The mind must shift from a knowing position to one of questioning, which allows the possibility of seeing something new.
The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
– Einstein
If one takes this challenge seriously, investigating it will require a careful and considered look at the entire concept of time as well as who or what it is that wants to live in the now. Most of us accept there are three parts to time: the past; the present; and the future. It might be helpful to imagine time as a triptych, which is a grouping of three paintings that are linked by some type of common theme or image. However, if we take a fresh look at time, it might be revealed that grouping time this way, as a connected assembly of three equal elements, is not at all an accurate way to typify time. If so, the result may be that what we call “the moment” is not what we have assumed it to be. Not understanding exactly what the now moment is and how it functions can lead to misunderstanding the relationships of the various parts of time that will seriously affect attempts to live in the moment. So, in taking up this challenge, the very first thing we must do is to put aside what we think we know and look at time afresh. The mind must shift from a knowing position to one of questioning, which allows the possibility of seeing something new. New perception requires sustaining a sort of curiosity vacuum. The mind must have an empty space free of conclusion in order to investigate without looking through the filter of conclusions and fixed positions.
Coming back to the triptych, we see the three aspects of time lined up and seemingly connected by subject. Let’s first consider the picture on the left that represents the past. If we zoom in on it we can see it is made up of various types of memories. There is a large amount of memory making up our personal history, but in addition, there is material relating to physical skills, professional, technical or scientific information. Anything and everything stored in memory forms the past. When the scientific information is counted in as information about the past and stored as memory, the past now extends back a total of about 13.8 billion years. Just a few hundred years ago the “depth” of the past was only considered to be about 6000 years as formulated by Bishop Usher’s calculations from the Bible that placed the date of creation at 4004 BC. I think we as individuals enjoy extending a sense of our personal past by relating to and including family ancestry as well the history of the groups we identify with and may belong to.
Can you and I, as individuals, live in this world without being identified with anything? After all, I identify myself with my country, with my religion, with my family, with my name, because without identification I am nothing. Without a position, without power, without prestige of one kind or another, I feel lost; and so I identify myself with my name, with my family, with my religion, I join some organization or become a monk we all know the various types of identification that the mind clings to. But can we live in this world without any identification at all?
– Krishnamurti
2nd Public Talk in Hamburg, 1956
Memories
Science aside, our personal memories are by far the most important for most of us. These memories give us a sense of personal history that is composed of a complex jumble of impressions about our self that have been put down in layers as we have gone through good and bad experiences and as we have matured, received education and formed group affiliations. It contains much subconscious material as well as layers of values, attitudes, and standards that have been internalized from various group associations starting in childhood with parental figures and household rules and standards. Also, when I refer to memories I am not just referring to words, picture-like images and intellectual concepts. Especially included are emotional reactions stored in memory. Emotions as memories are extremely powerful when evoked and can easily distort or block the brain’s input. This conglomeration of different types of memory is highly internally interactive and not necessarily logically consistent. The dynamics of this jumble create interactions and reactions amongst the different memory elements. Thus, memory can be marked by ambivalence, confusion and various collisions of different value systems that have entered memory at different times in our history.
Our personal memories form a large and convoluted system for evaluating and judging both ourselves and involvements with people, events and objects of the outer world. The inevitable conclusion is that for humans, the past as memory is not only internally convoluted but is also spilling into the present. Putting this back into our analogy of time, it means a big possible problem with our triptych painting. It is as if the paint used for our personal memories is never dry and is leaking over into the present to make an overlay that distorts the present to suit the ego’s need for continuity. Because of this distortion, we can become ineffective at dealing with current issues and problems at the various levels of existence because ego’s needs take precedence.
The conclusion must be that the past literally is a construction of memory as far as psychological time is concerned.
There is only one time by the watch, there is no other time. There is actually no tomorrow, except that thought has created tomorrow. Of course there is a tomorrow, again, chronologically, but is there any other time? We have made time – not chronological time but psychological time – as a means of resolving our problems: “I will resolve my problem tomorrow”, “I will do this” and “I will do that”. So thought has invented time which is unreal, and that is one of our difficulties.
Why does the mind create this time, this time of the future, tomorrow, the next moment? When you say, “I will do” or “I will try”- all those indicate that you are dealing with an artificial time, but not with chronological time. So the mind invents time first as a postponement – please listen to this – as a means of postponing action.
– Krishnamurti
5th Public Talk in New Delhi, 1964
Certainly, there has been a past separate from memory. We can surmise that things have happened, and that happening has stacked up just as archeology indicates. But personal memory, not benefitting from the rigors of the scientific method, is far more inaccurate, and this means personal memory is probably very removed from real past events. One way or another, what we call the past is only a construct of images held in memory and, as such, is imaginary.
It is a lot easier to see that the future is also imaginary. I think the difference between scientific and personal projections of the future is that science tends to see the future as something based on probability, while projections into the future for our personal memories are usually based on a psychological desire for a better, more fulfilled or more satisfying sense of self, and the hope that this goal can be achieved in the future. This presupposes we can control who and what we are and that we should modify ourselves to fit internalized values and standards of who and what we should be. Therefore, concerning our personal memories, what emerges as our imaginary past produces our imaginary future, and this is how we sense psychological time. The past and the future are tightly bound as a unitary system that is not all that interested in the present.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. We all fill a great deal of the present with anticipation of what we hope or dread will happen in the future. The focus is on the future and, as such, we are frequently paying more attention to our past/future imaginings during the now moment than to the moment itself. Clear perception of what is happening in the moment is further complicated by ego needs for a continuity of the self view with all of its attached preferences and beliefs. The field of psychology has lists of “defense mechanisms” used by the mind to distort, filter or block incoming sensory information such that it will not be a threat to the existing order of the sense of self. This is the wet paint bleeding from the past onto the present so that new material is covered over to fit with the old. The incoming information from the present then takes a double hit from our needs for continuity with the past as well as preempting attention paid to the now in the now so we can focus on our anticipations concerning the future.
An Experiment
Seeing the past and the future as an assembly and movement of images originating from memory demands, I think, a new look at the present. For this reevaluation, I invite you to carry out a personal experiment derived from an experience that totally changed my view of what the present is and it’s importance in our lives. Since childhood I have particularly enjoyed watching clouds, weather and stars. Some time ago I was outside admiring a particularly bright and luminescent group of big cumulus clouds majestically sailing through an intense desert sky. They were wonderfully beautiful and entrancing billows of white with curling edges. There was no need for explanation or description in the moment of this watching. But, unexpectedly, my mind began thinking of time, which has long puzzled me. I realized in watching the clouds that I was also looking at something about the mystery of time. The scene unfolding above me involved motion that appeared to have no connection to either the past or the future. Regardless of how closely I scrutinized the scene above there was no past or future in the moment of observation. You could not look at the scene and find a part that was the past or the future. Everything was just “here and now” as an interaction of movements creating change; endless change from endless movement. Movement, interaction, and change as one simultaneous process. In short, this was creation, and not just concerning clouds, it concerned everything including my own brain-body assembly that was observing.
Curiously, there was no “bandwidth” present, no depth of field for time as there is in the past and future, no measure of time whether it be fractions of a second or eons of years. The moment was seen as a moving instantaneous suddenness containing all of what is real in the entirety of creation. Everything that is except imagination. Hold on there, you might say, we can imagine things during the now moment. True, imagination does happen “in” the now but it is not “of” the now and never will be. Our brain/body system exists in the now and the brain’s neuron firings are also now events. However, the images produced by the neuron configurations that are created from the brain’s memories are “of” the past as representations put down prior to now. Everything in the actual moving “nowness” is new. It does not issue from the past; it is a fresh creation.
Is it possible, not theoretically, not hypothetically or in a theological sense is it possible to be free of time? Is it possible for a mind which has been conditioned for centuries upon centuries to free itself? It cannot be done by thought, because thought is the result of time and thought cannot free consciousness which is limited. There must be a different action altogether, which is not born out of will, the will being again yesterday, today and tomorrow – I was, I am, I will be…
Freedom implies an end to time, not abstractly but actually. Freedom means to live completely today, because we have understood the whole structure, the nature, the meaning of the past. The past is the conscious as well as the unconscious. We have understood the whole of that. Because of that understanding there is the active present, which is living. Can this actually happen in our daily life?
