The First Distinction

[Deleted]

Dec 16, 2022 19:34:07 GMT -5 laughter said:

Dec 15, 2022 13:09:44 GMT -5 zendancer said:

That's an interesting mouthful, but I'm not sure exactly what he's pointing to with those words.

In a light most favorable to Frank, it would be something along the lines of .. "the substantive physical world quiets the mind". Like a sunset, perhaps. "Pondering" .. it has a bad rap, too closely associated with thought.

That's definitely not what he meant. Perhaps the words out of context are too cryptic. In his defense, he didn't drop them in isolation; he explained them in his book.

He meant that the most real, rock solid (ie "substantial") thing of all is pure subject (ie, not object), pure Consciousness – which is also the least tangible (ie, "ponderable") to the senses. To him it stepped down from there into universal truths, like forms of mathematics (which he liked), and on the other end (most ponderable, least substance), the body senses.
His words are a bit odd but that form of meditation is one that seems to work for me.

Interesting historical background: the person who started this site had a Realization trigged by reading Franklin Merrell-Wolff's "Induction" paper, which was a transcription of a meeting where he tried to, well, "induce" a realization in others.

[Deleted]

Dec 16, 2022 19:31:08 GMT -5 laughter said:

Dec 15, 2022 12:41:20 GMT -5 @robertc said:

Franklin Merrell-Wolff had a phrase, that was (as usual with him) a bit of a mouthful... "substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability". It led to some interesting meditations for me a few times. Does that (or a simpler restatement) resonate with you? 

Related question: can you see what Is? Or is This (to use your word) never an object of consciousness?

Frank maybe should have spent some time out in the sun on a hot day. By a deserted lake. Nearby a big, flat smooth rock that he could sit on after he got out of the water.

He wrote about appreciating nature, and specifically the mountain environment. He lived on the slopes of Mt. Whitney in California. I did a long hike in those Sierras once. They are _awesome_.

[laughter]

Dec 15, 2022 11:01:00 GMT -5 stardustpilgrim said:

pretend or imagine the room where you spend most of your time at home, is dark, no light. You have never seen light, don't know what it is. You may have heard of talk of light here and there, but have no reference for ~what light is~. That's our analogy. Now, we're starting from scratch, so you don't know there's no light. So you are in a sort of way, blind, but not really, because you have the capacity to see light. Now, in this post I am giving you a gizmo, I'm telling you, this is a gift, possibly an important gift. So this gizmo is a fancy flashlight, it has a lot of buttons on it, but you don't know what a flashlight is, having never seen light. So we stumble around in our favorite room, we bump into things, stump our toe from time to time. We find our cozy chair...

Jane Roberts channeling "Seth" made a similar suggestion, greatly simplified: (as I recall) sit quietly in a dark room and try to see it without eyesight. Also suggesting it as a metaphor.

There's no denying that we aren't aware of what we're not aware of. It's a tautology, after all. Noone has ever denied that life can ever lose the capacity to surprise, that there are limitless paths of exploration and discovery. But. Answer the question "what is aware?". It doesn't have an "answer" that you can learn your way or work your way into. But when that question is gone, it is gone. See case #19. At this place, neither doubt nor certainty have any meaning.

[laughter]

Dec 16, 2022 20:29:25 GMT -5 @robertc said:

Dec 16, 2022 19:34:07 GMT -5 laughter said:

In a light most favorable to Frank, it would be something along the lines of .. "the substantive physical world quiets the mind". Like a sunset, perhaps. "Pondering" .. it has a bad rap, too closely associated with thought.

That's definitely not what he meant. Perhaps the words out of context are too cryptic. In his defense, he didn't drop them in isolation; he explained them in his book.

He meant that the most real, rock solid (ie "substantial") thing of all is pure subject (ie, not object), pure Consciousness – which is also the least tangible (ie, "ponderable") to the senses. To him it stepped down from there into universal truths, like forms of mathematics (which he liked), and on the other end (most ponderable, least substance), the body senses.
His words are a bit odd but that form of meditation is one that seems to work for me.

Interesting historical background: the person who started this site had a Realization trigged by reading Franklin Merrell-Wolff's "Induction" paper, which was a transcription of a meeting where he tried to, well, "induce" a realization in others.

Ah, so what I wrote to you then, in light least favorable, definitely applies.

And it's all good really. Different trails for different snails.

