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Thread 0019: What is the "universal unique?"

entry 0001:

DTS, pp. 230-1: The wholeness of such presence traces to the Body of Knowledge. Based on the presence of presence, light awareness invites us to enter inner recesses of 'light being' that ordinary knowledge finds inaccessible and even inconceivable.

In this 'going inward', time allows the whole of knowing to be present in experience. A Body of Energy encompasses the whole. Light encompassing makes lighter, until appearance arrives at the luminous round of the universal unique. Here there is no speeding forward or jumping ahead; there are no tight corners and no unoccupied and empty spaces. Since there is no way to measure out, we might speak of the point or the whole; since no dimensions take form, we might refer to zero or to the indivisibility of all that is. The center becomes centerless: focused without focusing 'on'. With the present not marked out as a specific place or situated at a particular point, there can be universal embodiment. The awareness carried on the whole allows for multiple perceptions-for the truth of field or energy or mechanism and for pervasive knowability.

Sensing this awareness, conventional perception is transformed and transcended. A vastness opens within the particular: the pervasive and non-exclusive universal unique. Allowing without discrimination, knowledge liberates appearance into wholeness. A mechanism of transforming proceeds without discrimination or bias, without sorting out or assigning priorities.

The power of this knowledge is presently knowable-not as an object or a construct, but in the truth of our own knowing. It is space into space, knowledge into knowledge. It is the gateway of time, permitting the unity of all extensions and transitions. It is the Body of Knowledge, allowing a genuine and holistic merging of all experience and appearance in nuclear time.

entry 0002:

DTS, pp. 162-4: The Infinite Unique

If there is nothing to engage with, no product of a process, how is linear time itself established as a governing principle of experience? One possible answer is that time is not established at all. There is simply the random alongsideness of all that appears-including the mechanism that presents this appearance as changing from moment to moment.

We could also offer a different description. With no established appearance, there is the infinity of the universal unique: a wholeness without a beginning, an appearance without a source. Within that whole, various rhythms express and move, giving both possible and impossible and the distinction between them: presenting without limitation.

We could name this unlimited 'rhythm expression' the Body of Time. Alive with different qualities, the Body of Time transitions the appearance of what appears. Without confirming division, it allows for the conceptual separation into past and present and future. It enacts the experience that confirms these distinctions, quantifying and measuring.

Measuring itself is an expression of this rhythm energy. Experienced inwardly and known outwardly, the Body of Time 'remains' pointless, yet presents all points. There is the locating of subject and object, the activity of observation and prediction, and the availability of knowledge as data for specific purposes. Past and present and future give form to the whole, allowing it to emerge in accord with specified mechanisms.

As 'compartments' of time, past, present, and future cannot be engaged separately, even though we imagine that this is what we do. Their rhythms form a unity that echoes the universal unique-a rhythm infinitely divisible through the operation of concepts and experience, yet never departing from unity into manifestation.

If we think of the unity of time as being like a sphere, the temporality we establish is like slicing through the sphere. The first layer that the slice reveals will invariably be the past, but the slicing will always be threefold, giving the present and future as well.

In this 'dimensioning out' of what is unitary, time shifts its shape. It stretches into a linearity that can communicate the recorded forward, and it presents the past as a storehouse for the patterns from which we will construct the whole. But this reshaping of time is an artifact of the act of dimensioning. The unity of time suggests something quite different.

Emerging into time's wholeness, we discover a world infinite in its measured-out manifestations-far richer in its possibility than we have ever imagined. But the infinite unique cannot be measured. It is the activating medium of measurement: the heart of time. Since this is so, time itself can also not be measured. When we measure out time and specify time's manifestations, this is not the Body of Time.

entry 0003:

DTS, pp. 148-150: Let us tell the story of conducting once again, aware that our telling can be a conducting and our conducting a part of the dance: a potential path of power and gateway to knowledge not bound by claims of 'true' or 'false'.

