What do you call it?

I see it as the TAO, the Anima or the Fleuma...

What? Happy horseshit is what you see as the TAO and the rest?

The only way one can know "totality" seems to be akin to the way one can know "the Pacific Ocean" or "Mankind." Now these terms seem meaningful, and "everyone knows" what is meant by them. It is only when we drill down to that components of the term that they seem not to make sense; as we begin to think of the concrete instances, for example, we readily find gaps that make us less sure we know what we are thinking about.

...No Kenneth I was obviously referring to the Can-can that Granny use to love in the old days... :whoa-dude:

Oh. Maybe, then, you should be more specific.

The only way one can know "totality" seems to be akin to the way one can know "the Pacific Ocean" or "Mankind." Now these terms seem meaningful, and "everyone knows" what is meant by them. It is only when we drill down to that components of the term that they seem not to make sense; as we begin to think of the concrete instances, for example, we readily find gaps that make us less sure we know what we are thinking about.

Whenever I deal with Totality I think more along the lines of the categories, and in particular, Kant with his Transcendental Categories. The unity is the totality of the plurality. The functions themselves have no meaning unless applied to experience.

What do you call it?

I see it as the TAO, the Anima or the Fleuma...

What could the phrase, "the totality of experience" possibly mean? The totality of whose experience, during what time, what kind of experience? Experience of what? Experience as contrasted with what else? The mind boggles. It does not follow that just because it makes sense to talk of all the eggs in the carton of eggs, that it makes sense to talk about all the experience there is, or even worse, talk about just "all".

In the Transcendental Deduction, Kant aims to show that the categories derived in the Metaphysical Deduction are conditions of all possible experience.
Critique of Pure Reason - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Too bad about Kant.

It seems to me that it's only thanks to Kant that objectivity was salvaged from Hume. (That's an oversimplification, but what isn't?)

[INDENT] The Tao is like an empty bowl, yet it may be used without ever needing to be filled.
It is the deep and unfathomable source of the ten thousand things.
Blunt the sharpness.
Untie the knot.
Soften the glare.
Settle with the dust.
It is hidden deep yet ever present.
I do not know whose child it is.
It existed before the common ancestor.[/INDENT]

The TAO, I can understand. I don't know what you mean by Anima of Fleuma. Elaborate if you're inclined. Jung's anima seems like an unlikely candidate, but I know the word has other meanings.

Hey R - I think what you're feeling for is 'The One'. This is what Plotinus declared as the source of all being. (Zetherin was pretty right in declaring it as 'spirit'.)

Now you might say 'one what? which one?' And here you are beginning to intuit non-dualism. Why is that? Because duality (and, necessarily, number) begins via the differentiation of self-and-other, subject-and-object, within which our whole world is arrayed.

But the totality of experience includes the observer. There is no way to name or conceive of the totality of experience. This is what you have to enter via the meditative absorption - being at one with it, not analyzing it. It is a different mode of awareness.