[MD] tiny skull... change... nothingness...

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, David --

> I would also suggest to Ham once again that
> the only source that would seem to be entirely free
> and possess infinite potential is a source that in
> our finite terms is Nothing. Anything that has being,
> has SQ form, is necessarily limited, what else is
> SQ, what else is repetition, other than a given
> limitation, a repeat, a blocking of DQ/change.

Your statement makes sense only in the context of finite existence, and you
have qualified it with the words "in our finite terms."  What I am
suggesting is that ultimate reality cannot be defined in finite terms, and
that it cannot be "Nothing".  Again, nothing can come from nothing.  The
source of all things cannot be nothing any more than it can be a "thing".
It is the Essence or potentiality of Beingness or "thingness", not the being
or the things themselves.

Likewise, Essence doesn't change as Existence (what you call SQ) does.  It
is absolute and immutable.  I have been arguing that what Pirsig calls DQ
could conceivably equate to Essence, except that he posits it as a heriarchy
of levels.  Essence is not subject to divisions or levels because it is
absolute.

> How to experience nothingness?
>
> Take one ice cube.
> Let it melt?
> Where is the cube now?
>
> Collect water.
> Freeze into cube.
> Where did the cube come from?
>
> Boil some water?
> Where did the wetness go?

What this demonstrates is the changing state of matter as we experience it,
not the experience of nothingness.  Of course, if you intellectualize
evolution and change as a series of separate events in time, what separates
the events is nothingness.  Thus, Event A passes to event B, and event A
(the ice cube) no longer exists.  That is a transition in the actualized
(physical) world.  As an intellectual precept, you can then say that the ice
cube is no longer ice, since it has reached its melting point; but that's
only how the intellect interprets reality.

The mode of human experience is to intellectualize all phenomena as
differentiated happenings within the framework of time and space.  We
abstract "things" from their essence by negating them as finite objects -- 
by using nothingness to divide them.  My hypothesis is that experience
begins with a differentiation of sensible Value.  What we actually negate is
the value that represents a particular thing.  The appearance of the "thing"
is what is left over from the value negated or abstracted from Essence.  The
result is an incremental, space/time perspective of a reality that is
essentially neither transient nor differentiated, but absolute.

We ourselves (as negated agents of Essence) are the "dividers" of this
Essence, but no single self can partake of the absolute source.  Our only
link to Essence is the conditional values with which we identify in
experience.  Because they represent the Essence denied us when we became
individuals, values are our link to the absolute Source.  Man is a "negate"
whose Essence is Value.  Which is why I say Essentialism is a valuistic
philosophy.

Thanks for the opportunity, David
Ham