– Krishnamurti
5th Public Talk in Paris, 1966
Always New
Another way to look at this is to consider our body. Mine is considered old but if you look at it from the now moment it is brand new. What!? Yes, my body, like yours is constantly under reconfiguration with slightly different versions of it appearing in a steady stream of change just like the clouds overhead, just like everything except retained memories. Have you ever seen an “old” cloud? This new/old version of my body is basically one that is less efficient, less flexible and weaker than the “old” one of my youth. All of my body’s transformations have taken place in the now, the place where everything is undergoing constant change. Nothing has ever happened in the past or the future. The one is over and done with and the other never happens as a perfect match to the mental projection. Both the past and the future are memorial. The present contains all there is and all there ever will be and nothing about it is fixed; it is constantly changing.
So, I invite you to repeat this experiment. Please don’t accept what I have just described as some nice thing that happened, some kind of romantic mind-wandering. If you are interested just go out and find a nice tranquil location that offers refuge from the hectic jabbering daily life and just partake of tranquility, and within that atmosphere simply look. Watch what is moving out there, go with it, watch a changing reality unfold without effort or plan. Try to find the past. Try to find the future. It will be there but only in your mind as images built from recalled memories, and if you go into that imaginary place it will remove you from the present; it will disconnect you from all that is real including the actuality of who and what you really are. The “you”, that idea of yourself, your ego, will never be able to live in the moment because it is “of” the past as memory and “of” the future as a projection of imagination driven by desire within psychological time.
Unpredictable Creation
Science supports the view that the present is not part of the past/future psychological time assembly. Newtonian physics proposed direct cause/effect connections between what was, what is and what will be. The future was seen as predictable when all the variables could be accounted for. But things have changed. Modern chaos theory says measurements can never be perfect and tiny discrepancies too numerous to account for can have profound and large effects that befuddle long-range attempts at predicting complex systems. In addition, quantum theory, which originally prompted Einstein’s ire, has proven that the fundamental elements of the universe can never be firmly located or identified. They arise in the moment from interactions and they exist not as something totally predictable but rather as something happening within a field of probability.
Said differently, what we “know” can never be solid, unchanging and unquestionable if knowledge hopes to keep up with the ever-changing now. Events and things cannot be nailed down. The permanence and control we crave and seek psychologically is not possible because existence does not just have change, it is change and that change is beyond self/ego’s control. Basically, unpredictable creation is the present.
Each one of us is in need of a total mutation; there must be a complete transformation deep down, at the very root of our consciousness, otherwise we are mere automatons living in a shoddy, superficial world with all its conflicts, sorrows, miseries, and responding only to the most superficial demands and urges. To bring about this fundamental inward revolution, one must inquire into action; one must find out if there is an action which is not dictated by circumstances, by ambition, by social demands, by reformatory ideals, by nationalistic or other pressures. To find out if there is such an action, it seems to me that one must go very deeply into oneself – so deeply that the mind is no longer operating according to ideas, conclusions, memories, and is therefore capable of living in that total present which in itself modifies the very nature of action.
– Krishnamurti
9th Public in Saanen, 1963
The challenge of living in the moment then involves first understanding the relationship between time and consciousness. In closely examining time it appears that the common and traditional representation involving past, present and future as a three-piece painting is not at all accurate. The present stands by itself and is the unfolding of all creation in an eternally changing now. Outside the now, the past and future are bound together by the mental/memory/imagination workings of the mind. For our sense of self, this means that a relationship between the present and memory does not exist. The present always slips away from memory regardless of how hard we try to grasp it. A picture of a cloud is not the same cloud as soon as the shutter snaps.