[laughter]

Dec 16, 2022 20:33:47 GMT -5 @robertc said:

Dec 16, 2022 19:31:08 GMT -5 laughter said:

Frank maybe should have spent some time out in the sun on a hot day. By a deserted lake. Nearby a big, flat smooth rock that he could sit on after he got out of the water.

He wrote about apperiating nature, and specifically the mountain environment. He lived on the slopes of Mt. Whitney in California. I did a long hike in those Sierras once. They are _awesome_.

Well, then, ok, so if he meant "no pondering" as in "still mind", aces. But there is a potential energy flow from that "substantiality", and even for those not conscious of that (it's like a hum), there can be a .. *gasp!* .. so like I said to ZD, "ponder" gets a bad rap ...

[Deleted]

Dec 16, 2022 20:36:20 GMT -5 laughter said:

Dec 16, 2022 20:29:25 GMT -5 @robertc said:

That's definitely not what he meant. Perhaps the words out of context are too cryptic. In his defense, he didn't drop them in isolation; he explained them in his book.

He meant that the most real, rock solid (ie "substantial") thing of all is pure subject (ie, not object), pure Consciousness – which is also the least tangible (ie, "ponderable") to the senses. To him it stepped down from there into universal truths, like forms of mathematics (which he liked), and on the other end (most ponderable, least substance), the body senses.
His words are a bit odd but that form of meditation is one that seems to work for me.

Interesting historical background: the person who started this site had a Realization trigged by reading Franklin Merrell-Wolff's "Induction" paper, which was a transcription of a meeting where he tried to, well, "induce" a realization in others.

Ah, so what I wrote to you then, in light least favorable, definitely applies.

And it's all good really. Different trails for different snails.

I don't know what that first paragraph means. I wonder if anyone does.

[inavalan]

Dec 16, 2022 19:34:07 GMT -5 laughter said:

Dec 15, 2022 13:09:44 GMT -5 zendancer said:

That's an interesting mouthful, but I'm not sure exactly what he's pointing to with those words.

In a light most favorable to Frank, it would be something along the lines of .. "the substantive physical world quiets the mind". Like a sunset, perhaps. "Pondering" .. it has a bad rap, too closely associated with thought.

www.thefreedictionary.com/ponderability

• Considerable enough to be weighed or assessed; appreciable: ponderable results; ponderable issues.

www.freethesaurus.com/ponderability

• Synonyms: appreciable, detectable, discernible, distinguishable, noticeable, observable, palpable, perceivable, perceptible, sensible

www.merrell-wolff.org/fmw/philosophy

Third Realization: Substantiality is Inversely Proportional to Ponderability

Wolff’s description of this realization is as follows:

• As I remember it, the occasion of this Realization was in July of 1936. I was, at that time, standing by a creek in northern California looking at the sky when suddenly it dawned upon me that a fundamental error in our valuation and attribution of reality lay in the fact that we were oriented to the object of cognition; that in reality that object that appears before consciousness is an absence, or rather a relative absence, of substance and reality; and, that in contrast, there, where no object appears before consciousness, such as empty space, there was, in fact, actual substance or reality. This involved an inversion of valuation, and, in that sense, may be called a conversion from a point of view that had been habitual heretofore, and which is habitual, more or less, with nearly all men and all creatures. However, it was not a conversion in an ethical sense, but a conversion in a philosophical and psychological sense. There was, of course, as is typical in the Realizations known so far, the feeling of something delightful, something like a revelation. I had not known that any such position had ever been formulated before, and it was not until recent time, on a rereading of The Voice of the Silence a certain sentence stood out, namely, “. . . study the voidness[emptiness] of the seeming full,[and] the fullness of the seeming void.” This was not in my mind at that time; although I had read The Voice of the Silence, this, like many other statements in that little book, had not made a real impression upon my consciousness, but I cannot exclude the possibility that it may have been effective in an unconscious way. Nonetheless, so far as my conscious field was concerned, this Realization had the force of a major discovery. It took the formulation as follows: Substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability; or, it could be stated in the form: Reality is inversely proportional to appearance.[12]
  
  [12] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “General Discourse on the Subject of My Philosophy,” part 5 (Lone Pine, Calif.: March 1972), audio recording, 1.
  
