>>10627146 lb
>>10627310 lb
>>10627221 lb
>>10627302 lb
Emptiness
Understanding and differentiating the notion of emptiness, void, or any other of its
linguistic variations is crucial. This word has multiple definitions like Ken Wilber’s example
with the word spiritual. Both lead to spiritual bypass, if not blatant charlatanism, when
undifferentiated. I find that there is a certain characteristic of the generic word emptiness in all
states in both their content and their structure. In my experience, the subtle state was ephemeral
and full of mental thoughts, insights, and other virtual artifacts and even symbolically
represented by the empty dragon imprinted side of the domino. The subtle state contained aspects
characteristic of the use of the word emptiness like the physically ungraspable nature of mental
nuomena, while the structure of the state itself also maintained a certain ambiguity in spite of
clearly having boundaries upon the types of content within it. That is, though I couldn’t directly
perceive its structural boundaries, I perceived them indirectly by noticing where the content
ended. It might be similar to the awareness of Jim Carrey in the Truman Show when his boat
crashes into a wall painted like an endless horizon.
Something similar could be said of the causal state. In this case, the characteristic
emptiness of the state was due to the seeming non-existence of the perspective itself in terms of
the analogy. That is, it was the membrane between the gross and the subtle, so initially moving
back and forth across it, between the gross and the subtle, did not reveal its presence. A
DUALITY GESTALT, POWER, & DESTRUCTIVE CREATIVITY
16
hermeneutical conversation attempting to determine the structure of the states would obviously
conclude that the subtle is the second state. A good analogy would be a glass of oil and water. An
emergent meniscus forms at the intersection of the two, yet there does not seem to be produced a
third form of matter. There is just oil and water. A creature moving between the two liquids
would not notice the membrane until it left the glass and looked back. That is, it would
experience the membrane third after experiencing both the oil and water, although the membrane
structurally remained second or, better said, in the middle. That the creature would notice the
structure of the perspective in relation to the states rather than just the sensation of moving into a
third state requires that it also recognize oil and water objectively instead of subjectively as the
perspectives it has just exited. The creature might see the oil and water but not recognize them as
having just left them. Like love, so they say, you only recognize it when you are in it. That is,
until you start to recognize it from the outside, but perhaps that also suggests that one needs to
know what love is not first. Until we start giving credit to forms with characteristics of
emptiness, such as emergent membranes, which might be more causal to the two sides rather
than caused by their intersection as in a deeper philosophical and phenomenological sense, we
may limit our ability to differentiate not only the structure of consciousness but the structure of
reality itself because of consciousness’ requisite position at the crossroads between reality and
the perspectival meaning.
1/2