Time 'allows itself' to be conducted, and so allows every kind of conducting as well. Because time gives its support without restriction, all actions can be performed. As one action leads to another, momentum can build, lineage can transmit forward, and pathways can unfold. The conductor is allowed as well: the agent who sets in motion the momentum that produces action-the dancer enacting the dance that brings time alive. Conductor and conducting come together with no separate act of joining, no evocation of 'from' and 'to'.

The time that allows such conducting is conducted in turn. Not bound by any order, it is not a straight line, not a circle, not a spiral. At the outset of conducting, it is a single point; in the course of conducting, the dynamic intrinsic to that zero-point unfolds as a time available to be measured out. But in the prior of conducting, before the zero, the qualities of time are very different. Let us call this differently dimensioned timing 'nuclear time'.

Nuclear time is not one-pointed in the conventional sense. It is not originating time or founding time, though this is how it may appear from within the conducted order. Nuclear time moves, and in its movement includes past and present and future, death and life; includes us all. Without participating in the identities of what is included or has been conducted, it does not negate, nor does it negate negating. Operating before each measured-out move, prior to directionality, it is the not-not-not.

'Gradually' the nuclear point becomes a round unique-unique in quality, unique in dimensions. But still there is neither exclusion nor derivation. Dimensions of every kind-'flatness', 'sizeness', 'directionness', 'pointness', 'derivationness'; all perspectives and all possessing; 'from' and 'to'; middle, first, and second-all are included in the universal unique. Already 'present', they arise as nuclear time emerges 'through' the universal unique into the temporal order, called forth by the need for explanation and the limitation of not seeing.

Within the present conducting, nuclear time offers the ongoing prospect of a return to full seeing. All that is required is a style of conducting more in tune with the dance than the narrative. A special kind of 'biofeedback' is called for: a self-projecting of what has been perceived, without identification. We have that capacity available if we choose to activate it. Instead of conducting forward into order, we can improvise.

DTS, p. 151: Each of us conducts in this way, and any of us can do it: creatively, uniquely, flawlessly. It is a special skill that we put into effect, like conducting a piece of music or creating a work of art. Unerringly, we present the perfect model to follow: the very best that the mental architect can put forward. Knowledge seeks out the special patterning unique to the model and conducts accordingly; conducting in turn turns toward this perfect knowledge. Each of us conducts the whole of the universal unique.

DTS, p. 154: Time itself offers the gate to this subtle inward, this depth of accommodating knowledge. We can speak of a loosening of seeming, of a 'seesness' that becomes immaculate clarity. In its openness, appearance is neither ordered nor random. Nothing is just 'stuffed away'; everything is made use of. Moment to moment becomes more widely open. For example, thoughts become their own dimension: Left free to follow their own way, they chart a unique path that returns to the roundness of the universal unique.

entry 0004:

DTS, p. 144: In each moment, we can choose and cherish knowledge in all appearance. We can awaken our sensitivity and react newly to what arises; can cut each instant rejection of knowledgeability and inhabit what is happening. As we learn to direct our caring and discipline our appreciation, we can activate a boundless love for all that appears. We can let our love of knowledge lead us to the inwardness of time's conducting and awaken to the prior unknown.

Once we realize that appearance manifests knowledge, what appears is transformed. Limits on knowledge are no longer binding. The depth of our love becomes the inward intensity of time, and a new knowing emerges. Not confined by what is conducted, no longer compelled to practice rejection in even its most subtle forms, we can awaken the power of the universal unique.

entry 0005:

DTS, pp. 146-7: Let us imagine substituting for conducted identities and stories the image of appearance danced by time. Like art, like music, like magic electronic play, time's rhythms move, manifesting myriad features. At times the dance is stately and refined, and structure and symmetry reveal their special beauty. At other times it is fast and loose, and exhibitions and interpretations succeed one another in spontaneous bursts of arresting power and creative vision. The distinctions of the dance transform appearance without replacing what previously was with prescribed alternatives. Identity gives way to the universal unique, expanding and transcending in a rhythm of finity.

