With this post, I am switching to a new style. I will write my comments on other people’s posts as a post, rather than a comment. The idea is that this will make it easier for everyone to see what I am writing without having to read through all the comments, comments on comments, etc.
Today my job is easy: I have only Peter’s post of 21 October, and Anton’s comment to it.
Peter asks with respect to the exercises for Unit 3: “What is awareness?” And also, “What is pure experience?” He raises these questions because the exercises ask us to “swim in awareness” and “practice toward pure experience.”
The term “awareness” is used more in Buddhist texts than in TSK, but it does get discussed at some length in KTS. Here is a very interesting passage (pp. 313-14) that seems related to the questions you raise:
Suppose that awareness were not owned by the ‘bystander’, and so were available ‘within’ experience, ‘as’ experience. In that case awareness would operate ‘within’ each mental capacity as well. Available at the outset as well as the outcome, such awareness could be understood as the expression of a deeper knowledge, alive with a vitality prior to distinctions and determinations. . . .
Understood as active within the ‘field’, rather than specified by the ‘field’, awareness would lead directly to knowledge. But when we act in accord with position and character, treating awareness as response, we are merely accepting the ‘output’ of the ‘input’ put forward by knowledge. if we can ‘take out’ what has been ‘put in’ in a way that stays true to knowledge as the source, our acceptance will not specify awareness in a restrictive way.
Jack
Jack
The passage raises more need for clarification that the original question….which is fine. Perhaps what could be amplified by you is the whole turn of mind being suggested–and a phrasing that seems to be repeated in other TSK books “…available ‘within’ experience ‘as’ experience.” Obviously this statement cannot be “figured out” by just thinking about what it means–it points to the need for a different experience of experience itself. Perhaps you could help translate a bit more this KTS passage. The last paragraph especially is where things get pretty loose.
Ron