It is all good stuff you have written. Is there one aspect of it or one question that for you stands out among the rest?
Thinking, as we generally know it, is tied to time: the time of experience, the time of knowledge accumulated across years, the time of becoming a better human being. But we asking if there is a thinking that is not tied to time. Then, perhaps, we start to open up a new way of looking at the world and at ourselves.
I did wonder if it was helpful to use the word “death” in my last statement.
It was shorthand for a question I had about the process of someone who tries to observe themself, and what their motivation might be - in other words whether some insight into suffering was required, some revolutionary transformation regarding our relationship to the known/self - or whether trying to observe myself from this shore (of confusion) was actually possible.
I understand what not being bound by time, in the sense of not being its slave, its puppet might mean - but if the known is always a process based on past experience, I don’t see how thinking can be separate from time.
What do you mean by “tied to time” and what would it mean for thinking to not be tied to time in this instance?
This kind of question asked mamy times already. It seems we can’t.
I am glad you brought in the word ‘death’ because this is all about the death of an old way of living.
It may not be possible for thinking ever to be separate from time. We may find that thinking and time are inextricably tied together. However, that discovery itself may be enough to radically change the nature of our thinking. We may then find that our thinking about things is really no longer necessary except when faced with certain moments where only thinking can assist us practically and efficiently in the present moment. Yesterday, for example, I had to attend a dental appointment. Thinking allows oneself to navigate chronological time so that one arrives promptly and doesn’t waste the time of others. But what about the psychological time involved in going to the dentist? What about all the thinking of the possible pains involved? Does that operate too? So we are talking about psychological time chiefly first of all. Once we have resolved the issue of thinking being tied to psychological time, the other stuff must inevitably resolve itself.
Then let’s be intense about it. Don’t let’s accept anything from what has gone before, whether it is failure or success. Then we shall find that the brain is already in a different state. In other words, the feeling that there is only this time right now to get at this question and deal with it wholly. This is more than just a feeling; it is also a sensible, logical, factual approach. Either we’ll shy away from it or we’ll go into it together. There may be some degree of muddle or misunderstanding as we converse because we first have to get our words and their meanings clear. But if we approach all this from that supreme sense of not knowing what on earth we might find or encounter, then we are already establishing the foundations for a very strong and stable common ground. Our not knowing is a fact. From a fact we can move together.
My relationship to reality is usually one of complete authority.
We can call it a psychological relationship because its about me - how I am concerned by my experience - how I am the central, element of importance.
And we can call it a problematic, or mechanical relationship because of its total power : because what I see seems soo important to my survival, and seems soo real and correct - the power of what I know must be obeyed.
Then look carefully at what you know. Do you have any existence outside of thought? Or it is only ever thought saying, ‘I know.’ So thought is the authority.
My existence, and the existence of everything else, as I experience it, seems very solid and real. Even if I agree intellectually that its just perception, knowing and feeling -
perception, knowing and feeling is the whole of my experience, it is all of reality (for me).
Why would I question the truth of it? Even if there seems to be unpleasant stuff happening, maybe it cannot be avoided.
Why are you obsessed with finding common ground with others when self-knowledge is what matters most? Are you not self-centered like the rest of us?
It doesn’t matter what the other is doing when you are as self-centered as the other. Find out for yourself what the self is, what it means to be human, to be free of psychological content. Then you’ll have something to say to others.
But when you talk of knowing, what is it that you know?
I am not interested in having something to say. Do we have a global brain that is capable of clear, undivided, undistorted perception? Then so many of our words are unnecessary.
Most of your words are authoritative. You think and write as if you know more than you do. You have no interest in learning about the self.
It is you who creates the image of authority and makes it into a problem. I am putting a question or two. And sometimes I am putting a statement or two that are open for scrutiny. The authority comes in when you blindly accept or reject what is being said without looking at it. Then the authority is in your own brain in the form of any conclusions you have accumulated about what to do with your life. And I am asking if we can step out of this pattern. Neither of us know what to do with our lives! From here, with an honest assessment of this simple fact, we have a chance to do something different. This is not an authoritarian stance.
To whom are you asking such questions?
Aren’t all these statements, authority? The delusion “I know” or the delusion of the other I am not me but you are you!? A fool at that… HA!
There is only thought at work or at play here. There is no ‘who’ or ‘whom’, no fragment of the self which thought has not put together over time, either as the writer, the reader, the speaker or the listener. There is only thought. Can thought therefore be aware of its own limitations and excesses? Can thought be so aware of itself that it finds a different role to play in the universe?
Or do you say, ‘Sorry, I am much more than just thought’? ‘I am unique, special, creative. I am my wealth of experiences and memories; I am my unresolved hurts and hopes. Please don’t reduce me down to just mechanical, wayward thought.’
So the question you have posed can only be answered by your own brain, which is also my brain, which is the human brain. If you go for the second option then we are going to be at war, superficially or deeply, for the rest of our lives. That’s the way we have all lived up until now.
It’s not that I’m “intensive about it”, Maheshji. I see your point. What I’m talking about is a fact I observe: people can’t get this common ground, but keep arguing about words, on and on. Smth is preventing us from seeing real things behind the words. That’s our great problem…
It isn’t clear what you’re trying to say here. Try again.
Are there real things behind the words Valer and Mahesh? When we look at one another, what actually do we see that is real, that is not just a lot of images? Then these two entities, V and M, talk about something called a common ground. Why? Are we talking about the common ground because we fail to see one another? Is it as simple as this?
Which means our problem is very easy to resolve.
Words and concepts matter most when the brain is conditioned to rely on thought more than awareness.
When awareness is reactively (rather than carefully) translated into words and concepts, observation becomes the observer, the translator, and misrepresents (with words and concepts) what is happening.
But once there is awareness of this reaction and it is seen for what it is, it is not mistaken for awareness. Deeper awareness undermines the authority of the brain’s reactive psychological content.