Appendix 2

A Selection of TSK Exercises

Table 2A

Exercises for Exploring Space, Time, and Knowledge

SPACE	TIME	KNOWLEDGE
The Giant Body Internal Details The Microlevel Just Interactions and Shining Outlines Released to Space Opacity versus Translucency Body-Mind-Thought Interplay The Translucent Person Participation as Observer; Participation as Embodied Person Participation and Space The Source of Thoughts Space Between Thoughts Thoughts as Space A New Focus on Space A Mountain Retreat Space-Time- Knowledge on the Conventional Level Partitions and Occupancy Feel of Space Lineage of Appearances	The Object and Its Glow Past and Future Projections Past, Present, Future of Each Moment Reversing Temporal Structure A More Subtle Structural Reversal Diving into Time Going without Going A Marriage of Sound and Breath Intimacy Transcendence of Pointings Reversing Momentum Playing with Momentum Glowing Journey in Time Telling Stories Commanding Time Dynamic Time Penetrating Time Embracing Time Inventing the Past Projecting the Future Building the Past Opening Time	A Stream of Memories A Cycle of Seeing Awareness as a Reflective Surface A Subject-Object Reversal Not-Knowing as Knowing A Unifying Clarity Self-Transcending Appearance The Embodiment of Knowledge An Evocation of Knowledge Pastness Knowledge Instant Replay Exhibition of Knowledge Healing through Light Return to Light Choosing the Unknown Conducting the Vision Conducting New Knowledge Abiding in Thought Manifesting Time, Space, and Knowledge Adventure of Being

Table 2B

	Holons	Perspectives/Enactment	Karma & Creativity	Pan-Experientialism	Inquiry/Knowing
Giant Body Exs. 1-6 (TSK)	X	X		X	X
TSK Exs. 7, 8					X
TSK Exs. 9, 10		X	X		X
Past, Present & Future of Each Moment (TSK)			X
Diving Into Time (TSK)		X
Transcendence of Pointings (TSK)		X		X
TSK Exs. 27-30		X
Co-Relation (KTS)		X
Containment (KTS)	X
Qualities of Space (DTS)	X	X
Not-Knowing as Knowing (TSK)				X	X
Lineage of Appearances (KTS)			X
Choosing the Unknown (DTS)	X		X		X
Catching Mind (KTS)		X	X		X
Pastness Knowledge (DTS)			X
Space-Time-Knowledge on Conventional Level (TSK)		X
Opening Time (DOT)	X		X		X
The Object and its Glow (TSK)		X
Inventing the Past (LOK)			X

TSK Exercises for Exploring Integral Concepts

Note: Exercises in bold are described in this appendix.

Exercise Descriptions

The following exercises and commentaries, arranged according to the Integral concepts which I suggest they may help to explore or clarify, have been drawn verbatim from the books of the TSK series.

HOLONS, HOLARCHY, AND PERSPECTIVES

Dynamics of Time and Space, Ex 7, pp. 271-274: The Qualities of Space

A. Bring to mind an object with which you are familiar and build up a picture of the object in your mind. Include a sense of the space that the object occupies and the space that surrounds it.

Now expand your field of vision to include whatever it is that contains or includes the object: perhaps a cabinet, or a room in a house, or a park. When you have this more expansive object in mind, expand your vision outward again. Continue to expand in this way, until you are aware of the whole continent as an object in space. Then go on to the entire planet, the planets of the solar system, the stars, and the galaxies.

If you wish, go back and forth between different magnitudes, exploring the feel and field of the space associated with objects at each level. Be aware as well of the sense of other objects inhabiting 'the same' space at the same level of magnitude, and of the interactions between objects that result, including any sense that space has become 'crowded'.

As you do this exercise, notice the perspective you adopt as you investigate at each level. Sometimes you may stand outside the object and the space that it occupies; sometimes you may be within the object or contained in its space. See what happens if you shift this perspective, trying out various possibilities. This could include shifting from inside to outside, or varying the distance between you and the object.

