FROM SENSUM TO DIVINE CONSCIOUSNESS
The text of a talk given by Eugene Halliday. Ishval Audio 112
Track 1
Is that battery working?
Is that better?
Perfect.
Even I can hear it. Deaf old man can hear.
All of this is symptomatic. A medical friend of mine said recently, looking at me, “You look so horrible. You look so really awful. You know,all the things you have been talking about for so long, I think you had better do a very short synopsis containing an outline of the whole thing from A to Z before it is too late.”
So I said, “Well, how will I do that.” He said, “Oh, the usual way you know. Just start at the beginning and go right on until you come to the end and then, if you can, stop.” So that is what I am going to do. I said, “What would you call it? And he said, “What would you call it?” And I said, “Well what would anybody call it, an intelligent anybody?” And he said, “Probably from sensum to divine consciousness.” So that is the title. I am totally irresponsible for the whole thing.
Now, to begin with, as my friend Peter says, why do you start the wrong way up? I put it that way so I can go like this.
Now, anything that we know is the product of a stimulus. You probably all think you know that already, but the word stimulus is very interesting. So, we are going to spend about two hours analysing that and then dash through the rest. As you know, the S means ‘Spirit’ and the T means fixation by crucifixion, cross forces, fixate. So S T means self where self equals spirit, Sentient Power, crossing itself and providing itself with its own stimulus. And the I means ‘Individuation’. When one line of force hits another, at the intersection point there is stimulation of one by the other. It is always both ways. You can’t stimulate an object without the object stimulating you in return. In India that is called ‘Karma’, action-reaction. S T I, self-crucifying individual. The M means ‘Substance’, the U means ‘Drive’, the L means ‘Binding‘, the U means ‘Drive’ the heart of the bind, the S means ’Issuance’. ‘Mulus’ means a root, ‘mulle means root, a root issuance.
Now, the real source of all things whatever is Sentient Power, power that feels itself. Science tries to dismiss awareness, consciousness, in order to gain what it believes will be, purely objective information. But that is utterly impossible, that would imply dualism of an absolutely unconscious object and the conscious subject, the subject knowing the object, the object being known by the subject but the two being absolutely diverse and that cannot be true because they interact. Stimulus, therefore, means a behaviour of a root power, so substantialised by crossing itself, it initiates changes within itself by this same self-crossing. That is the meaning of stimulus. Ordinarily you tend to think a stimulus is application of a force to an object, possibly a living object like a cell, an amoeba, or a complicated animal structure.
So having got the idea that stimulus, the stimulus situation is really infinite, the stimulus situation is the Infinite, the extended Sentient Power. The Indian for that is Brahman. Brahman means the extended being, infinite extension of Sentient Power, being itself, by enclosing itself and differentiating itself within its self-enclosure. So, the stimulus which external biological science would think would be external to a cell, is really the container of the whole situation, including the object that is being stimulated. So the stimulus comes and it gives rise to a sensum.
Track 2
Now, we will examine the word ‘Sensum. I’m not talking the two hours on the stimulus after all. I have changed my mind about that. Sensum means the spirit is triple and moving and issuing from within itself and driving itself to substantiality. Sensum. ENS as you Latin scholars know, ens, implies being itself. As you know the letter E the fifth letter, signifies Infinite Life. And it was drawn anciently and it is even found in ancient Hebrew manuscripts in the same form we still use it today in English, a vertical with three bars coming off it. One for form, one feeling, one drive or conation, thinking, feeling and willing, and implied by the letter E, three strokes on the vertical. Sensum therefore means Sentient Power in its triplicity, remember triple F, Force, Form, Function, always simultaneously co-presented, driving itself into a state of substantiality. Now, to substantialise, all you have to do is focus inwardly on your own being. The act of internal self-focus causes substantialisation. In the same way, in the body of protoplasm of a human being, it is internalisation of the Sentient Power of the fertilized ovum that deposits within that fertilized ovum a series of changes of cells, of divisions, and the production of a food canal and a nervous cord, the spinal cord, and so on, all these are produced by internalisation of Sentient Power. So the M at the end of sensum, which means substantiality that M implies an inner focussing of Sentience itself upon its self. Sentience, when it does not focus upon its self, is not called substantial. Because sub- stantial means ‘understanding.’ To understand, the Infinite must make a sphere by pressing in and pressing into that sphere very hard and then the sphere becomes a substance, in the same way that the internalisation of the determination to stand up and have legs and so on, in the body, actually deposits bones in the protoplasm. Every organ in the body is deposited in the body by an act of interiorisation of Sentient Power.So, the sensum is the immediate product of a stimulus. Remember the stimulus situation is infinite and a sensum is anywhere whatever within the Infinite that there is a substantialisation of the stimulus presented to it by itself.
