreducibly good, but limited. Of course, the limit I felt was his rejection of past and future which, as I always couldn't help but feel listening to him, are implied by the term "now" (why else say 'now'?). Yes, only the present "exists" (the good first step), but in the present, and thus also existing, are future and past as elements of One Whole Time.

Yes, I have had the same "sticking point" with Tolle. It seems he is presenting essentially a simplified or more streamlined teaching to Krishnamurti's. And in both, to be honest, I have picked up on some unintegrated dualisms -- some subtly polarized positions regarding thought, time, etc.

You wrote: It's easy to see how the past exists: I am the past. I am developed, evolved. My DNA built up over, and contains, the past. I represent but a further extension of a line that goes back to god knows what that was back then. Thus the present is the walking talking past.

I'm not sure if this is of interest to you, but one of the concerns in Integral thought is to account for the "presence of the past" -- something which seems to be subtly (if not overtly) denied in popular (New Age) teachings on the Now, but which I believe the TSK vision handles in a subtle and sophisticated way.

You said: The future has always been a little trickier to incorporate as present-time, and I think TSK's future infinitive does it justice: future as present-time openness, the never-will-arrive element of experience. "Never will arrive," for its part, and to me, feels contradictory in that it posits some definite "thing" that never will be (ie, posits the existence of a non-existent, like the Buddhist notion of ‘self,' cough!). But never-will-arrive is, in a sense, first-stage (unintegrated) future-sense, the way the future is naively felt; future-in-the-present, integrated into real time (ie, now) transforms (reconfigures, in your words) that naïve sense of future into something very real: the feeling of potential in the present.

This is well said. The discussion of the "never arriving" quality of the future infinitive is, in TSK, a provisional gesture, helping to orient one to this transfigured sense of the openness of time.

You wrote: I thus also don't follow Eckhart when he separates Being from "the mind," "thought," etc. It also has crossed my mind that his own awakening was precipitated by thought, was in a real sense a gift of thought. So there feels to me to be a bit of a remaining split I don't feel when I read TSK.

Yes, I agree. One thing I appreciate about TSK (and about certain schools of Tantric and Dzogchen thought) is this deeper sense of integration -- the "room" they have for those dimensions of our humanness and finity that are often denied in the service of ascent in other traditions. I think that skillful means may sometimes first call for this "separation" or distancing in thought; where the problem enters, in my view, is when these moves are reified, taken as representing given splits in the world.

I've been pressed for time this week, but I've been intending to respond and finally had time to put this partial answer up now. More later!

Best wishes,

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 04:15:08 GMT

I wonder if knowledge, by its relation to the unknown---the whole dynamic of knowing-unknowing---gives a feeling in awareness for---is awareness of---being ... being in awareness?

I'm struck by the fact that, despite knowing little how an electron works, what it is, etc., we are electrons. Being electrons, we must "know" how they (we) are and work, but that would be knowledge, if you will, at the level of being, not at the level of aware knowing.

In any event, here's a quote from Bohm that speaks to the relation between being and knowing, or their intersection in awareness. It's from a letter I dredged from his archives in London:

How do we "know" that there is an underlying reality [a reality underlying knowledge]? Let me propose that we know it because we are it. Even science is showing today that each part of the universe is in a relation to the totality, in such a way that each part is the totality. Here, I use the word "is" not in the sense of identity, but rather, in the sense of predication. (The table is green.) So the totality of predicates of each entity is in its relationship to the totality of the universe---a two way relationship. Consider the radio telescope probing the structure of the universe, as carried into each point of space by radio waves from everywhere. Similarly, each atom, each cell, etc. is in a kind of contact with the totality. Most of this contact occurs at a very deep and subtle level, where it is lost to our senses. But I suggest that in the process of awareness itself, man may come into a direct kind of contact with the totality, if he can be in a sensitive enough state to appreciate it.

Interestingly, the etymology of "predicate" = pre- before; dicare, make known, say. "Pre-" in this sense is as in "present," before essence, being (esse).

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:45:18 GMT

Yes, I appreciated your earlier comment on the finite in the infinite. TSK has a term it uses, finity, which refers to this perception or understanding. Another related term is the "universal unique." I'll pull up some quotes sometime.

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:33:01 GMT

Lovely, quote, Bruce. I particularly like his description of stage four knowing, and particularly this:

Now we can see that not-knowing ... is intrinsic to knowledge. The move that places not-knowing ‘outside' is a kind of deception practiced by first-level knowledge, a distortion (or ‘not-knowing') that comes from the failure to acknowledge not-knowing as the limited nature of first-level knowledge.

The dynamic that discloses this interconnection is not-knowing as ‘knowledge'.

So not-knowing as a form of knowledge! Very nice: not-knowing in knowing, knowing in not-knowing. This is what I referenced when suggesting "the infinite is the finite."

