A NOTEBOOK ON THINKING IN THE SIX TRIADIC FORMS
Anthony Blake
Part 6
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TETRAD
Transition from Triad to Tetrad in respect of Space
In Cartesian space, any point can be defined in terms of a direction, distance and reference point. In this way, every point can be related to every other point. We are able to find any point through a combination of three terms: we simply need an origin (0,0), a direction Q and a distance r. The direction term is complex in requiring a reference direction (say, north). We might feel that this means that there is really a fourth term involved, thus: we have two ’referential’ terms and two ’divergence’ terms. One of the referential terms is our starting point; while the other is our reference of direction. Only if our co-ordinate system is taken for granted do we have only three terms. If we think of the reference direction as ’North’ it reminds us that we have to deal with something physical; something that stands outside our abstraction. There needs to be something we can detect by an instrument (such as the magnetic compass) or- see (such as a peak). Thinking along in this ‘way, we can explore further what it means to be able to find a particular place. Recently, there have been published riddles which hide the necessary information to locate the place of a buried treasure (there is still outstanding one made a hundred years ago giving the location of millions of dollars in gold!). How is such a place to be found? What is the nature of the information that can lead someone to it?
It is certainly not relational. It requires the identification of a particular place that is unique in satisfying a set of requirements. These requirements will be couched in historical as well as in geographical terms. In other words, what will be important will include what has happened there or said to have happened there. It involves a space defined by words as well as by numbers. It will also involve the actual kinds of things to be found there, such as crosses or memorials.
We approximate to the land of myth: ’you will come to a land where . . .’and there you shall find a . . . ‘ ; and ’fast by the …. where . . . ‘ and so on. Everything is couched in terms of concrete entities, even the distances to be travelled. The land of myth is very physical.
It would be an impossible exercise to establish just what is the minimum number of items of information needed to find any particular place (in this country, say). The postal code seems to require about six. However, our own location could be given by the following four:
in a Cotswold village
close by an ancient Saxon Borough
at the sign of the snake
seek the second gardener
It is put in riddle form to be provocative: the first item gives the Cotswolds and a village; the second that it is near Winchcombe or some such town; the third is a vague way of talking about an S-bend in the road and the last refers to the actual address (2, Gardners Cottages where I used to live!). The phraseology could be much improved and fine set of clues produced which could turn into a verse. Interestingly enough, this sort of description of a place is designed to make people make as many mistakes as possible, whereas the Cartesian system was designed to do the opposite. But, there is another difference: at the site of a ’riddle’ instruction there will be some thing to tell us whether or not we have succeeded; but, at the site of a Cartesian set of instructions we may only encounter a ’point’.
This highlights something very important: in the Cartesian relational system, it makes no difference what is there; whereas, in the mythical and verbal system, all references are to something and lead to the tangible presence at the end. The intention of the words concerns something to be found. The intention of the Cartesian numbers is to arrive at a location, not to find anything. Just think of being given a map-reference and told that there is something important there: we would not even know how big it was, what form it would take, or anything about it.
What we have been implying is this: there is a distinction between position per se and the position of something. This is highlighted when the ‘something’ involves an hidden-ness. And this, in fact, just where words become important and do something that numbers cannot do. Words can tell us of something by hiding it: the riddle is a paradigm of language. We are in the realm of being.
A further speculative consequence is that number belongs to the triad as words belong to the tetrad. However what these two mean – ‘number’ and ‘words’ – is yet to be discovered. Indeed, our whole journey concerns their discovery. All we can say at this point is that it seems to us that the transition from triad to tetrad marks a transition from number to words, ^ery probably, beyond the tetrad, we shall discover ’thoughts of number’ which transcend the division of the two. These speculations arise because we are attempting to think in number and not about number. This means that what we are calling ‘numbers’ are not the same as those we count with, what we have described so far in terms of geometrical figures, projection and reduction represents only the threshold of enquiry. The geometrical figures of triangles and the like are only inactive shapes. They embody the important principle oi equal-value but little more. They are not able to embody the distinctive character of the terms, for example, for which words are still necessary.