However, consciousness is more than just memory. Memory can flood and occupy consciousness, but seeing the need for an open awareness can open consciousness to be receptive to new input in the presence of the now moment. This openness provides for the possibility of the brain to experience learning which is not tethered to memory. When tethered, learning always is an extension of previous images and ideas. The brain cannot make this untethered learning happen but it can be receptive to a possible departure from the status quo. In other words, consciousness can undergo a severing from the past via contact with the present. This is an exposure to the same forces creating change throughout the universe.
I hope this does not seem awfully difficult, theoretical or complicated. It isn’t, but it is elusive and uncommon; it requires persistence and patience. In fact, I hope the simple experiment outlined above might have provided an opportunity for readers to experience a sense of revolution via observations of motion in nature to gain an intimate understanding of the present as the creative source of all. The mind then can transcend the limitations and restrictions of its own former idea of time, and one’s position in relation to the present.
By Robert Steele
I think you need to make it clear that these articles are not by Krishnamurti, but by other people exploring their ideas about about his teachings. They might have a certian value and interest, but i would much prefer to read just the extracts from Krishnamurti’s writing and talks.
The author of this article is offering his views on the phenomenon of time and compares them with some excerpts from Krishnamurti teaching.
I personally don’t accept his views, yet, I wold like to make a comment here.
You say:
“I think you need to make it clear that these articles are not by Krishnamurti, but by other people exploring their ideas about about his teachings.”
Exploration of his teachings, that’s exactly what Krishnamurti told his listeners and readers have to do.
Never follow him, never take his words literally, never take his words for truth and never believe them.
Everything has to be taken under scrutiny – just everything.
“…consciousness can undergo a severing from the past via contact with the present.”
This realization comes about through meditation. Or to put it another way, realizing that there is only the eternal present (with or without the distraction of past/future}, makes this moment the only reality. We are clouds undergoing constant change, regardless of our effort to become this or that.
Relatively speaking, after reading most of the article, several points stood out so I stopped. First, Consciousness is not some-thing that can change…it’s never changing and yet, ever -present. What the article implies is that the point-of-view undertaken determines the location (past or future superimposed on the now) , therefore the challenge which really only exist in duality is a conditioned viewpoint…it’s okay, but it’s still an erroneous viewpoint. This is only from a point of view from ‘mind’ which is object obsessive and could never locate Consciousness since it’s not an object and is non-dimensional. Suffice it to say – Time is Consciousness objectified by thought and Space is Consciousness objectified by perception…They’re both created by Mind which is really a modulation of Consciousness…Nevertheless, thanks for posting the article…I A(nama rupa)M !!!
K repeatedly said “consciousness is its own content”. He also emphasized the need for a personal transformation in that content. He certainly must have been indicating that consciousness can change.
Eternity is not a whole bunch of time. Eternity is the absence of time. Now is not what is happening. Now is the ever-present space in which “what is happening” happens. As such now is eternal.
That’s the point, Aron, in fact, a very strong one about time and eternity.
Interesting, we invented time, it’s not linear.
Is the author of “the challenge of living in the moment” article -Robert Steele- the same as this Robert D. Steele?https://goo.gl/images/GGNrmJ
Hi Robert Steele,
“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
– Einstein”
What has a scientist with their fantastical hypothesises, whatever they say, whoever they quote, to do with Krishnamurti?
Especially the one who took part in developing atomic arms?
Einstein, being the father of relativity theory, knew a lot about the mystery of time especially in terms of debunking the idea that past, present and future are connected. K also mentioned they were not connected. Also, Einstein had NOTHING to do with developing atomic arms except as his theories indicated the possible power of them and were hijacked by the developers. He implored humanity to not develop them and that is well documented in his letter to the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. He made a famous statement that if atomic weapons were used, the fourth world war would be fought with stone weapons.
Thank you Robert Steele for this beautiful article filled with depth and teachings pointing to the world of illusion we live in. JK has left a legacy to inquire into self and Robert Steele is a prime example of the expansion of consciousness through self-reflection. Every aspect of this article mirrors Krishnamurti’s teachings, it is another view through experience of truth.