I just read something in Bohm that relates to this. In a letter to "John" (?), he was speaking of groups and subgroups and how any factor expanded to its utmost comprehends all others in it. To illustrate, he refers to Atman and Brahma (for which you could substitute knowing and not-knowing):

If the "Atman" expanded to the utmost, all would be comprehended in its "factor group." Vice-versa, if the Brahma expanded to the utmost, (ie, to extend the external world model), it must include the Atman. In other words, Atman and Brahman are normal subgroup and factor group of each other. Each can invert its role in the relation to the other. Together, they cover the totality. But the utmost expansion of either one eventually comprehends the other. So if the awareness could expand without limit, it would be the totality of What is Real. Or if the scientist's knowledge of an external world expanded without limit, it would also be the totality of What is Real. Thus, Brahma = Atman.

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:46:31 GMT

I really enjoyed your reflections, Tom. I will respond to some of them in depth soon. For now, I thought you might appreciate the following passage on not-knowing from one of the TSK books (Knowledge of Time and Space), since it echoes some of your thoughts. In it, while Tarthang Tulku speaks of a final stage, he does not mean "absolutely" or "metaphysically" final -- rather, it is the final stage in the transition between what he calls first-level and second-level knowledge.

~*~

"Though we usually understand not-knowing as darkness, a place where the light of knowledge does not shine, this does not tell us what not-knowing truly is. On the one hand, it might be a blank with nothing to offer; on the other, it might reflect a potential for knowing that does not accord with the juxtaposed positions of the already known.

As a symbol of this latter possibility, we can designate the unknown as ‘x'. In ordinary usage, ‘x' not only marks the unknown, but also designates the infinitely variable. It indicates not only a point where entry is forbidden, but also ‘the spot': the point that may hold the treasure we seek. The multiple dimensionality of ‘x' suggests that the unknown might offer great value.

Greater appreciation for not-knowing can be developed by investigating the links between knowing and not-knowing through several successive stages.

Stage One: At the outset, knowing and not-knowing are sharply distinguished. But this distinction, by separating the known from the unknown, defines the known and gives it shape. We might say that the unknown is the ‘field' from within which the known emerges; the 'not this' from which ‘this' comes forth. While the difference between knowing and not-knowing predominates, it is already clear that this difference is possible on the basis of something shared. Like the back side of a coin, not-knowing supports the known.

Stage Two: At this stage, the focus is on the barriers and limits to knowledge - the points of contact between known and unknown. These limits give the known its structure, even its authenticity. Without them, the knowable would remain an open and undifferentiated ‘field', perhaps not even knowledge at all.

Focusing on borders suggests that the line between known and unknown may not be so easy to draw. On the one hand, limits mark the appearance of the not-known within the realm of the known; on the other hand, the same limits are the most distinctive aspect of the known.

Stage Three: Now the focus shifts to the potential for knowing within not-knowing. As the point of not-knowing, ‘x' is also the point at which old limits can be challenged and new knowledge can emerge. For each new and unknown point, 'x' allows the possibility that knowledge can open. Now for the first time not-knowing does not limit knowledge at all; it seems possible that knowledge could hold the whole, that knowledge is found in each point. Indeed, not-knowing seems the only possible source for knowledge.

As a corollary, not-knowing now becomes the ‘carrier' of knowledge. At the first stage, when knowing and not-knowing are clearly distinguished from one an other,'carrying' knowledge would simply mean transporting it from one place to another. But now something different is being suggested. Not-knowing might carry a ‘knowledge' that can encompass both knowing and not-knowing - a ‘knowledge' within conventional knowledge that at the same time does not exclude not-knowing.

The view that not-knowing can carry ‘knowledge' into knowledge requires a reinterpretation of the limitations implicit in juxtaposed positioning. As points of ‘not-knowing', these limitations are expressions of a more encompassing ‘knowledge'. The conventionality of conventional knowledge - its restriction to a lower level - is likewise an expression of such ‘knowability'. We might say that not-knowing has disappeared, only to reemerge as the ‘knowing' within first-level conventional knowledge. This second-level ‘knowledge' shows up everywhere, making no distinctions and knowing no limits.

This transitional view culminates in a final stage:

Stage Four: The unknown as a sponsor of ‘knowledge'. At this stage, ‘knowledge' invites us to discover a more fundamental ‘not-knowing' implicit in conventional knowledge. Although earlier views brought knowing and not-knowing closer together, not-knowing was still understood as ‘surrounding' knowledge or underlying it. Now we can see that not-knowing, in both a first-level and second-level sense, is intrinsic to knowledge. The move that places not-knowing ‘outside' is a kind of deception practiced by first-level knowledge, a distortion (or ‘not-knowing') that comes from the failure to acknowledge not-knowing as the limited nature of first-level knowledge.

The dynamic that discloses this interconnection is not-knowing as ‘knowledge'. Newly familiar with not-knowing, we see the way in which we requisition a previous set of arrangements from the storehouse of what is familiar. We see how we have learned to take responsibility for the not-knowing of first-level knowledge, accepting not-knowing as our duty and making it into our position-even defining it as knowledge.

