An integrative approach, that helps avoid flattening our experience and understanding of the world, would suggest that both insights are true. It's relative ;-). Energy/light behaves as both a wave and a particle/packet. As Ken Wilber might put it, the experience of One Taste, or as Harrison says, one big ever-present NOW, where there is no separation (wavelike form), is always accessible to us. The discrete packet-like experience of the contracted self, is also real. They co-exist. And both need to be honoured and attended to for health and well-being.
An example of this is one of the stories about the death of the Buddha. It goes like this: The new students, those who had just received instructions and begun to meditate, when they heard of the Buddha's death, cried. Those students who had been studying for several years and who had attained a measure of mastery, did not cry. Those who had been with the Buddha for a long time and who were awakened themselves, cried. Ken Wilber talks about this a lot in his book, One Taste--how the experience of being in One Taste co-exists with the sensations and emotions of the contracted ego-self. The experience of NOW, opens our hearts--both to greater intensity of joy and pain. It awakens our compassion for all conditions--and reveals our inner expansiveness to hold all contradictions, all possibilities, all realities (kind of the ultimate open space). So, when you ask, "A skin encapsulated consciousness?" I resonate, "Yes! What a Mystery! What an impossibility!" And when you say, "We really inter-penetrate--we inter-be", again I resonate, "Yes! What a Mystery! What an impossibility!" Ain't life cool? Knowing nothing, just thinking stuff, Hugs, Wendy -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] On Behalf Of Jimmy Pryor Sent: March 3, 2006 6:43 AM To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Subject: Re: A Quiet Time Paul, Where is the you that perceives and touches. Does it begin at the boundary of your skin? A skin encapsulated consciousness? Is the light of the sun old light? Or just light that left the sun 9 minutes ago? Where does the sun begin and end? Since we are effects of the sun, could we say that we are part of the sun's body? (Hence the name of my business: SunBody.) Thich Nhat Hanh says that we are "I" am composed entirely of "non-I" elements. All of the elements of my body came from somewhere else. And when I read your email, you're thoughts become part of me. "This is not my body, my body is not me." In a Buddhist conception of mind and consciousness, there is the type of communication that you describe in which our perception of the other is mediated through light and thought. But, there can also be be unmediated direct perception. This doesn't fit well with Newtonian physics, but quantum physics does recognize this. One way to express all this is to say that the idea of a separate self located in a particular time and space is an illusion, whereas we really interpenetrate - inter-be as Thich Nhat Hanh says. We are all each other all the time. That is not to say that hugging and touching is not enjoyable and beneficial. Jimmy At 03:24 PM 3/2/2006, you wrote: >When we we see an impossible-to-fathom galaxy far, far away, we >don't really know that it exists in our now because it took millions >of our years for the light from that galaxy to reach us. Millions >of years of linear time have passed for that galaxy. It is really * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.2/274 - Release Date: 03/03/2006 * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist