TSK Inquiry

When I shifted to the feel of the sense of smell, I noticed that it seemed much more like a state of the body than an ‘object’ out in space; it was very close, not really located anywhere ‘out there.’  And the same was the case with taste and touch.  They seemed more naively egocentric, and I could link them imaginatively to primitive states of predifferentiation.  Seeing felt ‘agentic’ and me-centered in a more developed way.  Attending to the agentic feel of the visual field, I noticed that it seemed tied to the (directed, sometimes purposeful) movement of my eyes, whereas my ears were more passive receptors — perhaps a more feminine than masculine mode of perception.  (Though I imagined if I was a dog or cat and able to cock my ears purposefully in different directions, perhaps I would experience hearing a little differently…)

More later!

Bruce

This is the second in a series of entries I plan on posting based on my practice notes from the recent TSK retreat, "The Self in Question."  The TSK vision is not hostile to the ego or self, and does not regard it as something to be discarded or destroyed, but as the title of the retreat suggests, it does seek to call common presuppositions about the self into question -- especially through exploring its relationship to conventional conceptions about time, space, and knowledge (e.g., the "world" of experience).

The practice I will write about below is one we worked with about midway through the retreat.  We had spent some time over the previous several days exploring the ways the self manifests in relation to linear time, instrumental knowledge, desire and sensory experience, and so on, and had worked with several exercises to expand and deepen experience, to develop bidirectional and multidimensional attention, etc.  On the morning I am writing about here, one participant remarked that she had woken up feeling rushes of spiralling, expanding energy that was both exhilirating and disorienting.  Although she wasn't distressed, she said she felt like she was experiencing a loss of control, so we spent the first part of the morning looking at the question of self's pretense to be in control of experience.   

At one point in this discussion, the teacher, Jack Petranker, suggested we explore an exercise entitled, The Object and Its Glow.  The exercise suggests an interesting metaphor for conceiving of subject-object relationships: seeing the self's relationship to object as similar to the glow put off by a phosphorescent cactus blossom -- as the luminosity of a desert flower, distinct but inseparable from it.  Many TSK exercises have a characteristic structure, involving several stages -- attending to a conventional aspect of experience, focusing mindfully and alertly on one aspect of it, and then imaginatively or experientially altering it in some way, while remaining open to the arising of new insight or new experience.  In this case, we begin by noting the self-object organization of our experience, attending to it and exploring it both conceptually and phenomenologically, and then we introduce the "luminous cactus blossom" image and experientially explore this "reframing" of the ordinary "structure" of experience.

In my practice of this exercise, because I was already familiar with it, I started out straightaway with the cactus blossom image; I realized I could explore my subject-object relationship with the visualized image itself before focusing more on the "glow."  As I tried to stabilize the image, however, I found it difficult this time to hold it clearly in mind, and was inspired to draw on vivid imagery familiar from a recent movie:  the bioluminescent plants of Pandora, from the movie, Avatar.  I spent a little time imaginatively walking through the luminous forest, getting a sense of being an observing subject in the midst of these beautiful objects.  How might self-and-object be like an object and its glow?   

I stopped before a luminous plant, attending to the subtle light it gave off, the soft radiance at its edges.  Slowly, I expanded the glow and merged it with my sense of self, a subject among objects -- merging the plant's light with the subtle light of knowing.  This felt in the moment like a natural marriage and there was a momentary opening and release, a subtle shift in the field of experience towards suchness.  Suddenly the image of Jake Sully's luminous footprints on the forest floor came to mind, a momentary glowing impression which faded soon after the foot's passing.  Is that like the self?  Is the "self" like the glowing impression left by passing events? 

This image was compelling to me, and I sensed into it, feeling an intuitive fit.  But then a sudden objection arose:  No!  Self is more solid than that!  It is not just a passing, passive "glow" -- it is undeniable, present, here!  This narrative now felt compelling, but then it shifted again: I touched into the feeling of "No" and the subsequent objecting thoughts as thoughts -- a compelling object or event that was unfolding, "in" and "around" which I could also trace the subtle glow of self-sense, of subjectivity, given together with it.  A deeper sense of relaxation dawned, as the exercise expanded to encompass the ordinary flow of thought and experience.

