trying to understand / Pete

[Guest guest]

Nisargadatta , Pete S <pedsie5 wrote:

>

>

> On Jul 27, 2006, at 3:27 PM, Nisargadatta wrote:

>

> >

> > > One can experience the unknown as the unknown.

> > >

> > >

> > >

> > > toombaru

> >

> > D: Yes -- and one's experience now is unknown - and one is this

> > unknown,

> > knowing.

>

> P: The unknown that sees itself as the unknown knowing, is not

> the real unknown.

>

> >

> > We generally think of knowing as a memory-based process.

> >

> > But memory is only an aspect of knowing, and memory doesn't have any

> > privileged position (i.e., memory doesn't encapsulate actual events

> > and things that exist outside of memory).

> >

> > There is just this undivided knowing, which is therefore unsegmented

> > in terms of time (past, present, future) and position (knower and

> > known, experiencer and experience)

>

> P: It was memory who wrote all that above, you are memory fooling itself

> with the notion of being the unknown. No one speaks from beyond

> the door, as Gene said: You might have gone beyond the door, but

> when you speak, you speak from the antechamber. In other words,

> only memory speaks.

 

D: Only if you believe you are divided into an antechamber, a door,

and something beyond the door.

 

Otherwise, memory is always occurring *now* - memory isn't a basis

from which one speaks -- it is merely a conceptual category requiring

an assumption of a division which has never actually occurred.

 

Observed carefully, there is no separation of a memory from an actual

event occurring. There is only an imaginary line where a " real event "

slips over into memory, from whence the supposed trace of the actual

event can be retrieved. Although " mind " is based on this activity,

and " human knowledge " -- the line isn't really there, so this apparent

division of a memory and actual event that it represents, has never

taken place.

 

Although this imagined boundary can be useful in discussing

common-sense notions of time, such as what happened yesterday vs. what

is happening today and now - such boundary dissolves in/as the *now*

which isn't divided, which includes past, present, and future without

separating.

 

So, separation of memory is assumed in " common sense. " And in terms

of " common sense " it can be useful to talk about memory centers in the

brain, or a person who has a good memory as opposed to someone who

doesn't.

 

Yet, I don't define who I am according to commonsense suppositions

(which are consensus-dependent definitions arrived at to maintain

conventional roles and allusions to a shared reality).

 

So " common sense " is worthy of investigation -- just ask Alice!

 

This is where the mystery deepens, as Sherlock Holmes might say.

 

;-)

 

-- Dan