  
  

Wolff reports that this realization “had such a clarifying effect, relative to the nature of the phenomenal world, that it was decisive in clearing up the remaining intellectual barriers to Recognition”—that is, to his first transcendental or “Fundamental” realization.[13]

[13] Wolff, Experience and Philosophy, 133. Wolff did not categorize this statement as the product of a “realization” until after some years of reflection. Thus, in Pathways Through to Space and The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object, both of which were written relatively soon after his transcendental realizations, one finds that Wolff reports that there two not three realizations prior to his transcendental realizations.

================
EDIT:

www.thefreedictionary.com/Substantiality

• Considerable in importance, value, degree, amount, or extent: made a substantial improvement; won by a substantial margin.

[laughter]

Dec 16, 2022 20:49:43 GMT -5 @robertc said:

Dec 16, 2022 20:36:20 GMT -5 laughter said:

Ah, so what I wrote to you then, in light least favorable, definitely applies.

And it's all good really. Different trails for different snails.

I don't know what that first paragraph means. I wonder if anyone does.

This criticism is fair enough as it stands but is inaccurate and overly dramatic. "light most favorable" is legalese for "If i give Frank the benefit of the doubt of having realized the existential truth", and "light least favorable" is the opposite. Apologies. I've been very busy and engrossed in vocation of late.

[laughter]

Dec 16, 2022 21:19:47 GMT -5 inavalan said:

Dec 16, 2022 19:34:07 GMT -5 laughter said:

In a light most favorable to Frank, it would be something along the lines of .. "the substantive physical world quiets the mind". Like a sunset, perhaps. "Pondering" .. it has a bad rap, too closely associated with thought.

www.thefreedictionary.com/ponderability

• Considerable enough to be weighed or assessed; appreciable: ponderable results; ponderable issues.

www.freethesaurus.com/ponderability

• Synonyms: appreciable, detectable, discernible, distinguishable, noticeable, observable, palpable, perceivable, perceptible, sensible

www.merrell-wolff.org/fmw/philosophy

Third Realization: Substantiality is Inversely Proportional to Ponderability

Wolff’s description of this realization is as follows:

• As I remember it, the occasion of this Realization was in July of 1936. I was, at that time, standing by a creek in northern California looking at the sky when suddenly it dawned upon me that a fundamental error in our valuation and attribution of reality lay in the fact that we were oriented to the object of cognition; that in reality that object that appears before consciousness is an absence, or rather a relative absence, of substance and reality; and, that in contrast, there, where no object appears before consciousness, such as empty space, there was, in fact, actual substance or reality. This involved an inversion of valuation, and, in that sense, may be called a conversion from a point of view that had been habitual heretofore, and which is habitual, more or less, with nearly all men and all creatures. However, it was not a conversion in an ethical sense, but a conversion in a philosophical and psychological sense. There was, of course, as is typical in the Realizations known so far, the feeling of something delightful, something like a revelation. I had not known that any such position had ever been formulated before, and it was not until recent time, on a rereading of The Voice of the Silence a certain sentence stood out, namely, “. . . study the voidness[emptiness] of the seeming full,[and] the fullness of the seeming void.” This was not in my mind at that time; although I had read The Voice of the Silence, this, like many other statements in that little book, had not made a real impression upon my consciousness, but I cannot exclude the possibility that it may have been effective in an unconscious way. Nonetheless, so far as my conscious field was concerned, this Realization had the force of a major discovery. It took the formulation as follows: Substantiality is inversely proportional to ponderability; or, it could be stated in the form: Reality is inversely proportional to appearance.[12]
  
  [12] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “General Discourse on the Subject of My Philosophy,” part 5 (Lone Pine, Calif.: March 1972), audio recording, 1.
  
  
  

Wolff reports that this realization “had such a clarifying effect, relative to the nature of the phenomenal world, that it was decisive in clearing up the remaining intellectual barriers to Recognition”—that is, to his first transcendental or “Fundamental” realization.[13]

[13] Wolff, Experience and Philosophy, 133. Wolff did not categorize this statement as the product of a “realization” until after some years of reflection. Thus, in Pathways Through to Space and The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object, both of which were written relatively soon after his transcendental realizations, one finds that Wolff reports that there two not three realizations prior to his transcendental realizations.

================
EDIT:

www.thefreedictionary.com/Substantiality

• Considerable in importance, value, degree, amount, or extent: made a substantial improvement; won by a substantial margin.

Thanks for taking time to look that up and repeat it here. Now the meaning really is quite clear.

