CONTINUITY and GAP
Dear Friends of Philosophy
An (unexpected) question from Marie during the talk: on the paradox of “Real is Continuous with its appearance” vs. Mind the Gap.
Worthwhile to explore the difference of approach of “Mind the Gap” and “continuous with its appearance.” No technical math needed to feel the difference of a “Gap” and “Continuous.”
I have gotten a couple of emails on this, and if you have any comments, please send them along. Here is some discussion and thoughts.
The end of chapter 12 of The Wisdom of the Overself has the famous phrase “reality is continuous with its appearance” and when we realize that, “the desire to desert the world deserts us.”
In the 7th exercise the famous “serpent’s path” we are called on to explore Mind the Gap between thought moments.
Eckhart Tolle and Nisargadatta also mention this profound exercise in less detail:.
- ET: Pay attention to the gap—the gap between two thoughts, the brief, silent space between words in a conversation, between the notes of a piano or flute, or the gap between the in-breath and out-breath. When you pay attention to those gaps, awareness of “something” becomes—just awareness. The formless dimension of pure consciousness arises from within you and replaces identification with form. ET: Stillness Speaks.
- NM: Of course the self based on memory is momentary. But such self demands unbroken continuity behind it. You know from experience that there are gaps when your self is forgotten. What brings it back to life? What wakes you up in the morning? There must be some constant factor bridging the gaps in consciousness. If you watch carefully you will find that even your daily consciousness is in flashes, with gaps intervening all the time. What is in the gaps? What can there be but your real being, that is timeless; mind and mindlessness are one to it. I Am That Ch.69
Om Gupta wrote me:
- “the CONTINUITY in PB’s statement ’reality is continuous with its appearance’ could be taken in a non-dualistic sense. The reality is continuous whether appearance is there or not! Rather ‘Appearance‘ comes and goes whereas the reality stays. … Although PB was master of words, even then they have limitations. They should be taken as symbols!”
yes, like very much that the continuity view is related to the nondual sense.
We could say that reality is not itself continuous or discrete. it just is.
We could also say that Reality is BOTH identical and continuous, or still and active… shiva and Shakti.
Also paradox: Serpent path is name for glide between moments like a serpent. But Serpent also, in another context, is the Ouroborous: that bites its tail… the continuity of Reality and its appearance. One image is the Mobius strip… two sides of a paper colored red and white, given a half twist and there is now continuity.
Also: continuous with is an interesting phrase, yes . To me indicates that it is neither identical with (he didn’t say appearance is reality) nor separate from (it can’t be 0) but… continuous with.
Appearance/existence/experience is momentary… like the flashing frames of the film, it is in gaps, is dis-continuous in itself, and when we are in that, a way out is to look for the gaps,
But appearance is not discontinuous with reality… as someone says, the rheostat of consciousness is never 0 in our experience, in appearances. Ultimately, appearance has no other separate reality than Reality.
- PB: That which is at the heart of all existence–the world’s and yours–must be real, if anything can be. The world may be an illusion, your ego a fiction, but the ultimate essence cannot be either. Reality must be here or nowhere. 28.1.15
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Longer Excerpt from chapter 12 of The Wisdom of the Overself
Dualism is only for the ignorant. There is only the One. When we recognize that the Real is continuous with its Appearance and that the latter is indeed the very incarnation of it, when we understand that the vast universe is a presentation by the Mind to the Mind, the tendency to scorn the flesh and desert the world itself deserts us.
It is as incomplete a vision to see the world as transitory alone without its underlying reality as it is to see the reality alone without its manifestation as the world. The two are inseparably linked and true insight sees them as such, not as opposed to each other. The Real and its expression through the World-Idea are, after all, not two irrevocably separate things but an unbroken unity. The materialist too believes the world to be real but in a quite inferior, different and self-deceptive sense. We are seeing the Real all the time when we see the external world. Only, we are seeing it at second remove, as it were, and not immediately, the ice and not the vapour. As St. Paul phrased it: “The invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made.”