Looking back toward Week 8

I never really commented on your postings for Week 8. Here are a few observations, before the chance disappears entirely.

 David in one of his posts writes of “the object understanding itself.” quote KTS. It is perhaps worth noting that KTS speaks of “the image of the object” understanding itself. That image (rather than the object itself) is the meeting place for “the interpretive structure” that knows the object and the object as it is known.

Is this an important distinction? To me it suggests a point I have found very illuminating, but may not be able to express very clearly: The alternative to subject-knowing-object is not necessarily object-knowing-subject. Rather, it is (to quote LOK), “knowing knowing in knowing.”

That same post has a link to a very interesting image of a spinning silhouette that can reverse direction spontaneously. This is like various stationery optical effects, such as the very simple Necker cube (the doodle of a cube that everyone learns to draw as a child, which can be seen from two different perspectives). But the dynamic motion here makes it more powerful. My question: is there a way to ‘relax’ our usual self-mode of seeing that makes it possible to make the shift more easily? I could not find it, in just a few minutes of exploring. Did anyone else try?

Peter’s reflections on intimacy speak for themselves. The kind of intimacy suggested in the practices and readings is of course not threatening to the ‘I’, because for the intimacy to happen, the I has to let go anyway.

Now I see the connection between these two posts. The silhouette can spin in either direction. Can we ‘spin’ in the direction of ‘subject as knower’ and then spin in the ‘opposite’ direction of knowing knowing in knowing?

Jack