The emptiness of appearances is very valid existential perspective, and one that I can relate to, quite directly. One way to state it is with the dream/dreamer metaphor, but that's not one that I ever encountered while I was seeking and had to reconcile myself with after the informing of mind. For me it was the empty space between the supposed objects that comprise physical reality, the nature of the forces that we perceive, and the nature of what is not empty space that led me to a contemplation similar to Frank's, here.

Satch makes this point often, as to the difference between awareness of an object or not. There is a particular realization that can only be pointed to non-conceptually, about the nature of object boundaries: they are all mind-made and have no actual existence. Interestingly enough, Satch always scoffed at the potential for this realization.

But there is a flip-side to the realization of emptiness that Frank describes here. There is a Zen story (that I might butcher) of an old master walking with some of his students. They were engaged in an esoteric discussion of reality, that was getting abstract. Suddenly, he struck the ground with his staff, loudly stating: "THIS! .. is .. IT!".

A hot rock. By the lake, in the Sun. All eternity, conspires, thereto. Nothing more real, than that.

The existential truth is that there is no "inside", there is no "outside". There only ... is. Seeing through the trick of the mind that is object-consciousness, the thief is cunning and the obvious hiding place is to invert this into a notion of subject-consciousness. This is a very old historical cycle, played out on a very large scale, with significant way points by the Buddha and Shankara. And the dictionary is of no use to anyone, here.

[Deleted]

Dec 17, 2022 9:41:15 GMT -5 laughter said:

Dec 16, 2022 20:49:43 GMT -5 @robertc said:

I don't know what that first paragraph means. I wonder if anyone does.

This criticism is fair enough as it stands but is inaccurate and overly dramatic. "light most favorable" is legalese for "If i give Frank the benefit of the doubt of having realized the existential truth", and "light least favorable" is the opposite. Apologies. I've been very busy and engrossed in vocation of late.

I wasn't confused by the phrase "light most favorable", I was confused because there was no clear referent. In other words, who or what was in that light? Me, Franklin, or something he wrote or said? And there was another ambiguous pronoun. 

[laughter]

Dec 17, 2022 10:42:22 GMT -5 @robertc said:

Dec 17, 2022 9:41:15 GMT -5 laughter said:

This criticism is fair enough as it stands but is inaccurate and overly dramatic. "light most favorable" is legalese for "If i give Frank the benefit of the doubt of having realized the existential truth", and "light least favorable" is the opposite. Apologies. I've been very busy and engrossed in vocation of late.

I wasn't confused by the phrase "light most favorable", I was confused because there was no clear referent. In other words, who or what was in that light? Me, Franklin, or something he wrote or said? And there was another ambiguous pronoun. 

The ambiguity is only if you take the sentence out of the context of the thread:

Dec 16, 2022 19:34:07 GMT -5 laughter said:

In a light most favorable to Frank

[zazeniac]

Dec 17, 2022 10:54:17 GMT -5 laughter said:

Dec 17, 2022 10:42:22 GMT -5 @robertc said:

I wasn't confused by the phrase "light most favorable", I was confused because there was no clear referent. In other words, who or what was in that light? Me, Franklin, or something he wrote or said? And there was another ambiguous pronoun. 

The ambiguity is only if you take the sentence out of the context of the thread:

Dec 16, 2022 19:34:07 GMT -5 laughter said:

In a light most favorable to Frank

I owe you an apology. In one of my posts I spoke of a cure for your ambiphilia. I didn't even know that was an actual word. I thought I had invented a new term  i wad marrying "ambivalnce" and "love of."  It 's a device you employ quite often, ambivalence, which I actually enjoy and admire. Again. My apologies. Didn't realize it actually was a reference for someone's sexual preference.  

[laughter]

Dec 17, 2022 22:49:14 GMT -5 zazeniac said:

Dec 17, 2022 10:54:17 GMT -5 laughter said:

The ambiguity is only if you take the sentence out of the context of the thread:

I owe you an apology. In one of my posts I spoke of a cure for your ambiphilia. I didn't even know that was an actual word. I thought I had invented a new term  i wad marrying "ambivalnce" and "love of."  It 's a device you employ quite often, ambivalence, which I actually enjoy and admire. Again. My apologies. Didn't realize it actually was a reference for someone's sexual preference.  

no worries my friend. I did a double take but took no offense.

[inavalan]

There are no "coincidences". Everything is symbolical, created by our own subconscious, so it could (and should) be interpreted "deeper and deeper" (even "higher and higher" ). One's correct interpretation, most likely, is different from another's.