To quote words of wisdom by Robert Steele – “So, in taking up this challenge, the very first thing we must do is to put aside what we think we know and look at time afresh. The mind must shift from a knowing position to one of questioning, which allows the possibility of seeing something new. New perception requires sustaining a sort of curiosity vacuum. The mind must have an empty space free of conclusion in order to investigate without looking through the filter of conclusions and fixed positions.”
Self-deception always implies a concept of interpretation, of looking at reality, in such a way that one can satisfy the demands one places on oneself and which one would like to satisfy. You then can convince yourself as having seen something “new”.
to see something new our mind has to be completely still, empty of any thought
“JK has left a legacy to inquire into self and Robert Steele is a prime example of the expansion of consciousness through self-reflection.”
That’s exactly what it is: Krishnamurti’s legacy is EXPLORING THE SELF SO AS IT IS, whereas, the article is ‘a prime example of the EXPANSION of consciousness through self-reflection’.
Since we born until we die, we are concerning ourselves with EXPANSION of our ego. Upbringing, education and all sorts of entertainments are provided for that by society.
On one hand, nothing is wrong with that; on the other, it is the main reason we are always living in our own imaginations, cravings and struggles to do something with ourselves and never see ourselves immediately so as we really are.
Something that seems clear from what Robert and Krishnamurti are saying here (and what is verifiable by all of us) is that the ‘future’ is nothing other than the past. K often spoke about ‘freedom from the past’ but here he is putting it as ‘freedom from time’. Time is past and future as one psychological movement that does not contain the ‘present’ as it is. The ‘future’ is our hopes, desires, fears, expectations, plans, anticipations etc. If this is seen, then even our desire for freedom, understanding and ‘transformation’ is derived from the past and is included in the ‘time’ which we are questioning if there can be freedom from.
The implication of this is that we cannot look at freedom from time if we are doing so in order to escape some past ‘state’, or gain some future ‘state’. Both states are imaginary. Realising that the past and future are one movement, which is a movement within the imagination, asking if one can ‘do something about it’ is still to be trapped in time. The one who will ‘do something’ is the past, which is to say it is imaginary, so any movement it makes is also imaginary.
So what can one do? Nothing! And in some ways this is the ‘experiment’ that Robert is inviting us to do – to sit quietly doing nothing. ‘What is’ does not require our intervention. In order to intervene we first have to imagine that we are separate from it. Imagining that we are separate from what is (what is being now) creates the illusion of time. The illusion of time is the illusion that ‘I’ am standing apart from what is.
the explication of the artcicle is too long.-
desire,hope,want,search are all time.
ambition, envious, possession,are time.-
effort, discipline, are time too.
Can the time come to an end?
The question ,is time. (desire,hope)
The verbal answer,the response, is alwys time.-
Challenge? Who creates it and who accepts it? We all create our own “traps.” Oh, well. . .
The best question:”Have you ever seen an old cloud”
The answer is clear : NO
“Have you ever seen a new cloud”
The answer is also clear : NO
so,
what is that “thing” i called cloud
If it’s a question, I can take a try to put myself in words.
These ‘clouds’ — all of them: new, old and the current one — are just names that we are giving at the current moment to pictures which are being created by our imagination and fixed up in our memory in order to operate them in the future.
Human thought process is fluent, flimsy and contradictory out of its nature, so it is trying to create constant robust pictures. One of them is the whole picture of our own ego that has permanently been recreated and maintained and, same time, trying to set up an order among those pictures.
So appears the infinite number of fragmentary imaginary pictures in our memory that our ego uses to take for its life area.
That way illusion imaginary upgrades itself to reality. Yet, it always remains a pseudo-reality, ever changing and never containing truth. Besides, psychologically, it always creates individual suffering.
To see reality, the imagination has to stop its permanent production and naming which means also, the thought process has to stop and the mind has to be completely still.
Majority of spiritual people in the world are talking since ever about necessity of stillness of mind to see the truth.
It’s only Krishnamurti says today, there is no way for ego to stop the mind.
That’s the revolution, his teaching is supposed to be performed in spiritual world. This spiritual revolution is, the same time, supposed to perform a total social revolution in order to change entirely the existing world order based on violence and hypocrisy.