I opened my eyes and looked at the objects in the room, allowing objects to evoke the inseparable "glow" of self, both present at once.  Interestingly, as I relaxed into this mode of seeing, this alternative "structuring" of the experiential field, I found that self, in its co-emergent given-togetherness, its inseparable, luminous alongsidedness, seemed to leave objects alone -- with self no longer an oppositional center, the whole field is "freed," and a subtle sense of joy arises and permeates the simplest transactions.

Great Time permitting, I plan to turn some of my notes from the recent "Self in Question" retreat into a number of blog entries.  This will be the first of several based specifically on my practice notes.

Midway through the retreat, after we had spent several days inquiring into the structure and operation of the self and exploring its relationship to (technological) knowledge, time, and space, we took an afternoon hike down the mountainside to visit a beautiful beach set in a rocky cove.  Jack had asked us to make the hike in silence, and although he did not assign any specific practices, I decided to practice Exercise 16, "Space-Time-Knowledge on the Conventional Level," on my way down.  I've worked with this exercise before during regular walks and often find it fruitful and enlivening.

I started with space, connecting with the space around me -- spaces of various distances between me and the trees, the slope of the mountain, the hints of sky above.  Then I moved into the feeling of occupying and moving through space, gliding through the corridor of trees, the body light and space-like, opening eventually into a sense of being space.  At one densely wooded area, I felt the unique "flavor" of this particular space, and reflected appreciatively on the fractal relationship between the complex, criss-crossing lines of the forest and the network of nerves, veins, and bones in my body, which I was envisioning in its transparent, "Giant Body" form.  This evoked a sense of kinship -- of layered, resonant spaces.

When we came to a steep slope and I began to feel the pull of gravity, I switched to a focus on time.  I felt into the pull of the slope, the tug of gravity and my muscles' response, and I imaginatively experienced that as "time."  But soon, my attention shifted outward and I began to contact "time" as distinction, differentiation, proliferation -- the abundant differentiating, creative, "time" of the forest.  At one point, I felt in touch with a markedly different time, the time of these still, upwardly reaching trees -- a different timing or rhythm in which I was now immersed.  Time was a fountaining upward instead of a horizontal, linear unfolding, dynamic but also still and centered.

As trees broke onto a light-filled clearing, with moss-covered branches shining whitely all around, I switched to meditating on knowledge -- the light of knowledge radiating everywhere in white branches and fluttering leaves.  I felt body, thought, feeling, vision (forest, trail, sky) all as knowledge, as known, as knowings.  The forest seemed illuminated inwardly by dreamlight, a virtual shimmering play of form.

Later on the walk, after losing track of the meditation for awhile, I tried to touch a more integrated sense of time-space-knowledge.  I first brought time and knowledge back in to awareness, and I found this led to more self-object differentiation, which evoked something close to the Subject-Object Reversal exercise -- the sense of being surrounded by a circle of knowing presences.  At one point, this experience took on a thrilling, slightly frightening edge, as I smelled a wild animal and began to imagine being watched by a bear.  A little while later, moving to bring in space as well, I appreciated the integral and elemental or fundamental nature of these distinctions: touching the time, space, knowledge of the forest was easy and natural, an appreciative acknowledgement of what was already "present" that seemed to bring a deep sense of well-being.  Space here was the "allowing" of these recognitions, which indeed were nourishing and enriching, as Rinpoche says:

"Space and Time are not simply backgrounds or supporting mediums for our ordinary pursuits and experience; they can provide a very special and direct form of nourishment for our 'humanity' or human nature, which is usually fed only indirectly through the pursuit of sensory and emotional gratification. Our attitudes, emotions and even our actions are usually rather 'closed' states of being. We can use knowledge to open space and time, and to inspire personal growth and integration. The liberating presence of space and time shows us that within all stagnant and oppressive conditions there is actually room for movement and growth. We do not need to escape from these situations. Knowledge can inspire a new way of being in which the usual difficulties and conflicts which we experience in our daily lives--and which also seem to be inherent in the world situation--can be seen in a new light--they are no longer so rigid or unsolvable. As these experiences take on a more open, transparent quality, we are more literally able to create balance and harmony in our lives, and in our world as well." 

For this segment of the course, we have continued to explore "space" in relation to the sense of self, layers of mind, perspective-taking, and the construction or enactment of experience.  As you might expect, some of these inquiries overlap with the "knowledge" aspect of TSK, and this week's practice is no exception.   One of the important TSK ideas we've explored in relation to space, for instance, is the field communiqué.  This term refers to the ways in which our experience is communicated forward -- to the active enactment of a worldspace, with its given "order," its limitations and borders.  This worldspace includes the "self," rather than being a product of it:  self and world are a co-emerging communication, a communication which is understood here as a certain "field dynamic," an emergent patterning of meaningful (if  also often restrictive or frustrating) experience.

