I’m not sure I’ve understood you rightly. We seem to talk about awareness but here you have also mentioned “physical habit”. It feels like some contradiction…
When you’re aware of doing something habitually is there contradiction?
If a smoker, for instance, is not only aware of but cares about what they’re doing when they smoke, would they enjoy the experience more, or be mindful of the harm they’re doing to themselves and others?
Contradiction I mean with “physical”. Awareness implies that what is related to consciousness
“smth”?
If you find typing the letters s,o,m,e,t,h,i,n,g too onerous, you probably won’t bother to look up “onerous”.
If it is a problem not only with you, I’ll write the full word. I did not think it’s a problem. Also, sorry for mistakes, my English is not good
If we use Bohm’s idea of thought as a system, a system that includes thought, the body, feelings etc. there is not a ‘me’ outside of the system and it is all conditioned. When we communicate here, it is the system that is presenting itself. But what is or can be different here is that understanding we are conditioned we can possibly go beyond defending our ideas and opinions, beliefs and conclusions. Possibly. Our reflexes act automatically and quickly. Control is an illusion. If you tap my knee in the right place, the leg will always kick.
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So the concepts I, me mine, are within the system and enforced outside the system as if they are actualities - not just concepts that become beliefs.
This is why Bohm said our thinking is incoherent, causing confusion and conflict in ourselves and in relationship with others.
Can thought remain totally silent from this very moment? Then death is no longer a theoretical exercise which has to be treated differently from the rest of life.
By silent do you mean no thoughts arise? No thinking? Why do we want thought to remain permanently silent?
The total acceptance of life and death is sometimes called psychological death.
It does not pertain to the physical death of the organism, or the brain.
If the brain was dead, thoughts would of course no longer be produced in that particular brain.
Psychological death has more to do with a falling away of authority, a clarity arisng from the disappearance of pain. Maybe its a misleading term as it seems to provoke a heightened liveliness.
We call it death I suppose because the I dies. We can say that the I is immediately reborn/resurrected, but experience in its absence has been seen. I am no longer undeniable.
Sorry, I’m not following : In what way do we treat death differently from life?
Do you just mean one is considered good and the other bad?
In which case we could say that they are treated the same as everything else. Evaluated from a distance. From the position of fear and desire.
Yes I thought that came out clearly with Jess. The idea that there is a ‘me’ in charge who chooses and makes decisions etc. who has ‘responsibility’ for his actions…and yet it may all just be the movement of thought. If the image or idea (or ‘reflex’?) that Jess presented and it is generally accepted to be true: that thinking is just a ‘tool’ that he or I or you wield; if that is false then that would be the source of the ‘incoherence’ that we see going on around the world among humanity, …perhaps?
Totally silent, not permanently silent - there is a big difference. And this difference between totally and permanently also points to the difference between thinking and thought. Thought seeks permanence in the form of a convenient verbal solution; thinking is only possible when these verbal solutions are denied or negated. When the mind is totally silent then another energy comes into being; and so the mind is free to think because it is no longer in thrall to thought.
It is thought alone that has made a problem out of death by projecting it as an event at the end of life. The journey of life is but one day long. So it is possible to die to everything from today without carrying it over into tomorrow.
Ah okay. By “from this moment” you do not mean “from this moment onwards” but rather “can this moment result in silence”
And we usually say that awareness of our discriminating mind allows for silence.
Seeing our experience of discriminating knowledge at work, we might recoil from that discrimination - if we have seen the full implications of mechanical discrimination.
Thought is an instrument of the intellect utilized in different ways for necessary purposes. But because the intellect can be overwhelmed and over-ridden by emotion, i.e., fear, desire, jealousy, greed, anger, etc., thought can be (and is) used for reckless, destructive, violent, deceitful, duplicitous, and self-serving purposes.
The brain lacking self-knowledge does not see and understand how the intellect has been high-jacked by the fundamental feeling of I, me, mine, and operates as if these concepts are actualities. The brain’s ignorance of its own operation renders its thinking incoherent.
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Is thought silent now? Or is it going on in the background, churning over some unresolved issue?
Do we? Speak for yourself. I don’t know if I’ve ever been aware of silence, the absence of the sound of me, the knower.
Seeing our experience of discriminating knowledge at work, we might recoil from that discrimination - if we have seen the full implications of mechanical discrimination.
Have we seen “the full implications” of anything? How would we know any other kind of discrimination than mechanical when all we know is the mechanism of thought?
The movement of thought in our waking state is more or less constant. Why should it cease that movement or “rhythm” as K called it.
To be or not to be, that is the question - Exhaustion? When suffering has banged its head on the wall so much it sees no point in continuing?
Until/unless the brain sees the incoherence of its thinking, its “rhythm” persists.
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Alright, the incoherence of persisting with the ‘me/mine’ is seen in a moment, there is a kind of ‘silence’ but that quickly passes and thought’s rhythm continues. If the ‘contents of consciousness’ are pathways laid down in the brain (reflexes), an ‘emptying’ of them would seem to call for a tremendous amount of energy or ‘shock’ for that transformation to take place. Wouldn’t it?
If that is so, what could provide that shock energy?
Fear of death’s imminence doesn’t seem to provide it.
Intellectually it feels essential to find this ‘freedom from the known’ but that doesn’t seem to be able to bring about the freedom. Does it? And looking at the ongoing plight of Mankind, it seems more necessary than ever.