Just as we do not perceive what the brain is doing to make us perceive, so we do not think what the mind is doing to make us think.
Thinking is yet another kind of ’filming’ that we do. It is important to reflect on the postulate that in thinking we have the interplay of two worlds. After all, we have the sense of thinking as being the most free thing that we do while, at the same time, accepting that what we can think about is entirely what appears to us ’in the world’. Thought is a fabrication, yet it concerns reality.
In the first place, we can regard thinking in the guise of abstraction. Then how is it possible for the abstract to realize the concrete? It is a difficult thing to find the correct verb to explicate what we mean by ’realize’. We mean such things as to hold, designate, agree with, clarify, make appear and so on. All these meanings and many more are implicit when we say that the abstract thinks the concrete.
In the second place, we can regard thinking as the operation of ’coming to know’ what there is in our experience, or in the world. But, ‘coming to know’ is too peremptory. We have to see through this to what it means. To do this, we have to think. Thinking is then: to dwell on, to read, to wonder, to doubt, to permit and so on; which words are an attempt to to describe the counter-flow in which the concrete thinks the abstract.
The meaning of the verb ’to think’ in the two cases is not the same. The second was the avowed method of Goethe. The first is the scientific norm.
We have allowed ourselves to introduce the ’abstract’ as term 1 and the ’concrete’ as term 2; but, these are merely pointers utilizing their mutual contrast, agents of the abstract. They enable us to make the observation that , in reference to our claim of the unity of the terms 1 and 2 in the third term, we have at least two kinds of ’one’: the abstract and the concrete. In the former, we have a concept of unity, while in the latter we have the implicit unity of the diversity of our experience. These two meanings reflect the dyad, where the former is the ’nothing’ and the latter the ’something’ or, alternatively, the former is the ’something’ while the latter is the ’all’. In its strongest sense, we say that the one is Nothing while the other is All.
However, the kind of unity we are after is special to the third term. It is in meaning itself.
Though we have introduced the notions of the abstract and the concrete we should not rest content with them. They are not the terms 1 and 2. They are the terms as they are seen in the forms 1-3-2 and 2-3-1.
In the form 1-3-2, we find the world of thought, what we think about, as concrete. In the form 2-3-1, we find the world behind thought which thinks as abstract. In other words, it is through the two basic ’flows’ that we come to 00 the experience of the two terms in this way. It is only when we centre on the act of thinking itself (term 3) that we can be near the realization of what the terms 1 and 2 are.
Term 3 is the ’representative of the whole’. What is this whole – which we can expect to be ’unbalanced’ by the first term? Here, we refer back to Heidegger and the ’letting lie before us’ which we ’take to heart’. The whole is in the unity of thinking and being.
The first term is that which grasps; which, in the western tradition, is identified with the will. The will seeks to have what it does not have (in the sense of ’will’ meant here). Abstraction is a necessary consequence but not the essence. The second term renounces any ’having’ – if we may put it like that – and fosters the inexplicable and unreachable. The second term is reality!
Thought is representative of man on earth; it is of his essence. The artifice of his contribution comes from thought; which, as we have suggested, is stirred into existence from the will to grasp, both mental and physical. The will itself comes from the triad of creation. We have the notion of God fashioning man according to His own image (as in the form 1-2-3). This essentially means that man’s will is a triad. We arrive back at the Trinity.
Thought
The relation that is thinking is most difficult to articulate. That is largely because we regard thinking as an activity, as something going on in the brain/mind, peculiar to man. Very little thought is given to how such an activity or operation could have come into being within the nexus of living things. It is important to understand this coming into being of thought, because the very- same forces remain at work in the operation of thinking as made it possible in the first case.
We tend to see thinking as a process, linearly. As simple observation shows, thinking always comes from thinking and leads to thinking. This linearity is not the whole story: it does not answer the question of why thought is necessary.