At this fourth stage, not-knowing now delivers ‘knowledge' in the non-deliverability of knowledge. Accepting the pattern of conventional not-knowing as what is given by ‘knowledge', not-knowing lets us embody the ‘knowledge' that is there. Not-knowing challenges each axiom, disclosing the ‘x' of the axiom as unknown, and as the ‘known' in the unknown.

The stages outlined here mark a transition from a first to a second level of knowledge. In the non-positioned ‘knowing' of this newly available second-level knowledge, first-level knowing and not-knowing are inseparable aspects of a limited positioning. This insight is presented not as a critique, but as an invitation: When we no longer confine ourselves to knowing, knowing and not-knowing alike become manifestations of a second-level ‘knowledgeability'." (KTS, pp. 265-268).

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:58:29 GMT

Bruce, there was always for me something "good first step" feeling about Eckhart's perspective---irreducibly good, but limited. Of course, the limit I felt was his rejection of past and future which, as I always couldn’t help but feel listening to him, are implied by the term "now" (why else say 'now'?). Yes, only the present “exists” (the good first step), but in the present, and thus also existing, are future and past as elements of One Whole Time.

It’s easy to see how the past exists: I am the past. I am developed, evolved. My DNA built up over, and contains, the past. I represent but a further extension of a line that goes back to god knows what that was back then. Thus the present is the walking talking past.

The future has always been a little trickier to incorporate as present-time, and I think TSK’s future infinitive does it justice: future as present-time openness, the never-will-arrive element of experience. “Never will arrive,” for its part, and to me, feels contradictory in that it posits some definite “thing” that never will be (ie, posits the existence of a non-existent, like the Buddhist notion of ‘self,’ cough!). But never-will-arrive is, in a sense, first-stage (unintegrated) future-sense, the way the future is naively felt; future-in-the-present, integrated into real time (ie, now) transforms (reconfigures, in your words) that naïve sense of future into something very real: the feeling of potential in the present.

I like the future-infinitive analogy to knowledge: the future represents the unknown in the known. “I know,” for its part, implies “I don’t know,” the former being but a distinction that, like all distinctions, implies what it is not. Not knowing is thus the ever-present flipside of knowing, the leading edge of knowledge, and always presently implied if not explicitly held in mind. For me, not knowing, as a real-time present reality, infuses knowledge with a certain beyond-knowledge feeling, the feeling of Being, perhaps, which feeling is not separable from knowledge. Hence knowledge and beyond-knowledge play and imply each other.

One can see this dynamic through the lens of the “infinite.” When people first realize the finiteness of what they know within the seeming endlessness of possible knowledge, they often will say, “I know nothing.” Of course, the finite never gets closer, by addition of any “more” finite units or elements, to the infinite, so this “I know nothing” seems to express a certain fundamental of knowledge.

But “I know nothing” is like the naïve sense of future as the “thing never to arrive.” Think through “know nothing” and see where it leads: if knowledge is infinite, then any knowing will always be bounded as within, and open to, the infinite, will never be any closer to arriving at “full knowledge:” that is the nature of knowing and of knowledge: it, like the present, is open as within itself, by its very structure and nature. So from a more developed, more integral place, it is not true to say “I know nothing.” Just as from that same place it is not true to say the future will never exist.

I thus also don’t follow Eckhart when he separates Being from “the mind,” “thought,” etc. It also has crossed my mind that his own awakening was precipitated by thought, was in a real sense a gift of thought. So there feels to me to be a bit of a remaining split I don’t feel when I read TSK.

We might draw an analogy between future, infinite and realization. I often hear such things as "realization cannot be achieved" or "awakening is as to how things always were before awakening." There has always sounded something a little myth-of-the-given to those statements. I think they represent a leap very similar to TSK's leap to understanding future as future-infinitive. Or analogize to finite/infinite: the infinite can never be "achieved" by any further finite step. But, of course, the infinite, to be infinite, must include the finite (and in my deeper sense, and a final banishment of human inferiority, is the finite).

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:59:00 GMT

Thank you, Tom. I like how you put this: "that turns what once were perceived as solid lines into permeable dashed lines..." Well said.

And I'd love to hear any further observations or connections to Bohm (cool!) that you might have to offer...

All the best,

Re: New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:16:57 GMT

Really nice essay, Bruce. I think you're right to suggest TSK future-infinitive time and triple-loop awareness are very similar. And I think both go beyond Tolle. TSK nicely loops both past and future into the present as One Thing, the future being that sense of indeterminacy and unfinishedness, if you will, and "aliveness" (as you well put it) that turns what once were perceived as solid lines into permeable dashed lines.

I'll come back with more observations, and some connections I can draw with Bohm's understanding of time. Nicely done, Bruce!

New Blog on TSK and Integral

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 05:53:15 GMT

Hi, friends, if you're interested, check out my new blog on time from TSK and Integral perspectives:

Three Nows, The Future Infinitive, and Triple-Loop Awareness

If you're interested in discussing it, feel free to do so here or over on my blog.