Presupposition
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For other uses, see Presupposition (disambiguation).
In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or ps) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include:
Jane no longer writes fiction.
Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction.
The greatest or most fundamental presupposition currently is that there is a separate individual self with choice (volition) and control, a separate self who is moving in time and space towards or into a future and leaving behind a past, operating in a thin sliver of something called ‘the present’ in which the boundary to both the past and the future is kind of invisible, unidentifiable- yet somehow solid and real.
To question the validity of this separate individual self would have been the equivalent of saying hundreds of years ago ‘Hey I think that the earth isn’t the centre of the universe- I think it travels around the sun.’ Madness- total madness- how ridiculous- we knowthe earth is the centre of the universe we know the sun rotates around the earth. Poor oul Giordano Bruno was burned as a heretic in 1600 for supporting this new position.
Of course the shift was a shift in perspective- nothing actually changed when it was realized that the sun was the centre. So it is with liberation, it’s the same ‘thing’ we’re looking at, there are sounds, ideas, cars, to do lists, Fridays, guitars, laughter, telephones ringing- and then there can be a falling away of the false centre that is adding itself to everything, instead of someone who hears a sound, there is a sound- it’s the same except that now it’s heard really, as it really is, boundless and complete and without the false addition of ‘me’.
It’s simple, too simple for the mind, that’s how it hides, by already being this, already being what is. This is the constant invitation to see that what appears to be happening is what you have always looked for. Stunning.
