The TSK Email Forum

Thread 0001: TSK and relationships

entry 0001: Here are quotes from the TSK books on "relationship":

TSK, pp. 17-18: . . . the 'lower spaces' we occupy have caused all kinds of crowding, confusion, weariness, and failures to communicate well. In order to create a sense of harmony and satisfaction both within ourselves and in our relationships with others, it is essential that we develop an awareness of the limitations which we have been passively accepting due to our restricted perspectives and presuppositions. Once this awareness is keenly felt, an ability to open to new dimensions (which will stimulate integration and creativity), will naturally follow.

TSK, p. 38: Earlier exercises helped develop an awareness of your presence as the observer of the giant body. . . . Is the observing self merely a separate entity, temporarily juxtaposed with the giant body, or is the self actually given together with the giant body in an integral relationship that tends, instant by instant, to polarize?

LOK, p. xxix: One way to investigate the human significance of Time, Space, and Knowledge is through an inquiry into balance. As individuals, we are often out of balance, whether on the psychological level, the physical level, or in our relationship with external circumstances. . . . From within the TSK vision, however, this view is only a first-level approximation of the true potential for balance. The language we use inevitably directs us toward the individual actor at the center of any experience, but the balance attained by the 'actor-self' is a 'personalized' version of the interplay among Space, Time, and Knowledge. The self singles out as its possessions emotions, self-image, attachments, relationships, and a sense of personal freedom. It sets in motion a momentum that heads at once toward imbalance.

The style of inquiry introduced here counteracts the tendency toward 'singling out', thus signaling a return to balance. With no positions or possessions, such inquiry is committed only to knowledge, and this commitment, because it remains available as a subject for inquiry, is in an important sense self-correcting.

LOK, p. xlii: The linear link between subject and object confines knowledge to a two-dimensional plane, leaving the depths of knowing unexplored. Even when experience seems direct, these same patterns may continue to operate on a more subtle level. When knowledge is more inclusive and evocative, it embraces the activities of knowing and seeing, strengthening their power. Instead of the linear relationship of 'subject knowing object', there is the 'experience' of 'knowing' the experience of knowing. The relationship between subject and object becomes accessible directly, with the consequence that subject and object alike are transformed: The 'object' becomes knowledge itself, while the 'subject' becomes experience.

LOK, p. 308: In the activity of questioning, the balance between 'subject' and 'object' calls for bringing into play a certain sharpness and cutting quality. But if inquiry is to call into question the 'question,' the 'questioner,' and the 'act of questioning' itself, it must be more than simply sharp and cutting. For such an inquiry, the question must 'contain' within it the potential for transforming the relationship between 'subject' and 'object'. The move toward separating and penetrating must be 'balanced' by a move toward embracing and embodying. The fullness of inquiry will open the structure of knowledge when its intention incorporates an appreciation that can deepen into intimacy.

KTS, pp. 253-4: CO-RELATION

A. Look at subject and object and their relationship. What makes the subject the subject? Try reversing the relationship, so that the object becomes the subject. You could take as object another person, a physical entity, or perhaps yourself at another time, past or future. To explore this practice further, refer to Exercise 30 in Time, Space, and Knowledge: "A Subject-Object Reversal".

B. investigate the relationship between space and existence as a relationship between subject and object or object and subject. If you have difficulty knowing how to proceed, you might initially apply the subject-object orientation with regard to thought and awareness.

C. Continue with the exercise, paying particular attention to the subject. How is the subject constituted and what determines its boundaries? Let this question lead naturally into an exploration at various levels of the subject's relationship to space.

D. Now see if you can integrate into the relationship between subject and space that between subject and object. How does making this move affect the standard relationship between object and space?

COMMENTARY

From the viewpoint of space, it seems that the 'bystander-self' is the object rather than the subject. Adopting this view is already a rather startling departure from the usual subject-object orientation. But there is another possibility as well: We could say that the 'bystander-self' is space as subject, while the rest of existence is space as object.

Making this identification gives the self a new role: If self as subject is space, then the self is the one who allows what appears to operate; who originates dimensionality. As this role is played out, the usual distinction between subject and object loses much of its significance.

Though subject and object are articulated, they are not separate: It seems that either one could be considered the subject.

KTS, p. 423: Between these two alternatives lies a third view based on interaction and feedback, in which subject and object relate in complete intimacy. When the self applies judgments to objects experienced as having specific attributes, object, attributes, and the judgments made by the self all sustain one another, with none more basic than the rest. An object is not 'beautiful' only because it is seen by a self who makes this judgment: Something about the object supports this judgment and thus makes it possible.

KTS, p. 497: It might seem that compassion insists on the substantiality of the one that suffers. But this is true only in lower-level terms. From a higher-level perspective, compassion is a form of 'knowingness': a clearsighted vision of the prevailing knowledge in operation. It sustains the Body of Knowledge as active force, working to bring benefit where benefit is needed.

Finally, there is inspiration through love. This is not the love that is actually attachment, which only tightens the bonds of the conventional order by reinforcing the concerns of a needy, wanting self. It is a love indifferent to ownership or security. Akin to deep appreciation, it has a unique flavor of its own.

KTS, p. 498: Love, compassion, and appreciation can be practiced and cultivated in every activity and every field of human endeavor. Wherever this is done, knowledge will deepen and inquiry will make valuable contributions. In personal relationships and private reflection, in study, research, artistic endeavor, social action, and business, inspiration offers knowledge freely.

