Inverse Proportion
Proporción Inversa
The teacher explores the idea that what appears most graspable is least real, and that true substance is revealed only when the ponderable dissolves.
Inverse Proportion
The teacher explores the idea that what appears most graspable is least real, and that true substance is revealed only when the ponderable dissolves.
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 are alive, you never die"?
That's exactly it.
Seeing what always was
All of those experiences, transitions, and realizations are ultimately about this: you see reality as it is and always was. Nothing is acquired or gained. It is what is lost that allows you to see that reality has always been of a substantive nature. You had simply always believed otherwise. But the attachment was so deep. Life, the sense of "me," existed by holding that belief. The end of that belief is the end of the sense of self, of identity in that way.
Is it the depth you're describing, something like a deep relaxation?
The relaxation is a side effect, and it is exactly deep. I could put my body and mind through a lot of stress, but there is something at a deep level that is completely unaffected.
The reversal
Before, it was the other way around. There was something really deep and very contracted, and any minor tension on the body-mind level was amplified enormously.