Many of the exercises and inquiries we've worked with consist of not-doing experiments, in a sense:  taking a conventional aspect of our experience and somehow reversing or violating or opening it.  Subject-Object Reversal, the exercise assigned for this week, also asks us to do this:  to first take note of normal subject-centered experience, exploring the sense of being located 'here,' observing objects 'there' (physically, but also in terms of thoughts, images, etc); and then to experiment with reversing this dynamic on several different (increasingly  subtle) levels.  On the first level, we 'allow' the objects in our environment (including even abstract, 'meta-level' features of our experience) to be the knower(s), and ourselves to be the known.  Then, after  practicing this for a time, we make several subtle shifts -- for instance, allowing thought or perception to 'do' us rather than us being the thinker  or perceiver, or allowing embodied experience to be 'experience knowing us.'   Later, we are asked to challenge even the sense of inhabiting or "being" a constant, abiding point of reference, releasing our hold on self-image.

I have been working with this exercise throughout the past two days, doing it as I take my walks, but also as I'm sitting quietly, or as I'm doing other daily activities.  Each time I've worked with this exercise has been different (I've worked with it before this class as well), but this week I've noticed two different ways it has unfolded.  In one, where I concentrate primarily on moving the sense of being a positioned observer 'out' into the environment, I have a definite sense of being held intimately 'within' a sentient field -- like I'm re-entering an animistic worldspace, surrounded by many different intelligences or knowing presences.  I start with prominent objects like trees and plants and various inanimate objects, and then move on to more 'background' elements like the air or the ground, allowing the sense of 'knowing' to emerge from them towards me.  I feel immersed in a sensuous field of relationship, an object held by innumerable subjects.  Sometimes these "subjects" were prominent, and the "body" was an object under these teeming gazes; and sometimes there was more of a sense of I-and-Thou, where I was also a small but knowing presence in this field.  This is most certainly an imaginative exercise, but it is revealing -- because it highlights the conceptual or imaginal dimensions of the conventional order as well.  It reveals, by contrast, the psychological contours of particular communicated meaning spaces: whether I am 'suspended' as a 'receiver' and 'responder' in a living, knowing field (with the senses of intimacy and reciprocity that involves), or whether I am an active knower apprehending and relating to various distant objects (with the senses of power and alienation that entails).

On subtler levels, which did not involve imaginatively transforming the world into an ‘animistic' landscape of knowing subjects, I simply dropped the sense of being the "knower" and explored what it would mean for experience to be experience-knowing-me.  Here, my focus was not on objectified knowers ‘out' in the world, but on the unfolding of experience (as impinging knowing events).  It is hard to describe what this subtle shift was like, but in general terms, I felt it first (somewhat conceptually) as "being sounded" or "being plumbed" by the world.  It was like my body was a particular "space of potential," and experience was the knowing sounding of that potential: the moist, cool wind on skin, the play of light and color and shadow, the rich play of vibration and sound, were knowings of me (in the intimate Biblical sense) -- an intercourse, an intimate exploration of me (as a fecund space of possibility), a ravishing.  Emerging experience was the light arising of bliss.  At different points, I would find aspects of my experience which were unconscious and more solidified - anchors for the knower - and I would reverse them, too, so there was an ongoing, multi-dimensional sense of "being known," "being thought," "being felt." 

Even now, as I write this while listening to the music of Arvo Part, I find myself oscillating between normal modes of subject-object experience, and this "reversed" sense of experience-knowing-me, though at the time there is not a strong sense of "me."  Just this receiving of richly layered knowings, like liquids flowing and curling into stillness.

I plan to continue with this practice over the week, and may write more in the comments section below.  This is a powerful practice, in my experience, particularly as it aims so directly at the heart of our habitual modes of organization.  For instance, this afternoon, an unexpected but apparent outcome of the practice occurred as I was concluding my walk.  I had been exploring the "no distance" insight of another TSK practice (where subject is seen as the inseparable glow of objects), applying it to the Subject-Object Reversal practice as Rinpoche suggests, when suddenly I felt a rush of energy run up my spine and out the top of my head.  This blissful current flowed upwards a moment, and I paused just to allow it to flow, then resumed walking.  At that moment, I felt a strong pressure on the top of my head and I paused again, feeling a bit overwhelmed and dizzy.  I took a few slow breaths, allowing the experience to unfold and pass, and then returned to work.

