from a really old e-mail to the list

Terry wrote the other day about direct vs. mediated experience of reality, and how experience for "this body-mind" might be based on interaction with (and "experience of") the various elements of what is constructed. (Please forgive the overly simplistic paraphrasing.) My own analytical and systems-based ways of thinking help me to appreciate that kind of model deeply, and there's a part of me that has always believed that only by truly comprehending the inherent structure - at the deepest possible level - of our world, can we truly understand its underlying meaning.

With that in mind, I read with some interest Dan's reply to these ideas...

Looking into the "image formation" ...
that's where the dilemma is revealed
as unable to sustain itself as grounded
anywhere --

And...

The way I was reading what you wrote was in terms of "constructing the universe through cognition/perception". So, "neurons", like "sensations", like "body-mind", can only be part of that construction, having meaning only as related to other constructions, no?

I'm left, over and over again, with a sense of nothingness. As in, contemplation on the structure is inherently meaningless, and by definition, must remain woefully caught up in its own illusory reality.