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Thread 0028: What are "levels 1-3 ?" Are they mutually exclusive? Does "first level" refer usually to a particular structure (including subject-object actions within linear time), and yet at other times to particular 'ordinary' entities such as books and rivers?
entry 0001:
[Steve Randall, 11/12/98] In TSK, what does the word "level" mean? My understanding, and I'm far from certain about this, is that first, second, and third levels are used to refer to different ways that 'experience' or 'reality' is structured or known (no 'knower' is implied), not to different aspects of 'reality' (using the common understanding of 'reality' as existence.
I remember only a few places in all the books where second and third levels might be said to 'coexist'. Most of the time they seem presented as alternative and mutually exclusive perspectives or ways of 'understanding'. E.g., p. 161, TSK: " . . . although there seems to be movement and separate places to move to on the first level, and still more open, fluid possibilities of movement on the second level-on the third level there is 'going' and no separate places."
From the books, it looks to me like "first level" is used in an ambiguous way, sometimes referring to 'conventional' or 'ordinary' communicative designation, sometimes referring to an ordinary way of structuring 'reality' or experience. If I had my choice, "first level" would consistently refer to a particular structure, and never to conventional, practical distinctions.
entry 0002:
KTS, pp. 426-7: The system that establishes 'levels' of time, space, and knowledge is itself a product of conventional understanding and cannot be considered absolute.
Imagining the three-level structure of time, space, and knowledge as a pyramid, and looking from the 'first-level' base of the pyramid, it seems natural to proceed by climbing from the base to the top.
But looking from the top of the pyramid, there is nowhere to go. Indeed, from this perspective the top is also at the center. Here, at the center of present experience, Great Knowledge is already available.
. . . A hierarchical model risks the interpretation that Great Time, Space, and Knowledge are states to be arrived at, as one would arrive at the upper story of a house after climbing a set of stairs. As a corrective to this model, we might use the traditional image of a finger pointing at the moon: The structure is the finger, and it would be a serious error to mistake the tip of the finger for the moon at which it was pointing.
KTS, p. 429: As knowledge and time and space interact, three levels arise, each unfolding in three distinct ways, making nine levels in all. However, this is a first-level description. From a second-level orientation we could say that at each level a 'read-out' prevails and a 'field' unifies; in third-level terms we might say that throughout time and space the Body of Knowledge is variously enacted, in accord with the fullness of Being.
entry 0003:
KTS, p. 447: On the first level, the Body of Knowledge is bounded by linear time and physical space; by positions, locations, and distance; by birth and death. On the second level, confinement comes through the pervasive structures of 'field', 'order', and 'logos'. But confinement itself is only the characteristic indication that lower levels are in operation; from a 'third-level' perspective, confinement has no reality as such. When the interpretations of lower-level knowledge are understood as presentations of the Body of Knowledge, 'knowingness' remains fully available even when such interpretations are in effect.
entry 0004:
KTS, p. 471: Though we may call them inseparable, first-level knowledge and Great Knowledge seem incapable of sharing the same space or 'coexisting' in the same universe. Conventional knowledge--the specific sets of information owned by a self--proceeds by fitting together bits and pieces to form a whole. It knows 'from' a specific perspective--more or less consistent and encompassing--that is invariably bound to a specific 'order'.
On the second level, the tendency to objectify is repeated
on a more subtle level in terms of 'field' and 'temporal order'.
Even 'the flow of time' can become an 'outsider' to that flow.
Similar difficulties arise as soon as Time, Space, or Knowledge
is understood as a potentiality out of which ordinary experience
arises.
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