Is that enough about that? Can I go on?
Peter:Does that mean that we can focus in and substantialise……. Not to buildout, we already have this limit and to build it structures from this limit?
Well, actually, Peter here is anticipating a very ancient Indian solution of the problem using the word limit.
Now, prior to the focus internally, there is no limit whatever. The thing is infinitely extended and is called Brahman. It is Sentient Power not yet intending. It is extended naturally, from its own being throughout infinity and only when it intends to focus does it start this process of self-limitation, which is substantialisation. When you look at the word limit it tells you… reverse it, timil, doesn’t it? The generation of this point is the beginning of time, which runs backwards from the point of functional precipitation. It is called the inner limit when you conceive a pressing into a centre because you must come to a definite point where you can’t press further in. If you press any harder you will come out again. Imagine a force contracting like the hand becomes a fist, I then contract the fist very hard, harder, harder, harder. It gets tighter and tighter. Now, supposing I had the ability to do this, the fist would get smaller and smaller. Actually my left hand gives you a good example because if I put those two bones together, you see that the left one is about three-quarters of an inch shorter that the right. Now, it did not used to be like that, that the deliberate contraction of certain modes of unacceptable intellection have contracted that side down so that it is very small. As a matter of fact it might finish up about the size of a baby’s hand, that one, before I depart. I am interestedly watching how far it can contract. But, imagine if I contracted it down it would get smaller and smaller but still retain the form of the hand, yes? And if I go on contracting, contracting, contracting, smaller and smaller to that, retaining hand form, I come to a point where if I put further power into it, instead of going smaller, it will suddenly burst out of the constraint. Is that clearly understood?, and when it is at that limit it is called yud, and yud is the primary primary point in Hebrew and means, funnily enough, in the lexicon, a hand. It is gained by actually doing this exercise. And, imagine if I contract my hand deliberately, very strongly over years, it will get smaller and smaller and smaller. Indian fakirs have done this, in fact, just to see if you can do it. And you can do it. You can wither away any organ in your body by this process of self-contraction. You can reduce it and retain its form but reduce it to the inner limit. Now, the object of the inner limit, logically is the exterior limit, which is the infinite extension called Brahman. So, we now have this situation where the stimulus situation, which is infinite, is stimulating itself within itself, and every part of it, because it is the continuum, is receiving the attention of every other part to be the recipient substance, of an input of concentrated energy of consciousness, and therefore, there is a sensum for every point of the total stimulus situation.
Is that clear, Peter?
Said yes. We can all find it clear to our circle because when Peter is clear we are all clear. In fact, in the next war, I am going to employ him to sound the all clear.
Now, when there is a sensum, the funny thing about it is, it is not yet rationalised. What do we mean by rationalisation? We mean the application of pi ratio to it. Pi is a very weird number, loosely three and a seventh, 3.1416. but it goes on, actually, to infinity. We call an arbitrary limit to that when we get tired of reckoning it up, but in fact, every formal, existential being in total reality, is dependent for its form upon that ratio called pi. You know, you do a pie, you just do two verticles and put a top on it. That is the sign of pi. It is like a lintel structure, two stones, the stones of Stonehenge with its cross piece lookslike pi( п ). Pi means simply, the actual ratio of all conceivable forms, which are built out of a primary rotation of energy, the circle and the radius. In Hindu philosophy they are symbolised as Krishna, that is the circumference, and Radha, the radius, they are man and wife. You know when you use the word ‘husband’ you mean houseband and the circumference represents the man holding the house and the radius is the woman trying to get out. You know, “Nobody ever takes me anywhere. I have nothing to wear, the last fur coat I had, which is racoon, fell to pieces!” Racoon means ‘robes edge.’ So we have to do something about a sensum because it hasn’t got any form. What it does is have a feeling quality to a degree of pleasure or unpleasure, intense pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, enstasy or intense pain, total impedance. It is interesting that in the Viking runes, which are magical symbols, the one that looks like a vertical stick, exactly like an I, means impedance, and it means that the individuated consciousness is the only impedance to the will of the Absolute. If there are any Satanists in the hall at the moment they will be delighted with that one. There was a vicar on late TV the other night talking about the satanism of a certain man who had been pulling people’s legs, including the vicar’s legs, by saying he was under the power of Satan and needed a few hundred thousand pounds to get out of it. And he was such a sincerely suffering man the vicar felt sorry for him and helped him to get the money, which he said was to purchase satanic instruments from Satanists in order to destroy them! So he got several hundreds of thousands of pounds for this and it was found he had been using it womanising, drinking and holiday making. So the court duly, I do not know by what rational, pi-rational process, decided he was worth a fifty thousand pounds fine although he had had several hundred thousand pounds and he had not declared the location of the rest of it. Anyhow, at the moment he is supposed to be languishing still in dreadful danger from Satan in the cell. And, of course, he was a joker and he believed there was another vicar who was very nice about it. And there was then an expert on the whole question of Satanism and devilry and he said that Satanists are men who believe in God but they believe that God’s real son was Satan and Jesus was not the real son, and therefore they worship the ‘real’ son, not the bad son. Jesus is the bad son they said and Satan is the good son; the bad son Jesus has been going about blackening the character of Satan, and with the aid of a few hundred thousand pounds the world was rescued from the danger of Satan taking over from Jesus. And, naturally, a lot of people are interested in Satanism because they are quite sure it has to do with sexual frolics in churchyards in the middle of a summer night, and that is practically irresistable on TV in Lon Chaney junior type movies.
