A "Now you have raised a question again, and I have to try to do the hard work so that you can understand. Maybe you will; maybe you won't; maybe you will understand in a different way than I understand. Maybe you will have your own opinion. That is all OK, even the opinion, which no one, you realize, can work with."
B Gloss: One of two or more introduces a response in a conversation where there was another question and now this question--neither given--the answer to which will be a meta-response about matters affecting future understanding of what will be hard to construct. Herein is a care-less concern and aim of transferring a definite understanding, while at the same time acknowledging possibly a different one will result, perhaps more accurately termed an opinion embedded in the holder and therefore inaccessible to any other. The speaker accepts this challenge and risk, born of some obligation or insistence, and so will continue thus. The invitation to converse includes confirmation of a prior truth that having an opinon will arrest any mutual progress.
C "If I am entirely truthful with myself and write it down or talk about it, then at least I have done my part, which is the first step towards conversation. In the end, hopefully not before, I and you can evaluate or judge what has gone on and make any decisions based on that, or not. We are free to choose at all points."
D Which leads to the hypothesis: A text of any length, if translated into its own or another language, has worlds to open to us that we may but dimly sense without the most careful scrutiny, the most careful listening.
E Aha: No wonder without wonder.
F Another sample, this from the King James version.
4 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
5 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;
6 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
G Seemingly didactic report of an event with quote claiming the protagonist descended from God and that business shall not be conducted in God's house, the temple. Driving merchants and animals out as well as pouring out money and overturning tables suggests less emotionally-charged methods were or would not be effective.
H And
7 . . . his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of your house has eaten me up.
8 Then answered the Jews and said to him, What sign show you to us, seeing that you do these things?
I In the face of this "scene" and echo of earlier scripture (Psalm 69?), the protagonist's disciples question his "wretchedness"? or the action born of it? These disciple-Jews, or others, then ask in response to the behavior--with or without the wretched part--what was its meaning?
J It seems again that a "text of any length, if translated into its own or another language, has worlds to open to us that we may but dimly sense without the most careful scrutiny, the most careful listening." But language-action plain or in translation can also but dimly denote exactly what it is we are to understand.
K Aha: Wonder with wonder.
L Imagine the impossible, that at the time of the above language-actions, or before, there was no interpretation. A baseline text once read is different from what was said if by the tiniest of margins, for it is the consciousness of the now other who has created it in reading or hearing. No full access-entry is possible into a text. Add to that the slipperiness of words and phrases and larger aggregations, as evidenced by illustrative reductions, we can only hope for coincidence. The closest approximation is what we are after, but that persistently and by the very nature of communicating intentions eludes us.
M Yet we proceed based on what we can apprehend, and through interaction, progress towards what we assent to as understanding.*
N The initial reduction, whatever its shortcomings, has to be compared with the original as re-read, decoded again. And if there is some large measure of satisfaction on what it is we have hold of then, we can accept the interpreted in an I-acknowledge sense.
O To restate the now convoluted.
* One, a text, an original.
* Two, the text is read. In the experience of reading, a first-hand interpretation is made. It is called what-I-think-it-says.
* Three, that interpretation is then reduced to match the text. Here is the second-hand.
* Four, the second-hand is compared with the original for fit and adjusted as needed. The comparative reading-rendering process becomes conceivably a revised second-hand interpretation, call it now third-hand, in that a third results from the process of interacting texts.
* Five, the third-hand, if taken up, becomes a fourth text in that it is a part of making additional texts which may bear great or little resemblance to the original.
* Recycle the process. Here is interpretation beyond the original and must be handled in the same manner as above in order to make sense of it.
P Aha: Wonder that we wonder?
Q To interpret in an I-acknowledge sense is roughly to have decoded a text and understood it within one's own language filters and horizons. If one adds external-to-the-text material, or voices, as somehow implied or inferred or reasonably understood as aides to understanding, we run the risk of nothingness, and . . .
R Aha: No wonder!
S We have fullness of how messed up things can get. This without the impossible, that at the time of the original, or before, there was--we assume, another of the genus interpretation--one or more intentions to communicate something or -things, consciously or unconsciously.
T Interim conclusion: Jam-packed, full of wonders, seen and unseen, to delight and dissuade us, much as the spells of sprites for good or ill when we think we are looking.
U The font of expression is metaphor, just as the impossibility of communicating intentions devolves into images and unspoken meanings as we separate.
V-Z [available for rebuttal or additional observations . . . perhaps a final Aha:]
__________
* Ken Wilber in unpublished material asserts that it is enough if I say something and you say you understand. Such assent is enough to proceed. There is no need for devolutions, reductions, convolutions, etc. See http://www.shambhala.com.
