This is a response to Bruce’s post, and to a question he asked in it. Bruce wrote:
We discussed on the call today how the field communique is invisible, in essence; it cannot be seen or operated on directly, and so instead we inquire into the nature of the objects “communicated†to us within the context of the communique. . . . over time, is it fair to say that the field communique at one point in time (the unconscious telling of a given “stageâ€) may eventually become “object†or “content†for us at a later time?
My sense is that we can look back on previous versions of the communique as ‘objects’, as you suggest. In fact, we might even be presented with an objective version of our own current field (or at least aspects of it) and correctly identify it as ours, without really being able to access it as a communicated field (Think, for instance, of acknowledging an addiction but stay in its grip.)
The idea that we can never get hold of a field holds at a certain level of the TSK vision. I think that ‘deeper levels’ of knowledge are no longer in the grip of the field.
By the way, I notice that I resist always writing ‘field communique.’ Sometimes it seems more accurate simply to speak of the field (that is being communicated).
Jack
Sorry not to reply earlier.
I’m no expert on Kant, but my sense is that the field specifies the a priori categories in considerably more detail than Kant had in mind. As to whether Kant’s a priori’s of space, time, and self match with TSK, well, yes, except that one might say that ‘self’ is more a part of the field communique, whereas knowledge is more basic.
Being free of the field does not seem to me to mean that the communicated patterns cease to be communicated; rather, our relationship to them changes. That point gets touched on some in the 11-16 phone call.
Jack, in relation to today’s phone call, and to this earlier question as well, I wanted to ask you about the relationship of the field communique to something like Kant’s a priori categories — the apparently “given” preconditions for experience. It seems there is some resonance between Rinpoche’s “subjective” ordering conditions conceived as “field” or “space,” and Kant’s categories. But if the field communique can also evolve, and if we also are not inherently limited by it at all “levels” or stages of TSK, then it seems it also differs from Kant’s notion in significant ways.
A question that still remains, for me, is whether we can be free altogether from the “field,” or whether we only become free of particular communicated patterns of TSK… I don’t say this really as an expression of doubt, but just of not knowing. I just do not know.
Best wishes,
Bruce
Thank you, Jack. That’s helpful. I appreciated the addiction example — it broaded the way I was looking at this.