This is just another answer, which then creates a conflict between what the mind knows and what it does. Why should the mind know anything?
If it doesn’t know the limits of thought, it’s a loose canon.
So it’s all in the ‘if’ - that’s the essence of thought, isn’t it? I may know very well the limits of thought; and in the next breath or look or encounter with another human being I may completely ignore what I already know. So my knowledge about thought doesn’t change my behaviour. Why not?
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You’re describing second-hand knowledge - not what you learn from experience.
What I actually know I can forget because it acts when it’s necessary, and what I think I know goes out the window when I act.
This is the crux of the matter isn’t it? The way we live and think is knowledge, thought, the past. My actions are the result of a thought process. Thought has formed images of ways to act, and prompts a designated action. Never mind that we do or do not have awareness of the thoughts. I accept the action as the right action, or the wrong action, because it is what I am doing. I conform to a way of life with all of its mess. The way we talk about our actions is as an apologist, not actually questioning the whole thing.
It is said that knowledge about thought doesn’t change behavior.
And there is a reply to this which states this insight as “the crux of the matter”.
And in this reply there is the statement: “Thought has formed images of ways to act, and prompts a designated action”. This means: First forming images and then action. This implies that thought in retrospect of the action can refer to its images. Thought therefore relates to action in a dualistic relationship between affirmation or condemnation. In principle, this is always a relation in which thinking can assert itself. In between, there is still a more convenient way, namely, to escape self-condemnation, to blame everything on thought, the ego, the self, the observer, etc., and to say that this is all their work, with which one does not have to identify, and one is off the hook. So the above mentioned knowledge about thought does not spare from the autosuggestive self-illusion.
But what about the state of perception when it is realized that the initiation of action and the forming of images are one and the same process?
Talking about this together, it is not his or her awareness, not his or her perception. The thought process is the fragmentation. The action and the image are separate and there is conflict. The point here is my action is conditioned by thought, and thought is the initiation, fulfilling the image.
Well, that’s the idea. And I would say, It is not. It appears only that way retrospective. But actually there is no separation.
If you are a musician, you play the instrument as you listen and you listen from what you play. A disruption occurs when there is a delay between the two, and the conflict becomes obvious when there is comparison to the score.
On leaving the house, one pushes down the door handle and the door is open. Pushing down the handle and opening the door is one. Only thought separates and makes it a matter of cause and effect.
But that’s also second-hand. It is still a response from the past, which just happens to be my past experience.
Self-knowledge is knowing how and why thought operates the way it does. The knowledge isn’t forgotten because it is renewed constantly with every conditioned response.
When you are systematized, “you” is systematic, not free to do anything outside the system.
But is knowledge ever of any use here? It must always be about something in the past. Using knowledge to meet the present immediately destroys any prospect of meeting it.
But only the system is saying, ‘You.’ Nothing else in the world is saying, ‘You.’ So you and the world are not two separate entities.
Here’s what you said in post #51:
“Then don’t use any system. When there is just you and the world, for whose benefit is a system that comes between you?”
You say we are born into a system. Are you saying this or is the system saying this? So don’t use anything to help you explain where you are or what you are. Then, when you look, you are looking with fresh eyes.
So you say…
It doesn’t matter what I say. My eyes are not your eyes.
Because what matters is our dialogues together, not who says what.
Dialogue is a waste of time when participants are learning nothing from it, or worse, making a game of it.
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Are you making a game of it? Find out. What others are doing is irrelevant. Some will be serious; some will be flippant. Some will come here to learn; some will come here to teach. But our question is about direct perception. One can never have direct perception into the motives and values of another person; one can see only a trail of behaviour. A serious person leaves one kind of trail; a flippant person leaves another kind of trail.
But am I serious or flippant? Am I playing a game? I am not sure. That’s why I publish those dialogues. The evidence is there. And it can then be challenged over and over again, not locked away in some remote cupboard of the mind.