In our scheme, the triadic ground of necessity resides in this: that there is a given whole which is disturbed or fragmented by an active force, which disturbance elicits a response or compensation the disturbance and the compensation having to be unified in one locus. The unificatory locus, or ’third force’, is necessary if the other two forces are to be brought into contact.. Neither of the two forces can act alone. We have the circularity wherein the first force disturbs the whole, bringing into existence the second force; which whole is the third force in its inception. Then, the third force that emerges in the ensuing forms stands as the appearance of the whole: the whole is shown in creative becoming. The original ’given’ whole is something that we do not see as such. It is a monad, hot an object or a subject. With the triad, we can begin to see what the whole means (though this statement is rather tautological). Since the given whole is a monad, we have no way of determining in advance how it may be articulated. That is to say, there is no rule which can tell us whether or not a given monad has one or more relations inherent in it.
We may consider human being to be a given whole and thinking one of its relations. Clearly, there can be other relations such as perception and will. Each relation is capable of enabling us to understand the given whole. And, we understand that in dealing, for example, with thinking, we are not dealing with a part of the whole. What is shown through a relation is due to the nature of the active force, the first term; which belongs to the monad of all active terms possible for that whole. It is not a matter of classification but of organic unity.
We are now engaged, in thinking through thinking and it is required of us to enter into thinking and discover there the first two terms for, we are assuming that what we call thinking has been ’called into being’ as the singular locus of two terms. To put it crudely, we are after some formula such as: x + y = thinking.
We know, that the first term will have the quality of artifice – but how is that helpful in this case when it obvious from the start that thinking is artificial, i.e. ’man-made’? But, wait’ Surely, even though man-made, no man can be said to ’make’ his thoughts? Everyone who has ever attempted to penetrate one of his most familiar activities – thinking – finds it impossible to say where the thinking comes from, or what makes it possible.
Let us be as simple as possible about this. Whatever happens, we should not give way to any tendency of infinite regression. Thinking about thinking remains thinking and is not something apart from thinking. What are the obvious features of this activity?
- some kind of directedness
- abstraction (e.g. the ’shape’ of things rather than things themselves)
- sense of thinking going on ’in me’ while referring to the world
None of these observations are profound or unquestionable. But they must suffice. The reason for saying ’must’ will emerge as we go along. What they point to is a basic experience in thinking which is that of distorting reality while coming to terms with it. In thinking is the sense of making it up, either by the invention of concepts or by the simplification of reality. Thus, in contemporary physics, we have the scheme of four basic forces (strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational). In earlier times we had the scheme of four elements. The urge is to claim that all physical interactions are the result of just the four forces or elements. However, there remain phenomena which have something more, such as those of life. Today, we would refrain from introducing a mysterious fifth force of vitality; but a question remains: it is hardly likely that we have arrived at a definitive view at just this period of human history. The argument does not rest on some belief in the non-physical aspects of life.
The argument comes from thinking itself. In thinking, we know that there is more to think; thinking is inherently incomplete. As John Maddox pointed out in ’Nature’ we have begun to realize that the successes of physics have been due to a ’sleight of hand’ in that it has addressed just those questions for which it was most suited and ignored all others.
Without the sense of incompleteness, we would be in dream. In science there is the built-in corrective of engagement in experiment to test, the limits of our conceptions. Nevertheless, it is widely recognized that no scientist gives up his favourite ideas easily, without a fight!
We may present our model thus:
|
x |
y |
|||
|
assertion |
+ |
effective |
= thinking |
Without assertions about reality, we would not have reality ’asserting itself’. This is critical in science. The problem in ordinary human thinking concerning life problems is how reality itself can make a response that is not already in advance thought of in agreement with the assertions being made. We can call x and y the ‘assertive’ and the ’receptive’ terms respectively. From the assertive term comes the basic flow of thought. The ’receptive flow’ should be independent but usually is not. We must remember that ’raw experience’ is not enough; it needs to be in a form that is compatible with what is asserted, in order to constitute a challenge. Thus, there is a thinking which mediates the counter-flow.