For me it is a hackneyed phrase to talk about a “challenge o living in the moment” because we already do that without our special effort. To postulate such a challenge, therefore, can be based on a wrong idea about the connection between the way we live at the moment and the fact that by living that past is transmitted into the future. To say that the past uses the present to provide continuity only seems right in the outward view of the movement, for example, in the return of fear. This may give the impression that the current fear is the resurgence of a previous anxiety situation. From this impression, it may seem rational that living up to this challenge could free it from fear. In the postulation of the challenge “of living in the moment”, it is ignored that there must be a connection between life in the moment and the continuity of the past. But this means that you have to find out in which way this connection takes place. And so the question of being free from fear is a question about the state of mind in the moment.
For myself, i found out, that fear is the way of being conscious of the contradiction that comes from the escaping action directed by the actual interpretation, looking for a secure position which can find agreement by memory. That interpretation may be formed out of images of the past and the agreement may be based on experience. But fear itself is not related to anything that happened in the past. It only exists through the escaping action and it comes to an end with the escaping action. Acting along the guidelines of memory creates a structure of contradiction in relationship to reality. This structure in the outward view appears as “time” and in the inward view appears as “I”. Both ego and time to explain illusions does not exempt from the implications of this structure. So the ideas about “time” given above are part of an illusionary escape from the implications of the structure formed by the movement of thought.
“For me it is a hackneyed phrase to talk about a “challenge o living in the moment” because we already do that without our special effort.”
No, Walter, sorry to contradict you. Since ego of a human being exists in the field of thought process, it never knows real present with or without visible effort.
As I said in my previous message, thought is just a conglomeration of pictures in the memory which our ego is trying to operate with. Therefore, this process is always the past even if it can be imagined as present or future.
You can easily see it in yourself if you are attentive enough.
‘Living in the moment’ is the basement of meditation and it’s a real challenge for any human being.
“To postulate such a challenge, therefore, can be based on a wrong idea about the connection…”
If something is based on any idea it’s already wrong per se, because no idea postulates truth itself.
That’s exactly K. is talking about in first please. However, it’s not so much important what he says, it’s rather paramount what we are able to see on our own.
“This may give the impression that the current fear is the resurgence of a previous anxiety situation. From this impression, it may seem rational that living up to this challenge could free it from fear. In the postulation of the challenge “of living in the moment”, it is ignored that there must be a connection between life in the moment and the continuity of the past…”
I’m afraid, you are trying rational approach to this issue using your ordinary human logic. In this case it has no use.
Only right meditation can bring us up to right seeing and appropriately to solution of our problems.
Well, the ego exists through the movement of thought. That we talk about “ego” comes from the appearance of the movement of thought in its outward relation, as this movement is bound on memory, on experience. In relation to reality there must be a division in the action directed by the movement of thought, the division between interpretation and actuality. The feeling is the way one is aware of the implied conflict. The division works in the present as well as it worked in the past in forming the shape of relationship. And the division shapes the images which are justified by what is called experience. And so the outward look on this movement recognizes former occasions recurring. The action to avoid what happened in the past deepens the division and leads to confusion. And all of this happens in the moment. In this structure of division the action to prevent the past works by perpetuating the past, as in turn it seems in the outward consideration. To get out of this perpetuating process performed in the moment, in the present, is a matter of two deeply connected things: clarity about the importance of the state of mind in the moment and the clarity about the work of the whole process of thought and its effect on the relationship in the experience of the world.
The rationality implicit in this approach may seem to you like a useless business.
But let me say the following to your approach without wanting to get too close: The whole process of thought is not an isolated self-sufficient process as you suggest in saying that “thought is just a conglomeration of pictures in the memory which our ego is trying to operate with.” With such an idea you generalize the schizoid world experience to the general relation to reality man has by thought. And vice versa the idea about meditation you convey seems to be a try to escape from the schizoid world experience. And let me say: If I use the word “idea”, I don’t use it in the bad meaning as it is commonly used as a concept, as a demand to be pursued, an absolute statement to be noted. If there is a question and you don’t know how to respond to it, the idea is the form of thought the approach is reflected. For example: If I put something in question, this putting in question is bound with the idea about the conditioned or absolute existence of this something. And when there is said, there is a “challenge for living in the moment”, then there behind is the idea, that life performs out of the moment. And from that point there is the task to bring live into the moment. For you: “right meditation”. And this idea leads to a method. It leads to that, even you may reject it. But it does.
