[MD] Marsha's (s)OL

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 15 Oct 2009 at 14:08, Ham Priday wrote:

> 
> You're on to something here, Marsha, and so is Platt (although he doesn't 
> yet realize it).  On 10/4, in his assertion that "existence, reality, and 
> Quality are permanent," he also said "'All is change' is self-
> contradictory."
> 
> Existence itself is contradictory because it pits the "self" against 
> "otherness".  A dichotomy like Self/Otherness cannot be "real' or true in 
> the metaphysical sense because it represents contrariety.  There is no 
> contrariety in Absolute Essence (Cusa's 'Not-other').  If you understand 
> negation, you must come to the realization that the only way contrariety 
> (differential otherness) can arise from an absolute source is by negation. 
> Selves are negated entities, as is all otherness.  In my thesis I refer to 
> existents as "negates".
> 
> Think of the negate as an individualized reduction of the primary source. 
> The first "difference" -- the "split" which Bo is always talking about -- is 
> the division of unity into two.  This is manifested in the empirical fact 
> that bipolarity is a prominent feature of existential reality.  You not only 
> have 'selfness and otherness', you have 'this and that', 'here and there', 
> 'good and bad', 'male and female', 'beginning and end', ad infinitum.  The 
> individual is a dichotomy of its own: Being-Aware.  It's not surprising, 
> therefore, that all experience reflects this primary dualism.
> 
> If I am negated from Essence, then I am no more "real" than the objects I 
> see around me.  Descartes might as well have expressed his Cogito thusly: "I 
> think, therefore I EXIST and AM NOT REALITY".  In one place in my thesis I 
> type this verb with a hyphen as "ex-ist".  'Ex' is the Latin for "from", as 
> in "separated from", and the etymology of the suffix 'ist' is IS (i.e., that 
> which is real).  So, in actuality, everything that ex-ists is a negational 
> derivation of the true reality, Absolute Essence.
> 
> The question I had to answer was: What is it that Essence negates to 
> actualize Existence?  It came down to a choice of Consciousness 
> (sensibility), Value, or Nothingness.  I won't bore you with my reasons for 
> rejecting the first two options, but Nothingness is the obvious choice. 
> Existence is a synthesis of Being and Nothingness.  Essence contains no 
> nothingness BECAUSE it negates it.  But a "being" must have nothingness in 
> order to ex-ist as a particular finite entity.  (Nothingness divides it from 
> the Whole of Essence and from every other entity.)
> 
> That makes Experience a "secondary negation", a theory that's too involved 
> to get into here.  But you're on the right track, Marsha.  And I'll be happy 
> to expound on my theory -- on or off line -- if and whenever you're ready.
> 
> (Have I given you any new insights, Platt?)

Hi Ham, 

No. I'm unable to follow your argument. The vocabulary you use is 
foreign to me -- "contraiety,""differential otherness," "negated entities," 
for example. But I think we may agree on the permanence of existence. 
In your post to Willblake you wrote, "Essence is not 'being' but absolute 
'IS-ness.'" To me the concept "IS-ness" means the same as reality, 
existence, Quality.  Of course, like Bill Clinton, we can argue what the 
meaning of "is" is.  

As for the Buddhist negative "Not one, not two" to indicate the Absolute 
(the unpatterned as Marsha might say), it simply means to me 
experience that words cannot express -- for example, what I and others 
occasionally experience in the presence of great beauty. Rachmaniov's 
Third Piano Concerto comes to mind. I'm also interested in inexplicable 
coincidences that seem to mark turning points on my life's path, like 
learning of this site quite by accident from Bo many years ago. . But, I 
digress. 

Regards,
Platt.