You can also experiment with seeing the object from several perspectives at once, or with maintaining an awareness of space at several different levels of magnitude simultaneously. How does this change your sense of the space that the object occupies?

At a certain point you may find that you have gone so far away from the object that you can no longer identify your perspective in relation to it. For instance, if I view a teacup from the other side of the world, I cannot say whether it is to my left or right. In the same way, I may lose track of above or below, inside or outside.

If you practice shifting across a broad range, you may lose track of even the most basic sense of directionality. For example, we invariably think of the sky as being located above us, yet if we go far enough away in space, this perspective no longer applies. Again, if we traveled many light years out into space, this planet would be only a dot; eventually it would disappear altogether.

To explore this perspective, expand your field of vision out into space to the point where the earth vanishes. Then return to a more local perspective, so that first the planet, then continents, then countries, specific locations, and so on reappear. Notice that the closer you come to an object, the more details--colors, shapes, forms--you can discern. Practice this expanding and condensing at various levels for some time.

You can also conduct this exercise with reference to the inner structures of the body, moving from the body as a whole to the organs and cells and even down to the level of molecules and atoms. For a more detailed description of these possibilities, see the first few exercises in Time, Space, and Knowledge.

B. Shift the exercise so that you are carrying out expansion in time rather than space. For instance, you can focus on the events of the immediate past--in your own life, in the operation of an organization, in a community, or in the events that shape the culture. Gradually take in more of the sweep of history or the unfolding narrative of the story. You can perform this expansion by moving into either the past or the future, or perhaps into both; you can also combine the expansion with an expansion in space, or with expansion from a personal to a societal to a global or cosmic perspective. Play with the various possibilities, much as you did with space.

PERSPECTIVES/ENACTMENT, KARMA AND CREATIVITY

Time, Space, and Knowledge, Ex. 7, pp. 35-36: Body-Mind-Thought Interplay Explore a wide variety of typical activities and situations. These can include social interactions, entertainments, learning experiences, various sorts of work or labor, and emotional highs and lows. In each situation, notice that its overall character and nature are reflected in your own psycho-physical embodiment. Observe the complex interrelationship between sensations, 'mind', thoughts, emotions, and body which constitutes 'you in that situation'. For instance, the mind receives input; it thinks thoughts; these thoughts bear an emotional dimension; and emotions are embodied in particular physical areas (the stomach, the throat, etc.). Such embodiment leads to sensations which again tie in with particular emotions, memories, thoughts, and so on.

Investigate the psychological and physiological mechanisms and interactions in as much detail as you can. Such an investigation may require that you treat your own body as a 'giant body', traveling through it once again as a tiny observer

Time, Space, and Knowledge, Ex. 9, pp. 36-38: Participation as Observer;
Participation as Embodied Person

A. Return to the interplay examined in Exercise 7 which tracks the body-mind-thought-emotion interaction. Follow it once more, but try to remain aware of your own presence as the observer of all the patterns. Do this extensively over a period of time before proceeding to the next stage of the exercise.

B. Open up everything that is present in 'A', rendering all defining regions and surfaces translucent until they finally become 'space'. Exclude nothing from this process--even 'opening up', 'translucence', and 'space' are to be opened up until they are gone. Then, even 'being gone' should be treated in this way. Finally, the subtle locatedness of this final experience as being the outcome of a certain process should be opened up, as should its status as an `experience'.

C. Be careful not to index the new type of unqualified openness discovered in 'B' to any standard world order. Let go of the subtle connections that bind this openness to the 'you' of that standard world. Try not to 'come out' of the openness in order to examine 'it'. When you do 'come out', as you will, regardless of your attempts to avoid it, watch that process very carefully. This is important. Finally, release any residual notions of quantity that may be linking the size of this open space to the size of the structures that inhabited it in earlier stages of the exercise.