The idea behind my approach is something like that: If things are going wrong, normally people think there is a lack in something that will bring about the right. And then there comes the problem to define for something to catch. And the action is attached by this problem. And there is a division in action. So I ask: If things are going wrong, what is in my actual action going on, that things must go wrong. In other words: Is there an inner logic in the relationships in which the action unfolds, out of which I have to deal with the wrong again and again. Maybe, there is someone who sees the meaning of that approach. But by consequent pursuing this approach, you are on your own and no outside help can help you.
Hi Walter.
I thoroughly was trying to catch your main point. Now I think, you just make it all way too complicate.
Look carefully what you are doing and correct me if I’m wrong: you postulate existence of reality in your second sentence and further up you make your theoretical constructions using your logic just like a mathematician puts up one or two prepared postulates as a basement and uses it to prove a theorem.
Yet, aren’t those postulates exactly the weakest part of the whole construction? In other words: have you ever seen those ‘reality ‘and ‘actuality’ you are talking about or all you are able to see is just your own thought-process? Just simply look into yourself and tell me what you actually see there and what you don’t.
Do you really know the qualities of that ‘reality’, that you put into some relations to anything else assuming ‘the division between interpretation and actuality’?
Why are you talking abut them, first of all? Isn’t it the task itself to find out whether those ‘reality’ and ‘actuality’ exist or not?
Can we see that our mind with our beloved ego in there is the only creator of all the troubles?
If we can, we could be able to find out a right approach to this problem.
If we keep using our mind directly, as our only tool, to sort out problems and decide what to do in order to get to truth – we will get inevitably even more confusions, that’s all.
So, the question is: are we able to see directly, immediately or we have to build up theoretical constructions about ourselves and truth?
Victor,
as I read, you were trying to catch my main point, I expected that you would refer to that and I would get the opportunity to get what you caught about. But nothing about that. Look, I don’t complicate things, thought has brought complication in relationship and the complexity has to be understood from the root and dissolved. With simple spells you can not get that borrowed from anyone.
You end with the question, if we are able to see directly or are we damned to build up theoretical constructions and live along them?
With this question we come a little close to what I tried to explain before.
When you ask for a “directly seeing” you suppose that there is an other kind of seeing, indirectly seeing. Indirect seeing is a mediated seeing, that’s what the word is expressing. And therefore comes the question: mediation between what. So I say between “what is” and “action in relation to what is”. So i say: the mediation is interpretation of what is in relation to terms of general intellect which are the “terms of time”. Und I say: the structure of this mediating process, which is the movement of thought, attracts a metamorphosis in relationship, from that a structure of relationship is created where live is bound in borders that can be described by an endless movement from past to future where what happens in the present is the continuation of the past on a constantly renewing scale. Violence for example: shoot from the arrows to the bombardment by drones.
If one, while walking, sees a stone flying towards one, one reacts immediately and eventually evades. So there is no problem with a “seeing directly” (Unless you really believe that seeing the rock thus flying was only a hallucination caused by any neural processes, or image-building by the ego or something like that – I hope you do not believe in such materialistic or subjectivistic concepts ). If the stone doesn’t meet one, the thing is finished. But not so finished for the mind functioning in the terms of general intellect. In that terms the flying stone is identified as an attack that comes from an attacker and from that moment the mind is attached with the problem to assess the nature of the attack. So there is a metamorphosis in relationship and the actuality of this relationship might be fear as where a special attacker is not located, perhaps fury, if a attacker shows up in the immediate vicinity. To “assess the nature of the attack” has become a process in time, which derives its energy from the demand of coming to an end. This also changes the reality of the walk. The walk is not only concerned with what happens in the environment, but also with feeling and emotion.
