On page 33 of DTS, in italics, there’s a phrase that I don’t understand: “Since appearance never takes form, each appearance–inseparable from space–fills the whole of space.” It’s filling all of space that I don’t understand. Is this pointing to the span of my attention: that every experience, while I am having it, fill’s the frame of my attention? And if I can widen my perspective to include more than one narrow thing, then this wider experience also fills my attention? This is a theme that comes up other places in TSK–the idea that without distance and separation there is no extention to space or what appears in space. It seems paradoxical that at the same time as space is everything, there is this image of it being no larger than the smallest thing that appears in it. — Michael
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Hi Louise,
I appreciate your poetic thoughts, as you parse each phrase in the quoted sentence about space. I find that your expressiveness itself exemplifies the “inherent fluidity of possibilities” you describe. It’s interesting how people who respond differently still all seem to hover around the same basic reality. I myself have been feeling good that I seem to now recognize something about the wholeness of space, but yesterday I had a follow-up thought: Does this feeling itself give me an excuse to avoid trying to contact this wholeness. It’s as if the familiar process of (once you’ve labeled something you no longer notice it) can apply to our identification of the wholeness of space? –Michael
Hello there………….. not sure if this is any help as an alternative perspective, as this is how I’ve understood it so far………….?
Since appearance never takes form –
Because representations of space are not fixed they have an inherent fluidity of possibilities. So for example, Christopher’s computer is more than just a computer in the wider sense of form: it’s an artefact, a toy, an environmental parasite, an encyclopaedia, a piece of junk, a magic box, a bulky door stop etc…………..
each appearance – inseparable from space
Because everything is space in action, which can be as expansive or as microscopic, as concrete / phantom like or appearance, or as structured or amorphous, or as down to earth or bizarre as you like etc, it’s all encompassed by the single entity that is space in its infinite (complexity and) representations (which we (as space too) give into and stimulate from space).
– fills the whole of space
Existence: tangible and intangible to include all dimensions in every locality (to infinity and beyond!) – in a nutshell, EVERYTHING, is expressed by / through the medium of space. So be this; empty space within space, visible shapes of space, or substance (our invention) of space, is all one inseparable space mass in action.
Perhaps putting my imagination down in words is not my strong point, but I welcome any feedback, as when I read other’s postings I can see that I don’t make the same connections, or have the same type of thoughts, so it’s really great to have this forum………….
Louise
I just lost a longer comment, so let me just say that I appreciated your comments, Christopher. Perhaps this process of taking up one another’s perceptions is one of the ways to approach the all-embracing wholeness you mention. What you say makes a lot of sense. For me, the material in chapter 5, which I think talks about knowledge more than earlier chapters, helps to elucidate the question of how appearance can fill all of space. I can see more easily with knowledge than with space how our experiences and insights are like looking through a window at something greater. And, like with an iceberg of which only a fraction rides above the waterline, the fact that we see only part doesn’t mean that the whole is anything but whole. –Michael
“Since appearance never takes form, each appearance –inseparable from space– fills the whole of space.”
Thanks for the inquiry subject. Since you wrote, Michael, I’ve been experientially exploring this particular sentence more during this afternoon; watching how locality emerges.
As I feel into this issue more, I experience that in all-embracing spaciousness there is no separate thing. Everything participates in the ‘all-embracing-ness’ of this particular kind of space – in an all-at-once-ness. That’s weird, but it’s very simple, this sense that each thing interpenetrates everywhere in the wholeness of experiential space.
My ordinary sense that a particular object is confined to one locality, so to speak, seems to be accompanied by the mental attribution or limitation of space to the domain of ‘object-space’ or physical space. Coming from the wholeness, from the holistic spaciousness, I experience locality ‘pop up’ out of the implicit, co-emergent with the object. Suddenly, a thing – like my laptop, as I am writing – ceases to be implicit in the ‘everywhere’ and is confined to an ‘over there’ space.
Now I’m curious, because I suppose that there is a co-emergent ‘me’ – a viewer with its agenda, who has a locality, too – that appears with the emergence of locality and object. More to discover, yet.
Thanks for asking this question, Michael. I, too, don’t quite get that. It feels right intuitively, but I haven’t yet understood it.