The basic flow of thought 1-3-2 comes under the general notion of ’thinking about’ something. The counter flow, 2-3-1, can be called ’representing experience’. In the former, we exercise concepts, while in the latter we explore situations. Thus, we look for e.g. ’counter examples’ to challenge a conceptual claim.
We used the phrase ’effective presence of reality’ just in order to leave open any question of how this presence is rendered effective. It may be that en assumption is shattered by a personal experience; or, that active mentation on a feature of experience questions our views.
When we use the phrase ’assertions about reality’ we do not necessarily mean verbal formulations. Term x may include such things as underlying feelings about how the world is or attitudes towards ourselves.
When we think as 1-3-2, we have experience as thought about, not as experience. When we think as 2-3-1, we have assertion as thought about, not as assertion per se. The forms lead into their final terms, usually as a sequence of collapse. Thus, in 1-3-2, assertion collapses into experience; while in 2-3-1 experience collapses into assertion. In the former, we are thinking things; while in the latter, we are thinking about what we think.
BIOSPHERE X
A biosphere is not a thing or a collection of things. It is a region of life. Every entity it contains is responding to every other one, more or less directly. There is in process the working out of an existential agreement; since every entity encourages or inhibits the existence of the others. Everything in it is living or from the living or permeates the living; even death is part of the life. The water and air are of that biosphere and n© other; they give mobility and communication as they provide the means to live.
The ’elements’ are media through which the pattern of the whole is communicated. This pattern is not ’from’ something, being imposed on the variety of creatures; it is from the creatures to the creatures, their life of being together. In particular, water and air pass through all the lives.
Model of the 3-M Equation
There is a commerce between Media and Matter for which the currency or means of exchange is Meaning. Media is incomprehensible without the response of Matter to it. Media is seen as in a mirror, in Matter. Strangely enough, in the case of the 3-M equation, it is easy to think of the Matter term as the artificial and the Media term as somehow beyond any artifice: we must understand that Media, in relation to Matter, is artificial, in that it is an incursion from a wider reality. That is why Media is sometimes characterized in terms of purpose and intention, as if it were the work of an individualized will. It is simply that, in relation with Matter, which is the province of human established expertise, Media is bound to be seen as a higher or more developed form of expertise, one that goes beyond the state of contemporary culture.
Meaning ’flows’ from Media to Matter and from Matter to Media. We can also regard these two ’flows’ as constituting a state of balance between the two. Just as the musician can ’hear’ the note mid-way between the higher and the lower ones which are actually sounded, so can we ’hear’ the middle point between Media and Matter – and this is Meaning. If we agree that Media is in the higher faculties of man – such as the intellect above our intellect – then we can agree that Meaning is to be found in a central point in ourselves which is more than the product of our thought and senses. This is the Heart. It is the organ through which we know who and what we are and what we are about. Put in this way, we might well paraphrase the philosopher who said that ’if God did not exist we would have to invent Him’ and say: If the Heart does not exist we have to invent It. The notion here is not very mystical; it rests on the notion that there is something which we have to ’make’ and which is not ’given’ in the way that our senses and mind are. Meaning is not given as something we can observe and then think about. Je make meaning when we recognize it. vie cannot be outside of meaning, measuring it; we can only belong to it.
The first and most elementary model is, then, that of a point of balance between Media and Matter. Such a point, to repeat, is not something that we can find outside of ourselves as an item in the world. We find it by putting it there; by putting it there, we find it. We ourselves are called upon to ’be’ the mid-point, the point of balance.
Is Relatedness Reducible to a Formula of Three Terms?
We have now to consider whether the triadic formulation of relatedness is a simplification of a more open-ended set of possibilities. We took as our starting point the banal view that a relation arose between two independent elements; we went on to explore the contrast between two such elements and also the status of the intermediary element through which they had an influence on each other. Let us consider first whether there have to be only two elements brought into relation. These are the criteria we have adopted:
(a) that they are independently active
(b) that they are in contrast with each other.