So the metamorphosis in relationship has to be understood from two sides: the relation to environment and the relation to the inner movement of the reaction in terms of the perception of the environment. And there is the question about the connection of both sides. For example: Here is the vibrating and roaring plane and on the other side the rising fear. What is the connection in mind by perceiving the vibrating plane together with that fear? What I found out is, fear is the way one is conscient about the contradiction included in the activity to bring back the relation to environment into a state of security. It has its continuation in the fact that in the immediate vicinity no support can be found, where this movement can come to an end. And so a reversal happens in mind, which means that fear is seen as something that has its cause in characteristics of the external environment. In this context people talk about danger. In the intention to alter the characteristics of the external environment fear finds its continuation. In reflection about fear, in seeing fear as a inevitable implement in mind to be prepared on danger by biology. In this way the door of the self-made prison is closed. The attempts to influence this reality are the actions to create the reality. But in the reversal perception this reality appears as divided from the movement of thought. It constitutes also an escape from that reality by the idea, this reality could be dissolved by denying its existence, to talk about time as an illusion, that it would only be “a conglomeration of pictures”, it would only be a concept adopted from generation to generation by something like imitation. The description of relationship in the world in terms of the divided process of “reception” and “projection” brings together what happens in the moment in terms of time, receive, record and project.
So the very question about “directly seeing” is: Is there a seeing in the moment that ends the process of the metamorphosis in relationship as it gets started. What has to been said is, yes. When man comes aware that the division is a delusion, the whole movement will stop immediately. And from that, for me, “truth” is not something that can be seen. Truth is the quality of that seeing, which brings about the transformation in relationship, not shaped by the implications of the mediation, the movement of thought. To see directly, as understood, implies to act in relation to “what is” immediately without any mediation. It is not a thing of receptivity (which is then based on the desire for seeing something new or seeing something, that you may call truth) but a fundamental thing in transformation of relationship.
So, Walter, now you are offering some sort of definition or explanation of “truth”:
You say: “And from that, for me, “truth” is not something that can be seen. Truth is the quality of that seeing, which brings about the transformation in relationship, not shaped by the implications of the mediation, the movement of thought.”
Truth is definitely the central point of the whole issue we are talking about.
Yet, this verbal construction is as much definitive as totally obscure. If we touch e.g. the nature of the ‘quality of that seeing’ we will, probably, never have an end of our exploration and conversation.
Instead to set out on that questionable adventure, I want to ask you: coming up with such verbal statement, what practical use have you got from it and what other people can have when you share it publicly? Can you say, you have discover the truth?
Unfortunately, this software is not designed for long, serious discussions; it’s rather limited to comments to articles. Anyhow, since administration is silent, we can try to keep on.
When what I say is totally obscure to you and as you are convinced about leading to an endless circle of exploration and conversation, how can you ask about practical use for anybody as a question you are really interested in? If one thing is clear, then for the other has no space left.
What I actually mean, Walter, is that clarity not verbal is and truth has nothing to do with thorough consideration and eloquence.
Thinking that it is dependent on those in any way, is exactly the fatal traditional delusion of human being.
Truth has no verbal definitions or positive explanations at all. So, saying, it’s a ‘quality of seeing’ is, in fact, saying nothing neither about truth itself nor about approach to it. It’s just a rhetorical statement, no more no less, and has no practical use for anyone including the one who has come up with this conclusion, but taking away time and life-enrgy.
That’s most likely the reason, you haven’t answered my crucial question, if you can say that you have discovered the truth making that verbal construction about it.
The general delusion comes out of the dualistic contradictory and conflicting nature of our human mind. The sense of existence of our ego as a separated entity plays very specific and important part in sustaining and maintaining of this self-deception.
Exploring and discovering of the hole process of creating delusion in our own mind is self-knowledge which is a paramount practical task and challenge for any human being.
Considering this above, I see, the putting up the issue contained in the article is enormously actual as a practical stimulus for people for living in the present to get approach to reality, which means to truth.
A good friend of mine many years ago defined learning as directed by the ego as “modified continuity.” I have always thought this was particularly insightful.