Knowing as an Act of Appreciation

Since the Field Communique gives each entity as communicated, knowledge of what appears is given together with what appears. Knowledge of appearance is inseparable from appearance.”  Dynamics of Time and Space. Page 18

Looking out my window as dawn slips in among the tree branches, it’s easy to feel that a quality of knowing simultaneously slips into my mind–the two together.

However this ready agreement cloaks a different and deeply engrained perspective.  In relating to the idea of knowledge, I envision that a knowing capacity resides in me, along with pertinent knowledge.  In appreciating the dawn as the visitation of a moment, I also draw upon memories of sitting on this same couch at this time of day–locating myself in relation to the movements of Sun and Earth.

While contemplating the possibility that my knowledgeable interest arises together with whatever appearance stimulates that interest, I seem unable to avoid envisioning a thing known by a knower who can draw upon memories of the past.

It is interesting that–in exploring space—Dynamics of Time and Space refers to Communication and knowledge of appearance, which seem to be elements of knowledge more than attributes of space.  Perhaps that is because knowledge plays a more forthright role in human life than either time or space.

Space allows and accommodates, but rarely steps into the centre of human affairs.  Time is alive in pervasive rhythms, but we don’t build time-castles out of the falling rain.  We seem to realize that in order to move closer to the presence of time and space a quality of knowing must flower.

Perhaps our intimacy with knowledge is best celebrated in that striking image in the original TSK book: Knowledge is the child of Time and Space.  Like proud parents, Time and Space follow Knowledge into the human realm and–as proud parents–delight in the Ooh’s and Ah’s that greet knowledge in its new life.  After all, the family resemblance is obvious to anyone who wasn’t born yesterday.

Wait.  How would I know if I was just born?  Perhaps all these apparent memories and this sense of inhabiting a body with a history of engagements and relationships, is but one grand but fleeting visitation–knowledge dancing in an echo chamber of its own realizations.

In that case you might want to ignore this because there is a probability that both of us are a communication of knowledge who only imagine that we exist in a world external to our thoughts about it.  And I wouldn’t want to waste your time, crowd your space, or treat universal knowledge as my own.