The criterion of contrast makes it necessary to deal with only two terms. That of independence does not. However, we have made use of yet another criterion:
(c) that they are directed towards each other
This direction already presupposes a mutual involvement. For example, a man and a star are independent of each other but are unlikely to have anything to do with each other. We would suppose that in a relation the elements are susceptible to each other. The notions of direction, involvement and susceptibility are focussed in the concept of ’from … to’, with the proviso that other forms of influence are possible in addition. What has enabled us to introduce these other forms of influence has been an interpretation of the third element, the intermediary. The whole treatment we have been exploring rests almost entirely on allowing the intermediary equal status with the other two. We have also had to allow this element a large measure of versatility. So much so, that it became for us the location of intelligence. Thus:
1 – artifice
2 – nature
3 – intelligence
The third term has been exemplified also in situations which made it appear as a transfer of energy, or elaborated into a device or molecular process.
The Relevance of Form for Reality
The form of something is the way in which it is intelligible; where such intelligibility entails a similarity with other things. In so far as there is difference and, even, uniqueness, we ascribe this to content. Form and content, then, can be explicated by the triad. An aspect is that ’I’ as observing this something, experiencing it, observe myself or experience myself and, hence, the unique but always the same nature of the passing moment. Thus: we speak here of time. In general, we might argue that the third force is temporal,
FORM
MOMENT (time) ‘I’ (space)
CONTENT
The phenomenal opposition between Form and Content becomes mirrored in the third force as I and the Moment,
Both Form and ’I’ are centric in character whereas the other two terms are centrifugal or dispersive.
However, the third term must be self-referential. The primary relatio in it is with itself. This contrasts with the relation of the other terms, which is, primarily, with each other. Thus, the third term enables the relation of the other two terms.
In the complementarity concerning our observation of things, the element we call the ’unconscious’ is that in which we are being seen. Let all that is be what is experienced. Then, in what we do not per se experience but has an effect, we are being experienced. This really is the creative unconscious. It is integral to the totality flow of experience. The being-experienced issues as media-meaning. We may feel it as partaking in a higher discussion. There are no objects as such, existing in themselves. Whenever we see something, there is also that is being seen by the higher. The two sides merge slightly in a step of understanding. There is discussion and flow of data. Media is alive.
The notion of ‘above’ and ’below’ is simple and naive in the extreme. When we innocently awaken this not-ion in ourselves, what we notice is a certain exultation of feeling, sometimes mixed with awe. The feeling, too, is that of being poised between two vast regions; so that the apparent irrelevance of the tiny manifestation of ourselves in the universe is overcome by a sense of the significance of our position in the middle region. Before we start to consider what the ’above’ might, be, we already have a sense of it. After we begin to think on it, we may become confused and doubtful. How may we think on something that really is ’above’? Is it not the case that this ’above’ is thinking on us? And, is not this the sense of the Divine, of God? if there is this ’above’ then it will surpass man in just those features which he regards as most his property – the powers of intelligence and consciousness and will. In this wise, we. come to regard the ’above’ as implying a higher will, consciousness, intelligence than our own. Then comes the dilemma: how is that we are not aware of this higher entity or entities? And, yet, we have already the answer in our hands. Do we suppose that the rocks of the Earth are aware of us looking at them, considering them? We do not. But, it is hardly passible for us to assume that the higher ’above’ regards us as we regard the rocks. Surely, we feel, there must be some kind of contact, in which that which is higher than ourselves and us can meet and ’converse’. And this has been the way in all religions, up to the appearance of Christ in which men believed that the highest of the high ’came down’ and was ’made man’. The Christians made this a peculiar virtue of their religion – to suppose that God is so powerful that He could ’deny Himself’, undergo self-imposed kenosis. or privation and make Himself as a man without losing what He was, essentially. And, thus, already, the words become more elaborate. Behind all the various attempts (if so they may be called) to reconcile man with what is ’above’ is the supposition that man represents a certain threshold: he is just at the point where ’meeting’ becomes possible. This is even taken to the extreme in that it is supposed that, any higher, and man would become merged into the ’above’ and not truly himself; would enter regions where lack of communication with God would become impossible. It is just because communication is so tenuous, so unlikely, that man is significant and his life of cosmic and dramatic significance.
