Usually when I log on, I check to see if any Posts have been filed in “General Comments” rather than “TSK Online;” as an editor for the website, I can change the category. So I have come across a few more Posts to comment on.
Ron’s “erasing of boundaries that demarcated the organs” reminded me of a paper that I read recently by a fan of TSK and graduate student who compared the Giant Body exercises to a notion in Deleuze and Guattari (they’re French intellectuals) called “The Body without Organs.” Ron, if you’re interested, I could send you a copy.
I liked Ron’s image of experience as being like a radio where we can only tune in to one frequency or station. It’s actually a good lead-in to our first study of time, because the idea that something is being broadcast in space is very much related to the momentum of time.
Since Ron mentions evolution and the complexity of the universe, I will share something I read in Scientific American recently. Stuart Kauffman writes that evolution happens in part because of what he calls preadaptation. For instance, certain fish developed air sacs that they used to maintain their balance; later, when some of these fish found themselves at the land-sea boundary, these air sacs proved useful in allowing breathing, and allowed for the development of lungs. This seems to me an example of what Ron is referring to when he writes that there a knowledge available in the universe itself. Kauffman uses this example to say that business needs to learn how to preadapt as well. I would use it more broadly to say that this kind of global knowledge becomes available when we do not tune into just one frequency or follow out just one momentum.
Arthur wonders about opacity/density versus translucency. He sees them both as space experiences (answering the question posed in the text), and is puzzled as to why someone might think otherwise. But perhaps the question could be better put this way: in the experience of density and opacity, is the openness of space still present? This is really very closely relate to the KTS question that I used for the title of the manual: “When It Rains, Does Space Get Wet?”
Arthur, does this help with the confusion you felt on reading the commentary to Exercise 6?
Jack
Die Ãœberlegung von Ron erscheint mir als eine (!) denkbare Möglichkeit. Die Wissenschaftler sind sich nicht sicher, ob die “hands” möglicherweise auch von ihren Vorfahren, den Landbewohnern stammen, oder ob es sich um Mutationen (wie bei 6-beinigen Kälbern) handelt.
Hi Jack,
I like the Stuart Kauffman reference…I just saw on AOL news report of a dolphin caught in Japan that seemed to have what appeared as hands–extra fins–on its body…there is fossil evidence that dolphin-like creatures once walked on land about 50 million years ago…evidently this peculiar dolphin still had traces of that prior evolutionary knowledge in its genes….
Ron