Theos-Talk Archives (June 2002 Message tt00027)

At 02:33 PM 6/5/02 -0400, you wrote:
> It is my contention that most of the ridiculousness you find in
> Theosophical fundamentalism is when, in an effort to explain,
> Theosophical teachers took continuous phenomena and described them in
> terms of discrete units, they confused the explanation with the
> explained. In all the talk of the "Cosmic Significance of the Number 7",
> you will find that virtually every case where 7 is supposed to be
> significant, it is human-created arbitrary boundries on continuous
> phenomena. For example, the rainbow. Certainly, you can point to one
> color, and say, "That is orange", and another color and say, "that is
> yellow", but can you point to a single frequency, and say, "This is
> where yellow ends and orange begins"? Can ANYBODY pick out "indigo"?
>
> Bart Lidofsky
Some things are of a continuous nature, like the
electromagnetic spectrum. But with our senses,
we perceive one portion of it as heat, another
as sound, and a third as light. In our experience
of life, these are discrete senses. Other things are
of a discrete nature like the number and type of
particles in a particular type of atom, or
particular states like alive/dead or even something
as simple as what channel on television that
we might be watching.

It's possible to wrongly attribute a discrete
nature to something that is continuous, giving
it arbitrary subdivisions. The opposite error is
possible too, attributing a continuous nature to
something that is essentially discrete.

If you have a specific number of continents on
the earth, separated by ocean, you're dealing
with something discrete. The same might be said
of the globes of the Earth Chain. They are
discrete places where you could exist, each on
a different plane or subplane.

With the spectrum of visible light, we could
pick out certain bands of wavelengths and call
them specific colors. In this case, we are
imposing a discrete category over something that
is basically continuous in nature. Our construct
is creating a certain view of the world.

The same could be done with sound. We pick
out certain sounds and arrive at what we call
the notes of a musical scale. Our musical
scale has discrete points to it. We have a
system that depends upon these specific
musical notes. From music as we conceive it,
there is not a continuous nature to sound.

Another aspect of assigning a discrete value
to a particular sight or sound is with the
letters of the alphabet, written down on
paper, or specific sounds that learned as
words and constitute spoken language. The
conscious of language represents an imposition
of a sense of discreteness onto something
otherwise continuous and arbitrary in
nature -- the spectrum of audible sound
and visible markings on a piece of paper.

It's possible to view the process of unfoldment
in life in continuous or discrete terms. This
is illustrated in the difference between the
gradual and sudden schools of Enlightenment.

It's also possible to view how gradual changes
along a continuous scale result in different sets
of discrete states. This is illustrated in the
bifurcation curve. Starting out on the X Axis
at zero and increasing, the state goes from
zero (inactivity) to a climbing single value.

At a certain point, there's a bifurcation and
now we have a two-state cycle. That starts
doubling to four, eight, 16, and so forth quickly
to infinity. Then, moving along the X Axis, we
pass through a starting state for every possible
number, each followed with doubling to infinity.
We basically have a continuous scale linked to
a cycling set of discrete states.

-- Eldon