The understanding of ’above’ and ’below’ has its form in the notion of relation and the triad; so much so, that this form is only one of several that can come out of the notion of relationship.) In essence, the move, is simple: we move out of a realm of contrast into. one of mutual definition: whereas, in contrast, it is we as observers who ’make the difference’; in relation, we presume the contrast to be a superficial aspect of what is working there already, without us. The contrasts of our judgment are replaced by the relation that both separates and unites. In essence, then, relation is the answer we suppose io the question of contrast. In no way do we begin to presume that this answer is like that those which come to the fore in physics. Thus, we do not find yet another entity to explain what we see in our judgment, as some kind of ’hidden parameter’ or mechanism; though certain physicists have followed such a route in their investigations. In fact, what takes place is a pragmatic exercise in combining together two sorts of roles: that of things and that of connections; which, in physics, is represented in the scheme of particles divided into ’matter’ and ’force’ kinds. Since this division is necessarily mo both incomplete and artificial, the investigation must continue into further elaborations and also into further simplifications; each vying with the other, walking, through the maze of technology. The essence of things can be understood if we ’allow them to lie together’ which- state of affaire defines a quality of thought that is rarely regarded because it is not founded on the contrast between things.
We can use relatedness to move from the domain of contrast and gain access to the ’above’. In our discourse, this has been by way of analogy. It is important to examine the following: do we simply extend what we know ’below’ to arrive at the ‘above’; or, do we have to reflect the below to find the above? The notion of reflection entails that of inversion. We have here an impossible quandary. For instance, will we (can we) find in the end that the ’above’ is passive in relation to us, though passive in a ’higher’ and inverted sense? The terms of the triad are multi-roled. Thus , the second is both denial and receptivity; the first both dominance and affirmation; the third both the middle and the free.
For, we do not find the higher to act on us as if by way of compulsion; it is not that the higher is a more powerful affirmation than the affirmation we can summon up, to turn our own affirmation into a passiveness. It is of a different order, of kind that makes us realize there is the divine.
There may yet be the compulsion that we are not aware of, which we do not feel as compulsion. The possible range here is vast. We could, include death, sex, fluctuations of consciousness, morality. Normally, we do not. We take it that there are certain things which are unavoidable from the very conditions of existence under which we live: space and time, conservation of energy, biological function and the like. In contrast with this, we portray ourselves as somehow subject, to a ’higher set of conditions’ or ’higher law’ which, for example, holds some kind of sway in the ethical sphere. Hence, the value of our love for another is measured against some kind of demand originating, from beyond us: there is a perception within which our goodness can be seen, just as we are able to see the measure of material things within our own sphere of perception. And, further, we are not cut off from this sphere of perception. At one time, according., to a common view, of the history of Judaeo-Christianity, we were ’given.’ laws and instructions in this respect – authoritative statements – and, at a later date, it was revealed in a general far- reaching way, that in our own conscience we were able to make contact with this perception.
In contemplation of this ethical sphere, we come across notions which apply also to the domain of knowledge: thus, for example, the truth of our knowledge is to be seen within the higher perception. This ’truth’ would include such things as the way in which we know and how we are able to know and the value of this knowing in us. Indeed, all spheres which touch upon values have this aspect t) them. The individual and the world event involved are simultaneously made of import in a sense that has no connection with their relative status vis a vis other individuals and events. Maybe, there is some relevance to a wider sphere of time and space; for example, to the future. But, only because this wider sphere allows the possibility of other considerations, other kinds of measurement, involving that which does not actually exist. The higher perception, also, has in it a direct contact with the mutual relevance of individual and event which can only be attained indirectly by that individual. The widow’s mite!
