Hello, Rupert,
A friend sent me one of your essays about what you call ‘knowingbeing’. In that essay you use the example of a car in the garage, whose observable qualities belong to the mind, not to the car per se, and you say, ‘Obviously the car, whatever exactly it is, is present. Something is. That is, there is being. And likewise, in order to assert the experience that something is, that being is present, it must be known. In other words, as we have seen before, it is not possible to have being without knowing, and vice versa.’
Obviously, in order for us to know something, it must be. There must be ‘being’. But is it true that in order for something to be, that ‘something’ must be known? I mean, the ‘car’ as a mental construction, with its visual and sense perceptions, is a by-product of the mind, and I agree that, for example, the colour of that car is not an inherent quality in it, but just a mental formation that does not stay with the car when we’re not in the garage.
I also agree with the fact that there’s something there that exists independently of a mind which superimpose mental qualities on it. But I don’t understand when you say that in order for that ‘something’ (which is independent from the perceivable qualities) to be, it must be known. What is the sense you give here to the verb ‘know’? Are you implying a mental knowledge or referring to the kind of knowledge through which consciousness knows itself, that is, without a mind? For example, a seed does not need to be seen and known in order to become a tree in the middle of a depopulated jungle. Obviously you would not make such a simple mistake, so I’m sure you’re giving a different sense to the word ‘knowing’, and I’d be very grateful if you could explain it to me.
Best wishes,
Rogelio.
Dear Rogelio,
Yes, by ‘knowing’ I do not mean as it is normally conceived, that is, in subject–object relationship. If we divest any object of those qualities that are not inherent in it, that is, all the names and forms that are supplied by mind and senses, we are left with the ‘is-ness’ of the thing, the ‘thing in itself’. What this ‘thing in itself’ is, is unknowable by the mind. What is the nature of this is-ness or being?
Let us admit first that the car in the garage, as we normally perceive it, may be a three-dimensional cross-section of a four, five or infinitely dimensional object, of which the human mind, due to its limitations, sees only a partial view.
For instance, imagine that a creature with a mind that knows only two dimensions (forwards, backwards and sideways), living on the surface of a pond, were to look at the two arms of a forked stick that is lowered into the water. It would see only two short horizontal lines.
The creature may build up a theory as to what these two lines are and what their relationship to one another is, based on its observation of how the lines sometimes get closer together (when the forked stick is pushed down into the pond) and sometimes farther apart (when the stick is withdrawn). The two-dimensional creature would not be able to conceive of the stick as it truly is (I mean, relatively speaking), that is, three dimensional, due to the limitations of its mind.
We, as humans, may well be in the same position: our three-dimensional world, or four-dimensional, if we include time, may be an extremely limited version of the ‘world as it is’, which may comprise innumerable dimensions.
However, we can be sure that, just as the essential reality of the two lines is the same as the essential reality of the three-dimensional stick (because they are two different views of the same object), so the essential reality of this world (or the car, for instance) is the same as the essential reality of whatever the world or car truly is in its full, multi-dimensional form, because each is similarly only a partial view of the same ‘thing in itself’.
And just as the two-dimensional creature is itself a part of the world in which the two little ‘stick’ lines exist, and therefore only needs to know its own essential reality in order to know the reality of its world, so we as humans are made out of the same stuff as the world we inhabit, whatever that world truly is, and therefore only need to know our own reality in order to know the reality of our world, whether it is observed in its totality or not.
If we go to our reality, to the being that ‘I am’, we find that it is not dead and inert, but full of consciousness and love. It is for this reason that I suggest that the essential being of whatever the world truly is, and that inevitably lies outside the mind’s power to grasp, must be not only present, but also conscious (knowing) and loving.
In other words, we cannot be sure that there is nothing outside mind, but we can be sure that there is nothing outside consciousness, because consciousness and being are one.
Of course, relatively speaking, we cannot discount the possibility of new minds evolving which may have a broader scope than our own and therefore greater access to the real form of things. But such access will always be limited by the constructions of the mind.
The same applies for any object that is unseen by the human mind. That object must have a reality, and there cannot be two realities, for if there were two realities, one would be more real than the other and would therefore be the reality of the ‘less real reality’, leaving only one absolute reality.
So whatever the ultimate realty of this current experience (and indeed every current experience), it must be the reality of all possible things in all possible worlds. The name we give to that reality is ‘I’. It is what we intimately know ourselves to be.
With warm regards,
Rupert