Commentary 9

This exercise should help in making the transition from the type of 'knowing' operative in the ordinary world view ('1') to the 'knowing' involved in the first two of the three nonstandard views of the world ('2') and ('3') presented in the last section.* Following concerted practice of Exercise 9, it may be possible to see the emergence of objects and of the ordinary 'knower' as a tendency toward 'freezing' what is actually a completely open dimension. We may also be able to discover another way of viewing our reality, aside from perceived linear development and interactions between items within a standard world order.

* The four worldviews are as follows:

"1. The ordinary world view. A person is born (or comes into existence) as a result of temporarily prior conditions within that world, developing in a law-like way up to the point of birth (or individual existence).

To this can be added the following nonstandard views:

2. Although linear connections within a world may always suffice (for ordinary perspectives) to locate and explain any occurrence, nevertheless, this world and its uninterrupted linear sequences represent an arbitrary and stubborn pattern which has derived its energy and possibilities from a more open 'space'. Once the pattern has locked into place, its own causal principles begin to operate; the knowing subject sees located objects, and `space' is lost, or shut out.

3. The pattern mentioned in '2' is really only a patterning which does not ever really become consolidated and therefore cannot perpetuate itself. Its 'causal principles', persons and objects, are only lower level summaries of the ongoing tendency toward freezing and screening out the full openness of 'space'.

A final type of understanding is that:

4. No `freezing' or anomalous tendency has set itself up in contrast to `space'. The frozen pattern is neither frozen nor even a `freezing'. Worlds, things, and persons remain `space', rather than only deriving from `space' as in `3'.

In exploring this new vision being presented here, it is important to experience the impact of each of these four views in succession. The second serves to restate the first in a way that urges us to shake off our rigid familiarity with reality and to attempt to appreciate appearance in new ways. The third and fourth temper this approach so that it does not, in the long run, constitute a rejection or deformation of the ordinary, familiar world of appearance" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977, pp. 33-34).

Time, Space, and Knowledge, Ex. 10, pp. 38-39: Participation and Space

A. Earlier exercises helped develop an awareness of your presence as the observer of the giant body. Attending to the phenomenon of 'coming out' in Exercise 9 will particularly contribute to this awareness. Now consider again the vision of the dense and opaque form of the giant body. Try to notice if a form of the 'coming out' tendency is also operating in this case. Is the observing self merely a separate entity, temporarily juxtaposed with the giant body, or is the self actually given together with the giant body in an integral relationship that tends, instant by instant, to polarize?

B. Still working with the opaque form, see if you can minimize or stop 'your' tendency to 'come out'. Very likely you will not have much success. It is sufficient at this stage of investigation to simply remain aware of this tendency, so that the notion of a solid, continuous, and independent self is at least challenged.

C. Now compare the more sophisticated 'space' vision of Exercise 9 with the opaque form of the body as encountered in Exercise 10. By doing this, you may gain some experiential insight into the possibility that the dense and opaque bodily structures, when seen in the light of your participating role as the observer or the embodied person, could be a kind of open 'space'.

Extending the exploration of 'quantity' presented in Exercise 9, consider the possibility that, although the structures of the giant body are finite in size, the new `space' dimension may be those structures without thereby being finite. Ordinarily, the volume of an object and the volume of the space it occupies are the same, but that does not hold true in this experience of 'space'.

PERSPECTIVES/ENACTMENT AND THE BYSTANDER

Time, Space, and Knowledge, Exercise 16, pp. 108-109: Space-Time-Knowledge on the Conventional Level

Find a quiet place and sit in a relaxed fashion for a while. Let go of the heavy emphasis on here-there, inside-outside distinctions, and on the special status of your self as the 'doer' or 'observer'. Let all positions, forms, and surfaces be given as 'space'. Because space accommodates rather than blocks, you can perhaps feel yourself flowing or sinking into the object pole of experience without actually moving towards it. Let all units, quantities, meaning, delineations, motion, and action be given as time (but not coming from a past time). Time is like lightning--flickering and flashing, playfully presenting without freezing anything in place.

