Wednesday, November 6, 2019
3:25 a.m. I’m ready if you are.
Let’s look again at the difference between transient and enduring, bearing in mind, of course, that neither is an absolute, but more a position along a bell curve. As we said, mistaking a transient phenomenon for an enduring condition is the source of many subsequent distortions.
- What if what is called “evil” consists of transient phenomena, and what if “good” indicates abiding conditions?
Are you saying they are?
Let’s for the moment leave it as “What if?”
All right, what if?
- What if “perceiving things as good and evil” – the second tree in the Garden of Eden –
Yes?
No, leave it as is, an open statement. It says nothing, but may suggest.
You are refining your technique, aren’t you?
Experimenting, anyway.
- What if insight is always spontaneous and unpredictable, but wisdom is always reflective and the product of an orientation, or say of a determination.
- Knowledge and wisdom co-exist but are not synonyms. They co-exist uneasily sometimes.
You can’t say they can be mortal enemies, but it almost feels like they can. Only, I don’t believe ignorance is ever a good thing in itself.
At the risk of beginning a digression, we have to say – “Oh?” You are quite happily ignorant of most things. Everyone is, of necessity.
I can’t argue the fact, but still I feel the words are papering-over a reality somehow.
Of course they are; aren’t they usually? Words are static; the things being discussed are usually fluid and always deeper and more interconnected than words let them appear. And in fact this is not digression, but to the point.
- 3D observation – knowledge, and the means of acquiring knowledge – is by nature assuming that what is being observed is static.
- Observation that extends beyond the 3D immediately begins to perceive that nothing is disconnected, nothing is static. It often seems that the rules change, when in fact it is the depth of observation and insight that changes.
- Therefore – and this is an important clue – observation that once transcends 3D-only changes in its nature.
And, in our view it looks like it is the observer that is changing in nature.
Correct. A 3D-only orientation is inherently unable to transcend its self-imposed limits, but life itself will have a way of breaking down the self-isolated worldview.
So I think you are implying that the tension between knowledge and wisdom is peculiar to the materialist worldview.
No, not at all. We are saying that the tension is inherent in remaining limited to a 3D worldview. One might be a good Muslim, believing that everything is in the will of God, and still there would be the tension of knowledge v. wisdom.
Then I guess I don’t understand your point here.
We usually have more than one point, or perhaps we should say, it is a poor exploration that doesn’t leave loose ends in all directions. One point is that one’s attitude toward knowledge and wisdom is the single greatest determinant in what will be found. If you aim at acquiring one, you may or may not acquire the other, but chances are you will have a better chance of acquiring what you deliberately pursue.
Still feel like I’m missing something here.
Do you aim for the moment or for eternity? For understanding of the 3D world around you, or for the context within which it exists? Do you place your treasure in this world or the next? Many ways of posing the same question.
I’m not there yet. Groping for it. You are discussing our orientation and what it allows us to know?
You might put it that way. It is important (and can be difficult) to remember that you as 3D individuals are always intrinsic to the process. You are always central to it, from your own point of view, and that correctly. The attitude you bring to life doesn’t exactly determine your life, but it does definitely tinge it. It is one factor setting the bounds to what you may experience. One factor, but still, one.
- Are you going to identify with your 3D being, or with your non-3D being, alone? Wouldn’t it make more sense to identify with your whole self, of which your 3D life is only one aspect, but is one aspect?
- Therefore, doesn’t it make sense to practice seeing the 3D from within 3D assumptions and from without them?
And is that the difference, or anyway a difference, between knowledge and wisdom?
We are saying, you can go only so far from an assumption that the 3D world as you perceive it and understand it may be properly seen and understood outside its greater context. Now, of course it may, in one sense. A pearl may be appreciated for itself without considering the nacre. But the wider your inquiry, the greater the perceived interconnections, and therefore the greater the re-interpretation of what you had previously understood.
Now, to tie this in with other things, consider the question of what we call vast impersonal forces. Given that they do not originate within 3D, how can they be understood within a 3D-only orientation? But after all, this is only a special case of a universally applicable condition: Everything in 3D originates beyond 3D-only. Or, put it this way (same statement): Nothing experienced in 3D is limited to 3D. Everything exists in 3D as part of the greater reality of which 3D is a subset. That sounds like a truism, and in a sense it is, only in order to see it as a truism, you have to have gone beyond the idea that there is a 3D and a non-3D as separate realms; you must have come to see the distinction as being between what can and cannot be experienced through 3D senses and a 3D-only mental orientation.
We have done our hour, but I am not sure we’ve rounded off whatever you intended us to see.
Just label it knowledge and wisdom, and we will pick it up next time. None of this, remember, is being presented as a logical sequence. Logic has its strength, but it has an immense weakness when one is exploring. Better to proceed this way, even if it seem to be “going nowhere, fast.” Over time, looking back, you will see that the landscape has changed.
Has it not! Okay, our thanks as always, and see you next time.