~*~

Photomicrography from Nikon Smallworld Gallery.

Recently, through an essay by Ron Purser (a professor at San Francisco State University and a writer on TSK, Gebser, and related topics), I was introduced to the fascinating virtual art of Char Davies.  In the essay, Cyberspace and Its Limits: Hypermodern Detours in the Evolution of Consciousness, Ron discusses the potential for VR technology and interactive digital media to undergird a collective cultural shift to integral/aperspectival consciousness, as the development of perspectival vision and art in 15th century Europe helped support the transition from mythic to mental consciousness (using Gebser's terms).  Ron suggests that many current VR technologies (what he calls VR1) actually support a hyper-modern turn in consciousness -- a form of hyper-perspectivism, Gebser's "deficient phase" of the mental-rational structure -- but the recent emergence of creative, deeply interactive virtual media (VR2) may help support the collective evolutionary shift in consciousness and space-time perception that Gebser and Wilber envisage (and which TSK also describes).

In this blog, besides highlighting Ron's essay and directing interested readers to it, I wanted to introduce Char Davies' work.  Davies has created two fascinating immersive virtual environments, Osmose and Ephémère, both of which allow participants to interact with luminous, responsive, multi-layered worldspaces, which provide "an intriguing spatio-temporal context in which to explore the self's subjective experience of 'being-in-the-world' -- as embodied consciousness in an enveloping space where boundaries between inner/outer, and mind/body dissolve."  This is accomplished, in part, through the unique user interface -- a motion tracking vest, which is responsive to the user's breath and balance, allowing for a fuller, more embodied sense of environmental immersion than standard joysticks or data gloves. 

Both installations represent the development of what Purser, in his essay, calls VR2 -- a creative, interactive tool with the potential to evoke and support integral consciousness.

"The integral potentialities of VR2 are apparent in several respects. The VR2 user, in constructing and interacting within a highly imaginative virtual world, draws upon long repressed magical and mythical dimensions of human consciousness. The richness and depth of the virtual world can inspire awe and appreciation for the myriad dimensions of consciousness that are co-present all at once. Virtual worlds in VR2 are evocative, requiring the user to consciously become aware of their participation in the figuration of appearances. Rather than repressing or disengaging the user's consciousness, VR2 turns the lights on, intensifying verition and active imagination. In other words, VR2 could open up human experience to a simulation of integral consciousness, providing a technologically mediated glimpse of a new vision, a new way of seeing the self in relation to the whole.

This is an exciting possibility, since it could potentially provide the capacity for people to express and participate in the creation of aperspectival virtual worlds. However, VR2 differs from VR1 in that it does not simply provide more surfaces to interact with, or a greater span of visuality. Rather, VR2 offers the possibility for entering into the interiority of space, of expanding inwardly into the depth of the image. In VR2, the user can, for example, see how a rainbow arises as an active construction or collective representation, involving both the user's perception, the image that is apparently distant, and the meaning-giving process that flows between percipient and the phenomena. In other words, the user would have the opportunity to actually experience what a participatory consciousness feels like in a VR2 environment. Experience within VR2 would evoke a meta-awareness of participation-as-observer."

I share Purser's excitement, and look forward to exploring this technology, if the opportunity arises.  Just reading the descriptions of the Osmose and Ephemere installations, I am reminded of a number of my experiences working with TSK inquiry.  For example, the following is from my TSK practice notes on 10/23/08:

It is evening and I have come to the school campus to walk the labyrinth under the trees.  Following the winding narrow paths between the rows of stone, looping around the same patch of earth again and again from new directions, I think about how space accommodates form, how every movement and shape plumbs its seemingly infinite potential.  I think about how these lines of stone both constrain movement and enact new potential, as our constructs similarly shape and guide our lives: so many ways that space can flower.  We seem always to move within limits, but ... is there a limit to the forms these limiting borders may take?  What richness is available for each new pattern to evoke, for each new pathway to enact?