This play of space and time is not out there, seen by you here. It simply is, and carries a 'knowing' dimension with it. You do not have to assert yourself as the knower. Everything, including your own presence, is given as a 'knowing' that shows a particular way that the unbounded openness of space can be shaped and particularized by time.

If you want to locate Space, Time, and Knowledge in relation to the usual 'knowing self' picture, let all objects be 'space', the observing subject be 'knowledge', and the presentation of subject-object interaction be 'time'. There is nothing exhaustive about this one 'knowing'. Space and Time can carry innumerable 'knowings'. If you remain in touch with their openness and spontaneity, you may notice some of the others. These in turn reveal more of Space and Time which you can embrace. Simply relax your locatedness 'here', relax the locating 'out there', and relax 'happening', 'now', and 'existence'. To relax them it is only necessary to notice them and include them in the Space Time-Knowledge vision. By thus releasing all 'by-standers' and 'outside-standers', you may be open to more of what is 'here'.

Commentary 16

Exposing situations to this vision regroups the features of experience--and finally makes possible their old grouping--in a way that completely uproots the ego, without any repression or struggle. Exercises which continue this regrouping and uprooting in even more vigorous ways will be given later. However, Exercise 16 signals a very healthy shift in emphasis because it reasserts the primacy of the vitalizing dimensions which make all appearance possible, but which the ego tries to block out.

KARMA AND CREATIVITY

Dynamics of Time and Space, Ex. 18, pp. 313: Pastness Knowledge

A. To open the past as resource for knowledge, look back at the immediate past, reviewing a period of a week or so. What mistakes did you make during this time; for example, wrong choices, miscommunications, or steps that you forgot to take?

As examples of mistakes begin to surface, trace out the consequences they have led to. What patterns did they reinforce? What new difficulties have they led to or are they likely to lead to? What limits have they helped to set in place? Can you see how such mistakes have actually reduced the knowledge available, or even the knowledge potentially available?

See if you can ask these questions in a fresh, new way, discovering mistakes you may have previously overlooked, or seeing connections different from the ones you usually make. It may help to look from a distant perspective, as suggested in Exercise 8.

B. Studying the history of knowledge can serve as a valuable gateway to inward time. For example, we might trace out lost battles in the struggle for knowledge: the past as a record of defeat. We could see how knowledge has been trapped and limited and denied; how the human spirit has been reduced; how willful ignorance or unconscious patterns have slowed the growth of knowledge.

We could also look at the ways that human beings respond to what time presents, molding the ways that knowledge will manifest. Confronted with the constant momentum of change, individuals and cultures seek to shape it toward their own purposes. They pursue their own judgments as to what is best and accord their conduct with their judgments. Values emerge, expressed in terms of virtue, happiness, spirituality, or truth, shaping the ongoing search for meaning.

Look at a period of history that interests you with this way of understanding in mind. Alternatively, investigate a news story of current national or international interest in terms of such questions. How would you rewrite the stories you read to reflect this focus on the knowledge dynamic?

C. Review your own past for points where knowledge was explicitly denied or rejected, or less consciously covered over or erased from the canvas. Try reviewing the events of the past day; then conduct the exercise again, focusing on events earlier in your life. At least initially, it is better to focus on events that are fresh rather than incidents that you have rehearsed in your memory hundreds of times before. On another occasion, review events in recorded history that seem to reveal similar patterns.

As you conduct your review, you are likely to see characteristic moments when a decisive turn was made: moments when emotionality came to the fore, when clarity was somehow lost, or when situations erupted into conflict and tension. Focus on such moments, developing a sense of the feelings involved and the impact they have on knowledgeability.

Attempting to explain how such moments arose is likely to lead back into the realm of stories. Instead, you can conduct a more subtle inquiry. The past can refer you forward to the present; the present can lead you with renewed insight into the past. Feelings can disclose motives; present emotions can guide us toward past arising.

