Higher ground

“The infinite vibratory levels, the dimensions of interconnectedness
are without end.” ~ Alex Grey

 

This leaves us with four different conceptions of existence, within any or all of which some entity may be understood to be. We can see how some entity may be understood to exist in several of these simultaneously; the entities, while distinct, can be linked to one another but can also exist independently. The entities in the objective world all inter-relate with one another: they all exist within the same objective world, at least as far as we can tell. In the same way, our subjective world consists of entities which coexist and correlate within that unique subjective world rather than within a range of them. Intersubjective entities relate in a more complex way, insofar as the unique understanding of the intersubjective symbol within each subjective observer's Cartesian theater informs both the unique understanding of other subjective observers and also the intersubjective meaning attached to the symbol itself - but again these intersubjective entities coexist with one another on the same 'level' as it were. Ideals, similarly, exist on their own 'level' - and yet we have already stated, and can easily say in everyday experience, that entities existing severally on discrete levels relate to one another. These metarelations between things that exist in different senses can be seen as existing in some larger dimension, in the same way as a succession of two-dimensional images can be layered over one another in a third dimension to become a richer and truer whole, and it is this dimension of existence, distinct from the first four, that we call the transcendental. The metarelations of transcendental reality are theoretically perceptible in the same way as the simple relations of subjective reality, and the process of metaperception in this fashion is the subject of the koan I quoted back at the beginning.

Now you have been given access to a somewhat fuller expression of the seemingly simple expression 'I can only be,' and a somewhat fuller elaboration within that context of the opening koan, I have reached a point at which this narrative can pause. If you are still confused, rest assured that this is because I still haven't begun to properly express myself yet. Do not make the mistake of reading into that refrain any sort of promise that 'proper expression' will ever be forthcoming; but strive for the faith that sustains me - the faith that any expression will, in the fullness of its flowering, become sufficiently proper that it achieves some measure of intersubjective potential.

Feel free to share your reactions to this. Let's make some Art.

Between the lines

“Words without actions are the assassins of idealism”
~ Herbert Hoover

 

We've already stated that you understand the words to have objective existence as marks on a page - otherwise you could not read them. And you understand the words to have intersubjective existence, without which they could have no meaning for you. You also understand them to have subjective existence in that you have formed a subjective impression of the sentences you've read within your Cartesian theater. But this is not the limit of your appreciation. You have understood these words in another sense, unless you are an extraordinary person indeed. You have understood them within the context of being a self-aware conscious individual with your own history and your own prior impressions of all the things you remember from your life so far. What I am communicating to you has not arrived upon a tabula rasa within you: it has been projected onto an immensely complex and vibrant construct, which is your self-aware, self-generated, self-sustaining subjective realm. The interactions between the novel material introduced by this intersubjective process, and the established corpus of self-awareness generated subjectively over the course of your lifetime, themselves have an existence which makes your subjective world uniquely your own. Your critical faculty - your capacity for comparing the material I'm presenting to you here with the subjective material of your pre-existing subjective realm - gives rise to the ideal existence.

To see this, let's digress for a moment and return to empirical reality. We had said that, in the objective realm, things that exist do so in measurable ways. This capacity to be measured is a property of objective entities, and the things we can measure are also properties. But entities are not simply properties - we can group together 'things that are red' and 'things that are big,' to give two simple examples, but we do not thereby perceive discrete entities in the way we understand them: certainly, we do not in that fashion perceive entities we can relate to word-symbols and communicate intersubjectively with other people. Entities, in fact, exist as unique relations between properties. Every entity is theoretically describable as a specific set of relations among properties that exactly describe it, and within the empirical physical universe the whole immensity of Creation is similarly susceptible to representation as an exhaustive and exhausting catalogue of relations and properties.