We too appear in the dance of time. At one level, we continue to 'be' our patterns and our limits, our prospects and our aspirations, the identities we proclaim and the perceptions we own. But in the revealing rhythm of finity, appearance itself is differently disclosed. In this most interesting world, things are and are not. Opposites unite, for it is only the rational that makes divisions.

entry 0006:

"Unique" stands in clear contrast to "sameness." Reflection can illuminate it. Even if I feel stuck, bored, frustrated--"same old world out there, same old thoughts in here"--I have to admit that the feeling is slightly different from all other times on which it has occurred. This is quite remarkable. I cannot imagine what it would be like to fully confront time's non-repeatability.

"Universal" seems to point to the fact that all appearances are linked to each other by virtue of being situated within the standard time-line. (p. 126) Yet if there is this linkage, and it is only interpretation, might there not be other ways of experiencing it? [Carl Wittnebert, 7/19/98]

entry 0007:

Nuclear time, the universal unique, and linear time can be seen as stages in the congealing of experience. The details of these stages are given in Chapter 15, and similar material appears on pp. 280-2.

"Already 'present', [all distinctions and perspectives] arise as nuclear time emerges 'through' the universal unique into the temporal order, called forth by the need for explanation and the limitation of not seeing." (p. 149, DTS)

The universal unique, then, is a stratum in which specific identities are possible but not yet established. Contacting this layer is presumably the goal of Exercise 10, "Space Arising."

"As you come to know this foundational 'place', you can see how ordinary experience arises out of it. A sense of being becomes 'being here'; from this arises 'being here in time'."

Perhaps we can rely on Ex. 10 to distinguish between nuclear time and the universal unique.

"Familiarity with this interplay [of foundational time and linear time], opens the possibility of contacting awakened consciousness. However, it would be premature to imagine that you have now gone beyond concepts. Although being is in one sense directly present, there is still a very subtle identification with the foundation itself."

In geometrical terms, time as the universal unique has acquired a roundness (p. 149); that is, an attribute. Presumably, this is what allows it to establish distinctions and perspectives. Nuclear time, though it "moves," has no attributes. Can we say that a subtle identification characterizes the universal unique, whereas nuclear time is completely open?

To counteract the tendency to identify, we are advised to focus on the activity of mind as the builder of experience (p. 282). I take this to be one example of "conducting nuclear time."

It remains to explicate some of the more problematical assertions in Chapter 15, and to right the editorial blunder on p. 152. [Carl Wittnebert, 7/20/98]

entry 0008:

This material may be describing the universal unique [Steve Randall, 8/30/98]:

KTS, p. 14: Each point, whether understood in terms of time or space or knowledge, is viewed in multiple dimensions that express a whole.

KTS, pp. 16-17: we can hypothetically entertain the notion that an aeon of time might also be considered a single 'moment'. Whether this happened would depend on how time was measured, and this in turn would depend on the activity of mind as shaped by knowledge and experience. The limits on our own experience make impossible an awareness that experiences aeons as moments, but we could imagine a being so different from us in knowledge or experience that measurement on this scale was wholly natural.

Since such a viewpoint is theoretically possible, we are free to work out its implications. Suppose we were to understand the span of time in which human beings have existed as taking up only a single moment. In that case, each 'event' that has taken place 'within' this span will have to be understood as inseparable from every other 'event'. We might say that all events are mutually recorded and preserved: equally exhibitions of one another.

From this perspective, every unfolding drama through the span of human history can be understood as part of an ongoing manifestation that makes no distinction between past, present, and future. In this 'time without distinctions', all events--all shapes and forms, thoughts and emotions, historical happenings--are equally available. Though a particular event may not be visible in space 'here and now', this fact takes on a different significance. The 'here and now' structure no longer specifies a particular moment in time, but rather a variation in a kind of atemporal 'isness'. 'Here and now' is an exhibition consistent with 'this' circumstance and not with others. Ten thousand years ago, one set of circumstances prevailed; ten thousand years from now, a different set of circumstances will operate. But this difference is no longer to be understood as temporal.