To picture the higher perception as that of a greater individual is probably a mistake. It is better to invert the relation which pertains to our perception of things. Hence, we would not be regarded as things at all. There would be a different order of perception altogether, a spiritual perception in that it is of the value of acts rather than of individuals and events
At the same time, let us allow for a perception which is also more accurate: in this is the existing led, the Cosmic Observer, Then, what we have considered so far is of the God who does not exist: with respect to this Goh, we have a perception which is prior to existence. Perhaps Moses had it right when he told his people that their God was ’1 AM.’, For this is what the. higher perception ’creates’; and, in its strict meaning, in this is the creation of man in the Image of God, The Image of God is I AM, Somehow, we must get to the place in which it is perfectly obvious that our own perception and conscious is so-to-say embedded in a higher one. And, in this and with it, the insight that even our own perception is the, thing in itself , where the thing is just that mutuality of individual and event. Identity in annihilation. Freedom does not come out of the possibilities of existence but from being: perceived; the trust is net in things but in the consciousness of things.
Since Descartes, philosophy has been dominated by the notion of •consciousness-of’; in which, for every object, there is a subjective pole, within a realm of experience. What has not been considered with this, but separately, is ’being-consciousned’, This latter has been relegated tou the realm of mystical speculation, even as a special state. But, there are hints of its supposed universality. After all, it cannot be the case that consciousness is ’ours’: we do not possess or have consciousness as we have eyes or ears. Just as we suppose all objects to be constituted out of the same total of material which has been formed in the creation of the universe, so we can suppose all consciousness to be constituted out of the same total awareness.. This is not to say that these two constitutions act in the same way. In the case of matter, there is combination; whereas, in the case of consciousness, there is participation. The question for a particular consciousness is to what degree it is able to participate in the totality, which is an awareness of everything all at once. The important thing is that consciousness does not derive from entities; but entities from consciousness since the presence, which signifies an entity arises from the presencing of presence, which turns on self-reflective awareness. There are no entities in the world of function alone: it is only through consciousness, which is of the substance of self-relation, that allows for everything to imply that it is because of I am. We are aware of things not through our own power, nor through the power that they have as belonging to the sphere of existing things but through the power of consciousness. This is not to say that things are conscious in any way that corresponds to our consciousness of them; it is to say that the existence — i.e. the presentation as entities – of things cannot derive from them as part of the combinations of matter. The existence of things as matter is unready it does not belong, to what is possible as things which are known and experienced.
Consciousness-of is derivative and derives from being-consciousned. We are known even as we know, feel, and so on. It is inevitable that our consciousness makes us vulnerable to being judged, for there can be no such thing, as an isolated consciousness, generating itself, arising from the combinations of matter. Consciousness comes in as it is able: which ableness depends on the degree of ’I AM’ that it lends. So that: our consciousness is all that we can bear. Just so as our knowledge of matter is by taking the limit of our experience towards our own irrelevance, so our appreciation of consciousness is by taking the limit of our experience towards our own maximum relevance and even beyond. It is generally felt that our present external culture related to science and technology has gone too far towards our own self-extinction, towards the Thanosphere. We need to find that which is not based, on combination. It is a Buddhist quest.
While we have used analogy to take us from the known to the unknown, it is consciousness that takes us from the whole to the part.
Analogy is an intellectual function, while consciousness acts more as a feeling. We do ’know1 things directly in consciousness; but this knowing, is so immediate and intimate that it cannot be handled and subject to analysis and recombination; instead, it serves as a guide for reason. In a very simplistic way: we reason and make our analogies and then ask within ourselves ’is it so?’, i.e. does it ’feel’ right? (Of course, this part of reasoning is where we have no explicit functional means of testing out our conclusions, i.e. we cannot experiment or calculate). This does not reduce us to trivial subjectivity – to ’how one feels’ – for the. task in consciousness is to be conscious and true to consciousness; then we have conscient consciousness. So, we approach what it is to understand; which is to have the ’above’ reveal in us the meaning, of the ’below’. The factual objectivity with which we regard what is ’below’ is to be located within the value perception of the ’above’.