Comment 18B

The many schools of knowledge that have flourished in the past--schools of science and philosophy, history and religion, social thought and political theory--can guide us to a deeper appreciation for knowledge in time. Each new set of theories or beliefs must somehow engage the accumulating weight of history, trying to make sense of what has gone before. Whether consciously or not, each engages in a twofold inquiry--not only judging, but judging how best to judge; not only knowing, but knowing how best to know. Systems of knowledge are put into effect, shaping human achievement at every level. In the study of such developments knowledge is available, ready to be thawed or melted in the 'infolding' of time.

The patterns set in place in this way range through extremes that could never be imagined in advance. In some periods what happens seems to depend almost entirely on individual choices about livelihood and ways of life and on the free play of a knowledge available for each person. In other eras almost the opposite seems true: Fate is determined for the whole culture, with individuals caught up in a destiny not of their choosing.

In history's endless variations, some eras simply seem to function better than others. In such times the choices made promote more knowledge and a greater sense of purpose and well-being, leaving a legacy of accomplishment. Sometimes it is clear why this is so; in other periods, the interplay of forces follows a patterning that remains mysterious. But as we investigate there is always the opportunity to ask questions that can illuminate and reveal, deepen and enlighten.

There is a way to look at these different patterns objectively and without taking a position--as one would look at scenery from the window of a passing train. Yet inquiry must also be guided by a deep caring, for being the disinterested bystander is one of the most rigid positions of all. Maintaining a balance between these two factors does not require careful maneuvers; instead, it is the natural outcome of deepening inquiry. At the point where the inwardness of knowledge meets the infolding of time, 'objectivity' and 'caring' are in no way opposed.

The special availability of the past as an object of study in today's world offers a unique opportunity. We can discover in each alternative way of knowing, each system and each set of choices, a way to transmit knowledge. We can draw on any or all of them.

But the past is not simply a storehouse. We are not likely to have good results if we sort through old models in order to adopt one particular way of knowing as our own. Nor do we need to comb the records of the past in search of lost techniques or overlooked mechanisms. The availability of the past gives us an opportunity at a different level. Tracing its various manifestations through time, not confined by the positions that we ourselves have adopted and now are playing out, we can go past positioning to awaken the infolding dynamic of knowledge.

ENACTMENT, PAN-EXPERIENTIALISM

Time, Space, and Knowledge, Ex. 26, pp. 205-206: Transcendence of Pointings

It may now be possible to open to a follow-up insight to Exercise 7. In that exercise, you traced out mind-thought emotion-body interactions. Now, see if you (or a more comprehensive 'knowingness') can apprehend a new form of such interaction, which truly embraces the way in which both the mental and the physical are given as existing. It is a subtle mutual pointing.

A read-out sets up a mind and body which refer or point to each other. You start with an acceptance of 'mind', and it (via 'time') says "I am mind; these are thoughts; that is a body." This same process applies when starting with the physical side of human embodiment. You can trace back and forth, from point to point, through such pointing. But in terms of a greater appreciation of 'timing', this pointing does not point to anything--there is not one thing related to another.

Commentary 26

Both the mind and body can be challenged. In fact their very appearance or appearing (and pointing) is what challenges them. Many of the previous discussions (regarding 'outside-standers' and 'by-standers', opening the focal setting through a balanced embrace, etc.) are theoretical and piecemeal approaches to this experiential insight about 'pointing'.

Even the pointings utilized in presenting this new vision are really not pointing out anything at all. They do not 'mean' anything, in the way that theories and systems usually do. A great deal is being said, but only to find it possible to say 'nothing'. For, this presentation actually undermines all 'saying', including even itself. These ideas and pointings say 'nothing' because they lead us from a lower condition (the first level) to a higher one (the third level) that, in a certain respect, turns out to be 'the same' as our beginning. It is precisely due to the undermining of all meanings, of all 'being led', and even of the undermining notion itself (of truth being relative to our approach or read-out), that it is possible to bring the 'higher' and 'lower into relation with one another in a way that is healthy. When all tendency to be manipulated by meanings and goals has died away, real balance can then shine through.

