Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Wei Wu Wei - Inconceivable


Positive' is not positive without 'negative', and 'negative' is not negative without 'positive'. Therefore they can only be two halves of one whole, two conceptual aspects of one whole which as a whole cannot be conceived - precisely because it is this which seeks to conceive.

'Being' cannot be without 'non-being', and 'non-being' cannot not be without 'being'. Therefore they can only be two aspects of one whole which as such cannot be conceived - in which there is neither being nor non-being as objective existences.

'Appearance' (form) cannot appear without 'void' (voidness of appearance), and 'void' cannot be voidness of appearance without 'appearance'. Therefore they must be two conceptual aspects of what is objectively inconceivable - as which their identity is absolute in non-objectivity.

'Subject' has no conceptual existence apart from 'object', nor 'object' apart from 'subject'. They, too, are twin spinning aspects of the inconceivable in which they are inevitably reunited in mutual negation.

Where there is neither positive nor negative, being nor non-being, appearance nor void, subject nor object, there must be identity. But identity cannot perceive itself, and that is what we are. That is why only he who does not know can speak, and why he who knows cannot speak - for what-he-is cannot be an object of what-he-is, and so cannot be conceived or described.

Positive and negative, being and non-being, appearance and void, subject and object, can be conceived by us because, as 'us', mind is divided into subject-conceiving and object-conceived but, re-identified with what they are, we are their total objective absence - which is thought of as pure undivided mind.

'Space' is a static three-dimensional concept, of which 'time' is the active counterpart, whose functioning constitutes a further dimension of measurement. Space cannot be conceived without time (duration), nor time without space (extension). Two conceptual aspects of a unity which is inconceivable; given the name of 'space-time', their identity is absolute in non-conceptuality. Unaccompanied by them, phenomena cannot be extended in appearance, and only with space-time as their noumenal source can phenomena be assumed to be.

'Phenomena' cannot be such without 'noumenon', nor 'noumenon' without 'phenomena'. Therefore conceptually they also are two aspects of non-conceptuality. Phenomena, being no things in themselves (devoid of self-nature) yet are everything, and noumenon, being the source of everything, yet is no thing. Everything, then, is both, and neither is any thing: eternally separate as concepts, they are forever inseparable unconceived, and that identity is the essential understanding.

That is what the universe is in so far as its nature can be suggested in words. The universe is inconceivable, because what it is, is what we are, and what we are is what the universe is - and that is total absence cognitionally which, uncognised, necessarily subsists as total presence.



 

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