The relation inherent in consciousness is a logic of entities. To be something is not only to be constituted out of parts but also to act significantly. We begin with the combinatorial composition. Every entity must be ’made out of’ the same ingredients, or ingredients of universal type. Otherwise, there could be no connections between things, no properties of observable and repeatable linkages such as those of forces, arising> and dissolving, generation and so on. There could be no behaviour and no means of observation. In our observation of things, we suppose something is actually happening which tells us something. Light is modified at a surface and received at the retina. More penetrating types of observation require energies which actually create what it is that we observe. We relate observations conducted through the various forces — gravitation, electromagnetism and so on – to produce a model of a thing. The means of observation are universal and, hence, observation itself supposes a universe of things made up of the same type of ingredients.
We find ourselves conscious-of things. We may be tempted to extend Our view of observation to attach to consciousness the notion that it is the universal, common to all modes of observation; we find, for instance, that, our consciousness embraces in a continuous and coherent way, all the diversity of our senses. We do not have to make the ingredients of our sensations come into agreement: they are already so. What ’makes’ them so is that there are things in the worlds – things are ’like that’. However widely we take the range of thinghood to be.- extending for example, to people, spirits, ideal triangles, angels, forces, etc. – there remains the overwhelming fact that there are things. We know this without having any kind of definite concept of what a thing, is: it is something primary. This primary sense is one with our own sense of ourselves. We could not be present to ourselves without, at the same time having things present to us. There is not the. one without the other. In philosophy, the problem of identity remains unsolved: this problem has its roots in the non-observable character of the sense of things, entities. The quest for the noumena is a mistaken one; we will not ever arrive at the thing-in—itself, for the sense of things is propositional, intentional, in character and not ever a matter of observation. In crude terms, in consciousness we assert the existence of things as a by-product of the assertion of our own existence.
We do not know by what means we come to assert out own existence. It is a strange affair; after all, this assertion is a cause of all our pain as well as of our joy. In fact, the assertion arises in us as a response to the unknown; which latter now assumes an even stranger and more powerful character than before. The unknown leads us to assert our own existence and give birth to the world of things’ It is fairly accepted that things and observers are part of each other without having recourse to anthropic principles or quantum dilemmas. What is not. so accepted is that it is the unknown which spawns this universe of possible knowing. How could this be? Because the unknown is the very power which makes consciousness possible. It is nothing which makes us conscious of something. The answer to Leibnitz’s query: Why is there Something, rather than Nothing? is not unknown, it is the unknown.
In the triad, in the relatedness, the third force is, essentially, nothingness.
It is in the essence of the relation with the above that we speak not in the mode of making a report or description but in the mode of speaking from. Lt is not that the above can be described or not described – such is not in question – neither can it be expressed: it is source of expression, from which description comes. It is by no means uncommon for people to ’speak from’ instead of ’speak of’. What can be spoken of is simply the combinations of matter. What it is that speaks is the entity of self-awareness. But, what is spoken, the essence of the speech, is what it is that brings that speech into existence. This is the Word of God.
The Word of God is there in language, as Value is there in every act. Yet, no assertions are truly possible about God: instead, we say that God alone is able to assert in the sense of commanding or leading forth assertion. The genesis of assertion is in nothingness; for, for this to be authentic, it cannot be by way of a response to anything. Hence, the only possible precursor of assertion is in the third force. The Theomertmalogos, the Word-God, is the assertion coming, out of the unknown. Immersion in the Unknown is the genesis of soul, which same is the individual counterpart of the universal power of consciousness. Soul is then the ultimate cause of act, or of will. In Dante’s Paradiso. when the poet reaches the highest heaven. He knows this only by what he is able to assert; not by anything that he can observe. We know the truth when we are able to speak it.
Affirmation, is, then, not an attribute of existing things; things being, as they can be observed, under the intentionality of consciousness. Neither is receptivity! For, it is equal to say that either affirmation or receptivity are engendered by the unknown.
The existing things do not ’receive’ our consciousness of them; it is we who receive our consciousness from the Unknown. In speaking from the unknown, we are making a response. In this response is the world. It is not correct to regard ourselves as another kind of existing thing.: the essential feature is that, in us, the affirmative and receptive meet, through the exegesis of the unknown. Thus, in ourselves, we can say ’I AM’. But, we can only find what ’Am’ is through reflection on existing things.