Such a 'saying nothing' is, in its own way, a great deal--profoundly important without being (temporally) urgent or about anything. It is therefore important to be wary of what we may deem 'understanding', and to consider such understanding in the light of 'time' and Time.

HOLONIC INDETERMINACY, ACTUALIZATION, INQUIRY

Dynamics of Time and Space, Ex. 23, pp. 330-332: Choosing the Unknown

A. Far more often than we usually realize, patterns and events play themselves forward in our lives that we simply cannot explain. Instead of accepting the automatic invitation to blank such experiences out, explain away our ignorance, or dismiss such events as random occurrences, go into their unknownness. Do not expect to turn the unknown toward knowledge; do not expect feedback on your experience that you can make sense of. Just be prepared to dwell within the unknown. Let unknownness inspire you toward knowledge.

B. Bring to mind the future, allowing it to be completely indeterminate. Instead of thinking about this or that coming event, see if you can let the unknownness of the future come to the foreground. As a gateway into this indeterminacy, you could reflect on the ongoing transformations through which living being evolves.

Within the steady flow of linear time, there are movements we would consider favorable and others that are unfavorable. Yet if you welcome the future without regard to specifics, you may become aware of a dynamic that unfolds naturally toward improvement.

The more you relax any preoccupations or concerns, the more you may notice this evolutionary thrust in your own experience. For instance, you may go toward being more precise and accurate in your thinking and planning, or toward more stability, richer experience, or moral clarity. Welcome and cherish these tendencies. Gradually you may sense that conventional time itself can evolve toward a different, more satisfying presentation.

C. Look to the opposite side of the positivity that you focused on in the previous part of this exercise. We know that there will always be change and decline; that 'forever and ever' holds only in fairy tales. The realm in which we move does not support perfectibility. Beauty fades and youth passes; wealth and power and relationships come and go. Health and family do not offer lasting support; language and concepts and knowledge itself all undergo change. The rhythms of time conduct the tides of change, whose force cannot be checked. Let yourself experience these patterns fully. You can use examples from your own life or the lives of others, from history, or from your fantasies or fears. The focus is not the specific example or the emotional reaction it evokes. Instead, let yourself feel the quality in time that leads to or promotes or supports such difficulties. Without attempting to explain, ask yourself: How does time come to operate in this manner?

PAN-EXPERIENTIALISM, INQUIRY & KNOWING

Time, Space, and Knowledge, Ex. 31, p. 260: Not-Knowing as Knowing

Following up on the idea of reassessing things that the self usually ignores or devalues, consider states of confusion and 'not-knowing'. There are many cases where the self feels that knowing is either unsuccessful or simply absent altogether. Examine your experiences of confusion, doubt and not-knowing. Examine also your concepts about the (supposedly) largely insentient external world. Look deeply into all subjective and objective cases of 'not-knowing'. There, too, there is 'knowingness'.

Commentary 31

This 'perfect knowingness' has no blockages in any direction. Most knowledge is imperfect--it deals with 'angles', perspectives, dichotomies--so we cannot see the total field, we do not have full awareness of what is around us. As a result we compartmentalize our experience.

Though we generally find no solace in doubts and confusions, even these experiences bear a powerful clarity of their own--a clarity which can even resolve our difficulties and make our path to other types of experience more smooth. In the same way that our learning and growth need not be accomplished through a series of disjointed 'states', our ordinary experience also need not be broken up into the relatively isolated states of clarity, confusion, happiness, and depression, which we usually experience.

When we find the 'knowingness' that makes for a greater continuity in life, we discover that there are no 'dead spots'. Even the apparently 'external world' bears the quality of knowingness. And in a world seen as an open horizon of 'knowingness', all presentations can be positive, clear, illumining, and nourishing.

Appendix 3

Proposed Course Syllabus

TSK Inquiry in AQAL Space

(Available upon request)

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