. . . In its most direct expression, the love that leads toward Great Knowledge is the Love of Knowledge. Perhaps it could be called Great Love. It is a special kind of love, in which there is no object, no separation between the one who loves and what is loved. It is difficult to speak of such a love, in which we are both the ones who love and the ones toward whom love flows. But we can say that in the Love of Knowledge, there is no reaching out to something else, no effort or obligation. There is only the unfolding of Knowledge itself.

DTS, p. 50: In the move through which the self (as subject) proclaims the realm of substance (as object), knowledgeability moves 'outward' to create the known and knowable objective realm. At the same time, it moves 'inward'. Falling in on itself like a star that collapses to form a black hole, it 'consumes' the knowledge inherent in zeroless appearance and uses it to manufacture and proclaim the unknown subject. Reality arises in a binary, polar relationship, distributed between the 'zero' of subjective consciousness and the 'one' of objective identity.

DTS, p. 135: Looking at linear temporality, we can recognize characteristics that would not apply to a time beyond the conventional order. Such an unknown time would not generate or invite borders, marks, or images; it would not support or be bounded by the projections of a physical realm of existence. Fundamental categories such as creation, existence, cause and effect, relationship, transitions, derivation, and momentum would not apply, since the interdependent world of things and constructs that serves as their basis would not function.

DTS, p. 192: Conventional knowledge operates within the framework of the communiqué, projecting the patterns of our interacting lineages. We carry on our heritage; we are faithful to the given. We identify 'me' and 'mine' and support and reinforce and augment. We take on the role of the self-supporting identity; we become a member of the cast. 'Me' is related to 'that'; 'that' is linked to 'me'. 'I' am part of 'this'; 'this' is part of 'I'. Relationships support each pattern and communicate it forward.

For a knowledge that transcends, the whole of this communicated content is like a single thought, a single bubble in the stream of time. In the next moment (though 'moments' too are constructs within the bubble) it will pop.

SDTS, pp. 19-20: The 'I am here' tells us that existence appears to be somehow related to location. 'Here' creates a sense of closeness in comparison to everything else, which is 'there'. These two points, 'here' and 'there', depend on each other. 'Here' makes no sense without a 'there'.

'There' provides a second point of reference. Now I can go from 'here' to 'there'. At this point we have introduced the idea of movement. There is a going 'from' and 'to'--perhaps physical movement in space, or the movement outward of the senses to the sense object, or the movement of the mind, which governs and interprets the whole.

In this way, a relationship is established. The subject is 'here' and the object 'there'; the subject is 'from' and the object is 'to'.

SDTS, p. 232-3: The gap between first-level knowledge and being is implicit in the mechanism of the ratio. Ratios distinguish and mark out differences; understood as the proper subject matter of knowledge, they do not arrive at presence, at being fully here.

. . . For instance, when the subject sees an object, what does it really see? First-level knowledge, taking up its ratios, sees presence as the outcome of what has gone before. But from the depth of being, that view is 'off'. Presence does not emerge from a background--'here' does not arrive from somewhere else. Yet that is exactly how first-level knowledge understands things to be. The result is that you and I talk, but do not meet--we are not present to one another at all. The meaning is lost, and the point is missed.

If we are time, space, and knowledge, can we exercise this way of being? One test is in the relationship of knower to known. Could we cultivate a knowing without a ratio between subject and object? If the conventional 'between' does not operate at all, how does knowledge engage its object? Can we see?

entry 0002: [Carl Wittnebert, 12/20/98] Tarthang Tulku apparently believes that the vision has practical applications in the area of personal relationships--as per KTS p. 498.

Inquiry would seem to commence with the love "that is actually attachment, which only tightens the bonds of the conventional order by reinforcing the concerns of a needy, wanting self." (KTS, p. 497)

I find the following passage about love particularly intriguing:

Even such a positive experience as love has unhealthy aspects. . .There is often a self-oriented, grasping quality to our feelings, which we generally do not notice. . . There are basically three strata or layers involved with love. . .[the] surface layer usually seems thoroughly positive and is characterized by a deep sharing, openness, and joy. But, with more 'knowingness', we can see a second layer that involves more forceful energies, which--by not being properly acknowledged by the superficial vision of the self--have become a counter-current to the first level, and therefore have an unnoticed but powerfully 'negative' influence. These energies. . .are aggressive, impatient, and demanding. Finally, 'beneath' this layer, there is a third stratum which is 'neutral', silent, but is nevertheless the ground which allows a stratification to develop along positive and negative lines. (TSK, p. 265)

He goes on to say that the problem is lack of acknowledgement and integration, and recommends "allowing the narrow and isolationist view of the self. . .to be complemented with the more broad and continuous participation of a higher 'knowingness'." (p. 267) And the transformation he has in mind "need effect no changes, but is simply a matter of "being in the energies which we are." (p. 268)

This seems to speak to the question of no-self or self-bashing that Pam [Richmond] raised in the last [nine-month program] meeting. The emphasis is on "to be complemented"--or the willingness to entertain a wider view simultaneously with our usual one, rather than encourage ourselves to be 'selfless' along conventional lines; that is, to somehow feel lousy for having personal wants and preferences.

Return to the TSK forum thread list.

[ Seminars and Study Groups | Origin of TSK | Newsletter | Definitions of TSK | Study Guide | Class Adoptions | Reviews| TSKA | TSK Characteristics | Mailing List | Applications | Home ]

TSK ASSOCIATION

email: steve@manage-time.com

phone 510-303-1035

1815 Highland Place, Berkeley CA 94709