Recall the Brian Greene scene with the spinning skater:
Greene’s point: physical space cannot be the emptiness claimed by Newton. Newton’s nothing-space is disproved by the centrifugal force felt in the skater’s arms and the lateral zone of her body. The fact that she feels this force means that ...
Read MoreLet us assume the American schoolroom convention for naming the three orthogonal lines that flesh out 3-space. For navigators, the X and Y spanned the ground—i.e., the surface of the Earth. X was left–right and Y was forwards–backwards. But in the classroom you learn X and Y first, and Y is ...
Read MoreWhy do we experience ontological otherness to self?
Why is physical reality not-self?
Why is matter a negation of selfness?
Even our own bodies are not truly self, but only infused by self—if you chop off my arm, I am still me. The Read More
Inside 3-space, we identify otherness as counterforce to will. Specifically, otherness is present as mass. But this presentation is dependent on the sensation of pressure that is a counterforce to will.
Mass combines with extension and impenetrability to inform our notion of substance. Mass is what distinguishes the predicate substance...
Read MoreThe other underlying theme was dissolving the dualistic tension between us and them, this and that, good and bad, by inviting in what we usually avoid. My teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, described this as “leaning into the sharp points.”
On Salvia the biggest sharp point of all gives way. That’s the sharp point of the universe itself as other. All that surrounding non-self melts away, and you see that behind the veil of otherness is just more self. Even better, you find that your human self has been e...
Read MoreThe secret for me is to feel the consciousness in my face. My face—the place of vision, hearing, and facial sensation—really appears as a meeting place between two universes. There’s consciousness on one side of the face, and then there’s this world on the other side of the face. Face-as-consciousness is scra...
Read More