This thought experiment suggests that the 'genius' of time in presenting the vitality of appearance cannot be confined to the present. Time's creative force emerges within a unity that links experience across past and present and future. By the same token, change cannot be the essence of time.

KTS, p. 78: The three times reveal an underlying unity: Each becomes a gateway to the energy of time, a flow within which the restrictive structures of the conventional 'order' are inoperative.

Creation, for example, is no longer a unique event that takes place at the beginning of time, or else through the inspiration of a mysterious force. Instead, as the momentum of 'time' it is freely accessible in each interaction. When the presentations of time are seen as inseparable from 'time', time becomes boundless in its energy. Artificial (and logically indefensible) barriers and borders (such as 'creation at the beginning of time') give way to a more integrated view. Second-level time is time brought to life, inseparable from life itself.

To see this adds a fantastic new dimension to what the self experiences. Embraced by time, all experience becomes a totality--not in the sense of being many things wrapped into one bundle, but in being unbounded and without limits.

 

entry 0009:

SDTS, p. 171: No longer bound to the linear structure of the cone, we are also freed from the isolation of the point. . . . When we look at our present situation from the perspective of the whole, we discover a different dynamic within the subjective point of view. We realize that we do not have to accept or reject conventional structures, and also do not have to put in place some new version of reality. . . . Whatever operates now is one face of the whole. 'I am here' does not confine us. How can it, when it is simply the front side of zero, the mask through whose mouth we first hear of the point of origin?

SDTS, p. 178: The self as knower considers itself in some sense unique, 'here' as opposed to 'there'. Yet 'here' is still a part of the universe. When the self takes its perspective or develops a certain understanding, it shares in the 'universal' space-time-knowledge cone.

 

entry 0010:

The humble moment, when seen as time, space, and knowledge, is a target worth aiming at. It's the vital center of the universe; if we hit it, we explode everything that prevents fulfillment, attaining everything that fulfills. (p. xlvii, DOT I)

 

entry 0011:

Perhaps this is a lower-level analogy of the universal unique [Steve Randall, 10/27/98]: KTS, p. 88: Suppose we imagined the smallest possible 'unit' of time and took that as a moment; then went on to imagine the body of space--the range of all that is--as the occupancy of that moment. As we traced from moment to moment the being of the body of space, how might our understanding of time change?

Another analogy: KTS, p. 108: Let us return to the 'original' invariable point and imagine that point expanding indefinitely, 'infinitely'. As it grew, it would swallow up points and positions. Eventually the whole that is established through 'measured-out' rhythms would disappear into this 'opening' of the point. At that 'point' of complete openness, would the universe of the temporal order collapse? How could we tell that the 'collapse' had occurred? And what could we say about the time'within' which it 'took place'?

entry 0012:

Knowledge alive enacts Time beyond past and future. A potential for manifestation moves and activates, disclosing change and character and condition. Reasons of place and reasons of experience improve and disprove, improvising variations on the 'instant point' in time. (p. 456, KTS)

KTS, pp. 457-8: Inquiry as Great Knowledge allows the Body of Knowledge to become the Body of Time, gaining intimacy with Time by embracing it in the instant. In each emerging instant there is a merging with the momentum of Time, so that the many presentations of time merge into the one Body of Knowledge. All-embracing Knowledge incorporates all rhythm into one point, pointing toward the one Body--the whole.

entry 0013:

KTS, p. 484: As a gathering together of all that contributes to its making, each 'point of decision' is the whole. We could go even further: Each 'point of decision' is the emerging gathering of all known knowledge, at whatever level it operates. In the gathered wholeness of the 'point of decision', nothing is left out, and choice is freely available. The known world is sustained from moment to moment on the basis of ever-emerging 'points of decision'.

 

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