The sensum therefore is a feeling with a degree of affective charge. Affective charge is liking and disliking to some degree but no adequate definition, so we need something else if we wish to control; the sensum. Do you like, I ask you all, do you like a vague feeling of disquiet with no definition of the cause?
No.
No? Nor do I. Everybody looked as if they meant that. Have you had a vague disquiet? I saw a man with a vague feeling of disquiet the other day and suddenly, he rushed out of the room and disappeared. And he re-appeared some moments later from the loo. Vague feeling of disquiet was a subtle warning from feeling, ‘something is about to happen.’ But the feeling, he managed to define it sufficiently, so the sensum had started to come into the level of the percept; the percept, the ‘cept’ is from capere, to capture,.a sensum, in order to become a percept, must be seized by reason. Per, pi ratio, per cept, rational capture. You get your vague feeling and you say it is my vague feeling, I’ll just have a look. There it is, that is a plain handkerchief you see. If I look at it and say, “What is it?” It is a bit blank. I turn it over, the Three Legs of Man, which to me symbolise the triple F, force, form, function. Now, the moment we look at that symbol on there we automatically tend to focus, don’t we? And we say to ourselves, “aha, now I am beginning to get control.” The sensum begins to be controlled when we rationalise it and declare it has got a cause. To do that we have to find a form acting upon another form- like posterior descends onto drawing pin, and if you focus sharply you get a percept, and usually, if you had it once you know it again. But, in the olden days, when monks used to wear hair shirts, you know that, to make themselves conscious, because you know a good hair shirt tends to induce consciousness, if they wore them too long they could not distinguish between hair shirt and flea bite, and some of them got pretty lousy while they were being illuminated.
Now, if you get a question, ”Is it my hair shirt or my hirsuite?” like Billy Connolly said the other night, “Is it a matter of my hair shirt or my hair or my body hair, or an inhabitant,” because you know when you start itching, as Negroes say, - the more you scratch the more you itch, you come to a point where you cannot sort out your lice from your licence, it is very important to know the percept saves you from the vague threat, and vague hope of the sensum. So that people who seek control deliberately increase perception and every percept is a capturing, a grasping at a sensum in order to fix it and define its causal relation with other sensa or other percepts. So, a percept is quite a high attainment. It allows a dog to distinguish another dog for a lady dog to know a gentleman dog. It categorises them. So even at the level of the animals the percept is already formed and the earliest percepts are those whereby plants recognise each other and their various parts in the process of fertilisation and cross- fertilisation of the plants, there is recognition of form. That means the plants can perceive, can capture, to a degree, an animal can do it more so and a rational human being can do it even more than the animal.
Now when you have a percept, if you had only one percept, it would be useful for controlling a sensum situation but it might not cover a host of sensa. It might be too narrow. So you want to make a lot of percepts and then grouping the percepts together, you put them in the form – concept. Concept, means capturing a group of percepts. I said capturing a group of percepts together, finding out what is similar about them and holding that similarity as a group sign under which you can subsume total of the percepts. So, if I say the people in this room are featherless bipeds, an Aristotelian definition of a human being, I subsume many men and women under the concept, human being. Concept means, take a group of percepts, arrange them for similarities and then give them a title to cover the similarities of all of them. We can then say we are conceptualised as animal as compared with vegetable and mineral. We are also conceptualised as rational animal and that makes us into man. When we get the concept, group we increase our power of choice. If we had only one percept we would have no choice. We would just be dominated by the percept. But if we have more than one percept we have a choice between them and the greater the number of percepts we have the greater the number of control concepts we have over the percepts we have, the greater the freedom of choice, and therefore when we come to choose we enter into the next phase, - volition.