This post is a reply to Anonymous’ comments and questions on the previous posts. They are repeated here:
Question about this part of your writing:“To combine the two words perception and Infinity in the same sentence or to say they are related, is really asking for trouble, because in their deepest meaning each one precludes the possibility of the other.”
I have always found comfort in Alfred Aiken’s writing about Intelligence perceiving and conceiving ad infinitum. Aiken said that the Individual-One-I-Am, the I-Identity that is Soul, Self-Awareness, the Single Perceiving Mind was Infinitely Imaginative and conceives or “thinks” ideas-things and includes all ideas-things ever conceived by Itself. He also said that an idea is not an “object” that can be labored for, or possessed on a finite plane.
Are you referring to “human perception” in your writing? Do you appreciate (agree with) Aiken’s writings on perception and conception?
Hi Anonymous,
Always nice to hear from someone familiar with Alfred Aiken’s work.
As far as Aiken’s statements about the Infinite conceiving/perceiving, and ideas—I wouldn’t say I agree or disagree. What seems best to say is, “I honestly don’t know.”
It’s impossible with a thinking mind to “know” what the Infinite is, or what It is “doing.” We can use thoughts and words to point and say what seems to be consistent with Infinity as we define It—but that’s about as far as it goes.
For many reasons, it seems hard to just blindly agree that the Infinite, the Absolute, perceives or conceives. The very notion of conceiving or perceiving usually is tied to ideas. And the very notion of there being such things as ideas, or conceiving/perceiving, seems to be totally derived from human finite thought. Even referring to the Infinite as “Infinite Mind” or “Infinite Intelligence” is using terms derived from would-be human finite thought, not the Infinite Itself, which really doesn’t call Itself anything, not even “the Infinite.”
The would-be finite human mind (if it were a reality!) definitely seems to conceive and perceive ideas. And because it seems to conceive (use concepts) and perceive, its concept of the Infinite is that the Infinite, too, necessarily should be a conceiver/perceiver of ideas. Yet is that really true of the Infinite, or is it just another concept or idea that human thought is attempting project upon the Infinite?
In the Infinite, the Absolute, or Emptiness, there is no sense of time, no change, no differentiation. Where there is no time whatsoever, where is there a need for ideas? Who says so? If there’s no differentiation, how is it possible for one idea to be different from other ideas? Notice that whenever anything comes up regarding conceiving, perceiving, or ideas, virtually always it involves human finite thought—not Infinite Aliveness, un-thinking Alive Being.
Alfred Aiken used to say that Infinite Mind must be a conceiver/perceiver because It would be incomplete without the capacity to conceive/perceive ideas. In one way, that makes a lot of sense. But—if you don’t start out by placing that kind of concept or label on the Infinite, such as calling It an “Infinite Mind,” then you don’t have that problem.
Alfred Aiken based some of what he said about ideas on this: He had formerly been a Christian Science practitioner, where there was a lot of emphasis on healing. He asked the question, “When it seems there is a healing of a problem, the problem or disease seems to vanish because it was unreal and had no basis in Divine Reality. But the body of the one who needed help didn’t vanish…so the ‘body’ must have some basis in Reality as an ‘idea.’ If the body were unreal like the disease, the body, too, would have vanished with the disease.”
In one way that makes a lot of sense, too. It’s also possible that this appears to be just a matter of degree. Where there is only Formless Infinite Consciousness, the Timeless NOW—there isn’t even time for a finite body-form to appear. So it would seem that the “body-form” too, must eventually seem to dissolve or disappear as one functions more and more AS the Infinite Itself.
On the other hand, to take a hard, fast stand that the Infinite does not conceive/perceive ideas would be trying to place a limit on the Unlimited—and that, too, would be merely a human concept. So, again, who’s to say?
Aiken emphatically said, “Leave what appear to be ideas alone. Don’t attempt to decide one way or the other as to whether the things that appear in daily experience are real ideas or not. IF there are such things as ideas, they would be conceived/perceived perfectly by the Infinite alone (the only One Conscious), so leave them as such. And if they aren’t real ideas, then they don’t really exist, so there’s no need to be concerned over them. Certainly the Infinite is not concerned over ideas that don’t exist. If things appear to be there in daily experience, so what? The Infinite is concerned wholly with being Infinite-Aliveness-NOW.”
In light of what was said in the most recent posts…
Suppose one even were to say or realize, “The Infinite conceives and perceives ideas in the Timeless NOW.” Okay, but then the moment it seems there’s that realization, it has to be said that realization is just a thought seeming to arise in the current moment. It’s a thought it seems one has just “had.” Then you have to admit, “Wait a minute. The Present Awareness that’s present NOW hasn’t been before NOW—so was It present before in order to even have had that “realization”? No! Present Awareness, ALL, is far too “new” to have even done that!