We can do more than criticize ‘lower knowledge’. We can come to see it as ‘lower knowledge’.
This simple shift in emphasis to the knowledge side has great importance… it provides a natural continuum of ‘knowing’, linking lower to higher knowledge….According to this new picture of a ‘continuum of knowing’, knowing is not the result of an interaction of separate things built up from component, nonsentient parts. …It is of an order where appreciative intimacy is primary. TSK 240
The exercises 30 and 34 on the TSK book help to clarify this continuum or non-dual reality.
One of the times I´ve practiced exercise 30 – Subject Object Reversal I´ve experienced a shift in the way I experienced reality. I was outdoors walking in a sidewalk around a lake looking at the sky and making a connection with a cloud. In the beginning, I felt as if I was catching the cloud with a silk thread, and after reversing, I felt as if the cloud was catching me with a silk thread. All of a sudden, the subtle tension between subject and object vanished and a warm openness took place, an intimacy and integration with the surrounding making me feel more present and alive. In that moment I was confident that knowledge would come to me if I needed.
In ex 34 – Embodiment of Knowledge, visualizing light and let it circulate throughout my body, brought a very soft and warm feeling, very nourishing, that made the border of my body disappear. No more inside and outside, I was one with the surroundings nothing to catch or being caught.
Everything includes everything, and no separations or disharmonies are found when appearance is seen as the embodiment of knowledge. TSK 277
Hi Eliana (and John & Caroline),
I enjoy the way you intersperse quotes from Rinpoche with descriptions of your own explorations and experiences. It occurred to me while reading your post just now that this is a way of exploring the higher through the lower, where–for both of us–our understanding is not as close to higher knowledge as Rinpoche’s, and so in trying to recognize TSK in our own experience, we are looking in the lower for the presence of the higher. Perhaps that is why Action follows Vision in the Noble Eightfold Path: we can recognize a higher vision only by testing it in our own actions in the ordinary realm that we inhabit.
Or, in TSK terms: recognizing a continuum between higher knowledge and lower knowledge, we are inspired to try to bring the higher into how we live our ordinary lives.
By the Way, have you ever heard of the Kogi in Columbia? A BBC reporter did a documentary about them and their pyramid-shaped mountain that rises from the sea-coast jungle to a 17.000 foot-high snow-capped peak. He may have been the first westerner to be invited into their community. They call themselves “Older Brother” and we’re “Younger Brother”. They are trying to send us a message that the world is dying, as a result of our actions (which lack knowledge of Mother Earth). Their idea of “knowledge” is very interesting. I could probably find the link to the documentary if you’re interested. I was reminded of this video by your reference to a silk thread joining you and the clouds. The Kogi lay out miles of golden thread to join the bottom of rivers with their shores. I think this must be an act of integrating the lower and the upper, the visible and the invisible.
Michael
Yes, that feeling of total immersion and fully-with-togetherness that is so different than our usual orientation. My inquiry currently is looking at this in smaller and smaller spaces, such as rooms, conversations with people, working on a computer and such. It’s easier to expand and allow higher knowledge and space activate when I’m in a larger lower space, especially nature, but these ‘smaller’ spaces somehow are more challenging. That is so interesting! The structure and appearance of lower spaces seem different (and are, of course) in a way that makes it easier or harder to expand within them. This is a good area for inquiry.
Thank you for this Eliana. I find the silken thread image of you to cloud to you very beautiful and really clear. And I celebrate your knowing: ‘I was confident that knowledge could come to me if I needed’.
This seems to link with what John wrote about Knowledge being ‘everywhere’ and the ultimate intimacy of space and time.