On Being: Experience of: Unity
|
Music: Chaconne from the Suite in E Flat. Subscribe to this site on Substack |
| On Being
Copyright by |
1. The act of being is indivisible, universal, and unchanging. It is the one within the many that we share with everything that is.
2. The being of a being is one, though that being be of many parts and undergo many changes. 3. Thus we perceive substance beneath accident: the tree in bud, in bloom, in leaf, in color, bare; the self as infant, adolescent, adult, senescent; the caterpillar turned butterfly. 4. Without the ability to grasp substance we would not survive, since experience would be a bewildering array of sense impressions with no continuity through time. 5. Thus consciousness constructs substance, but not of whole cloth. For although by definition one cannot know what lies outside of consciousness, by experience one quickly learns to adjust one's perceptions to one's surroundings. 6. Nor can we see things otherwise, any more than we can see them in five dimensions, or above or below certain frequencies of light. 7. The self is our substance, through which we perceive the unity of being most profoundly. 8. By stripping away all but the pure act of being, we can experience directly, as part of ourselves, the single is that is, from time and self unchained.
On Being: Table of About This |
|