Inverse Proportion
Proporción Inversa
The teacher explores the idea that the more something can be made into an object of thought, the less real it is, and how realizing this inverts one's entire experience of substance, self, and depth.
Inverse Proportion
The teacher explores the idea that the more something can be made into an object of thought, the less real it is, and how realizing this inverts one's entire experience of substance, self, and depth.
He refers to "ponderability" as that which one can make an object of, and to "substantiality" as that which is essentially real, that which has essential substance and reality.
Inverse proportion means: the more something appears ponderable, the less real or substantial it is. The less it appears ponderable, the more substantial it is.
I loved this expression for decades, until I had the direct realization of it. The substance of reality became direct experience, and everything that had seemed ponderable disappeared as something separate or divisible.
Is that why it is sometimes said, "If you can die while you're alive, you never die"?
That's exactly it.
Seeing what always was
All of those experiences, transitions, realizations: ultimately what they are about is seeing reality as it is and always was. Nothing is acquired or gained. It is what is lost that allows you to see, "Oh, this reality has always been of a substantive nature. I just had always believed it was otherwise." But there was such a deep attachment. Life, the sense of "me," existed by believing that. And so the end of that belief is the end of the sense of self, the identity as such.
Is that the depth you're talking about, something like a deep relaxation?
The relaxation is a side effect. And it is exactly deep, because I could put my body and mind into a lot of stress, but there is something at a deep level that is just completely unaffected.
The reversal of contraction
Whereas before, it was the other way around. There was something really deep, very contracted, and then any minor tension on the body-mind level was simply amplified.