As I move around the labyrinth, slowly tracing out this space within the larger space of the school gardens, sensing the movements of my body and the play of thought and image "within" me, listening to the rush of cars on the freeway not far away, I notice first a layering and overlapping of perspectives and spaces, which then seems to collapse and somehow become spaceless.  Turning a bend on the path, sunlight streams suddenly through the branches of the tree, illuminating the motes of dust hanging in the space under the branches and the watchful squirrels, and I experience the whole scene as somehow virtual, a patterned readout which overlaps with other readouts -- other perspective-spaces -- without obstruction.  I do not have the impression that the surrounding space I perceive isn't really "there"; rather, the patterned space in its all-at-onceness and givenness seems simultaneously not given, but read out, as the squirrels looking on read out their world, and the trees their own as well.

VR2 is certainly not "essential" for fruitful contemplative practice, but to the degree that it has the potential to evoke the sort of aperspectival space I described above, I think it could, indeed, serve as a powerful aid in the emergence of an integral/aperspectival cultural aesthetic.

"Time, space and knowledge are the most basic facets of human experience. They are the Being of our being as it manifests in this world. Space allows the world of objects to appear; time makes possible the sequence of events that gives order to our lives; knowledge gives meaning and significance to whatever appears or unfolds. Time and space are the ordinary stuff of existence, which ordinary knowledge aims to know.

Precisely because of their 'ordinariness'--because there is nothing more basic to our reality--time, space, and knowledge can also serve as the gateways to new vision. Knowledge in dynamic interplay with Space and Time can challenge familiar assumptions about self and world, knowing and the knowable. Time can present and Space can allow a new kind of inquiry, revealing Knowledge in a light that illuminates the whole of Being." (Tarthang Tulku, pp. xv, Knowledge of Time and Space)

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the emergence of the Time-Space-Knowledge teachings, Dharma Publishing has released the first comprehensive study guide to this vision. At 445 pages, When It Rains, Does Space Get Wet? offers beginning and long-term students alike a valuable resource for exploring the six primary books in the TSK series. Written and compiled by Jack Petranker, a long-time student and teacher of TSK and the editor of many of the books in the series, the study guide offers students several systematic ways to approach the vision and to explore many of its practices.

When Time, Space, and Knowledge was first published in 1977, it was hailed as "one of the most sophisticated cosmologies to emerge in years." And while TSK truly does provide a new and compelling way to view the Kosmos, its rich, multi-faceted discussion of time, space, and knowledge is intended, not as a comprehensive "map" of reality, but as a point of departure for inquiring into and growing more intimate with the living, open, dynamic fabric of our experience. In keeping with this TSK spirit, When It Rains serves primarily as an aid to inquiry, and only secondarily as an overview or summary of TSK perspectives.

The book is divided into six sections. The first section (the one with which I have worked most closely to date) consists of a 36-unit study program, which introduces students to many of the core themes and perspectives of the TSK vision and provides readings and exercises for exploring them in more depth. I have not yet completed the program, but so far I have found it to be a helpful way to work in a concentrated (and yet inviting and open) way with the material. The study program is followed by a section entitled, "TSK Guide: 75 Topics." As Petranker writes in his introduction, "This section organizes the themes of the TSK vision according to the three levels of time, space, and knowledge, making nine divisions in all. For each topic, references are given to the central place where that topic is introduced or discussed, together with related readings and exercises. The aim is to create a resource that readers and students of the TSK vision can approach in their own way and at their own pace, letting their interests and their sense of what seems appropriate guide them." The next two sections provide additional ways to explore the TSK books from the perspectives of first-, second-, and third-level time, space, and knowledge, and the remaining ones offer concise summaries of the books and other resources, including a collection of references for exploring TSK's unique methodology. Because the TSK books are so central to the inquiry When It Rains invites, a CD containing all six texts is included.

It has been ten years since Tarthang Tulku published Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space, the last book in the series. Since that time, several books of essays written by students of the TSK vision have been released, but to my knowledge Tarthang Tulku has not written anything further on these teachings. However, according to Jack Petranker, the study guide itself was Tarthang Tulku's idea, and he worked closely with Rinpoche in putting together several of its sections. As a committed student of TSK, I have missed hearing from Rinpoche in recent years; but I am heartened by his involvement in this latest book, and I take it as an indication that he is still passionate about communicating this vision to the world.

If you are not familiar with TSK, or if you picked up the first book when it came out in the 70s but haven't followed the subsequent unfolding of the vision (which, I have argued elsewhere, is uniquely suited to speak to, and also challenge, the postmodern temperament of our age), I recommend Jack's new book as a good way to begin to explore it. TSK is not a vision that lends itself to easy assimilation. It demands a lot out of us. But I have found the effort to be quite rewarding.