[MD] Ham on Esthesia

[Ham Priday]

Hi SA --


You know, I got tired of seeing my messages posted under DMB's sarcastic
"Pressed Ham" heading.  So, when I was sending off a note to Platt the other
day on the subject of Sensibility as related to Essence, I changed it to
Esthesia.  It's a good word, the root of fairly well-known terms like
anesthesia [the desensitization of body tissues], kinesthesis [the ability
of the body to sense the status of the limbs in locomotion] and synesthesis
[sensing sound as color, etc.].  I seem to have hit the jackpot.  Would you
believe it?  "Ham on Esthesia" monopolized the MD for the entire day on
Wednesday.  Maybe I should rename my website Esthesia!

The remarkable fascination with this word may be partly due to its somewhat
esoteric usage, but mainly, I suspect, because it connotes in a single word
the two principal aspects of subjectivity -- propriety and sensibility.  It
expresses the essential meaning of the phrase "I feel".

But the implications of this term have also sparked some controversy.

For example, you complain:

> Here we go again.  Essence is the trees, hearts,
> frogs, etc..., since essence embodies "...ALL that
> IS."  But then essence isn't existence, but its' All
> that IS, but essence isn't a thing.  Dog chasing its'
> tail.  Your essence thesis doesn't have connections,
> no parts or many of the One, yet, essence embodies ALL
> that IS and thus, All must connect to essence somehow,
> even if the connection is essence, thus, all is being
> connected, yet, essence is not-being, and your thesis
> doesn't have connections.  Dog chasing its' tail.

And Case adds his own metaphor:

> The ancients saw this as a snake eating its tail...

My simple answer to your complaint is that when I say something is "embodied
in Essence" I do not imply a "thing", itself, but the essence or "is-ness"
of the thing.
You should understand this with your professed interest in mysticism and
dharmakaya light.  My ongoing debate with Mark is over whether Quality,
Value, and Consciousness are synonomous terms.  They mean different things
in the finite world, so they have to be carefully defined.  But in the
non-contradictory realm of Essence there is no difference; Essence is the
reality of All as One.  Within that One is the Essence (or potential, if you
will) of actualized reality where everything is different.

The central challenge of metaphysics is not simply making a monism of
duality but getting from the undifferentiated One to the differentiated
Many, and back again.  The first step in this process is to establish what
the essence of reality is.  One may posit it as Love, Beauty, Quality,
Sentience, Will, Energy, or Being, for example.  My conclusion was that, as
the Primary Source, Essence creates, therefore it must possess the potential
(power) of a creator.  But that power has to be directed, focused, organized
to produce an ordered universe; so Essence also possesses what we would call
Intelligence, and creation is its intent.  But the intent of an intelligence
implies a reason for creation; in other words, there must be some Value in
creating.  Again, if Essence can realize value it must also possess
Sensibility.

Now all these attributes -- Potentiality, Intelligence, Value,
Sensibility -- mean different things in a relational world, but if you
remove the relations they are
equivalent.  I posit the primary source as the One Absolute Essence.  What
is one and absolute can have no relations, no otherness, no differences.
Yet, it creates an organized system with all of these elements.  Cusa
explained this enigma as the potentiality of a non-contradictory source to
actualize a contradictory reality.  Thus, the Creator is the essence of a
multiplistic world without itself being differentiated.  This is what I
meant by "the embodiment of all that is".

In the Creation section (no. 3) of my thesis I hypothesize how this comes
about by the negation of Essence, which divides (actualizes) awareness from
beingness as the primary "essents", from which all other entities are
subsequently derived.  You'll see that it is "all connected" by Value, and
that it comes "full circle" in the life-experience of every individual.

Hope this explanation helps.

Best regards,
Ham