Why do you ask? I mean someone could write a really interesting book on this topic if they were so inclined. But in terms of awakening and transformation, any conclusion would be beside the point - especially if transformation is about a perfectly timed meeting of curiosity, honesty and compassion, with the consciousness experienced in each instant.
nb. All movement of the self is by definition necessarily an escape.
If we are truly present, in the moment, no psychological past/future, just now, is there any âviewing of ourselves?â What we view is always at least a smidgen in the past, ditto for âour selves.â
This quote starts K saying, âYou are nothingâ, and concludes with, âyou are as nothingâ.
This may seem trivial, but it is significant because obviously, anything that exists is something, so no one is literally ânothingâ. But every mortal being is as nothing because the dead are nothing but what the living remember of them, just as the living are what they remember of ourselves.
So each of us is something in the moment, the here and now, but over time, that something is nothing more than what we (and others) think we are, and thought is as nothingâŚmore like air and smoke than anything. Yet we have the highest regard for thought, for the words and images that thought creates and modifies and disseminates.
Thought is useful and necessary, but itâs ethereal, ephemeral, and potentially false and misleading. Thought can be oxygen or it can be poison - at its best when the former, and its worst when the latterâŚand thought is what we are.
Only if by view we mean : seeing via the veil of discrimination, knowledge and interpretation.
Only if we confuse seeing with projection of narrative as actual reality.
Only if by view we only mean recognition (of the things I know)
In which case it is the projection of past experience as current experience.
Is there no perception prior to interpretation, or awareness of interpretation?
If so, then psychological past is merely a detail rather than the whole.
Shortly after I posted the message you responded to I saw it in a different light, but decided to leave the original message to see how it fared.
Hereâs what I thought:
If you go by clock time, what we sense is always in the past due to the lag time of each sense, the time it takes the sensory signal to move from the sense organ to the brain. This lag time ranges anywhere from just over 10 ms to ~600 ms, depending on the sense.
Thing is, weâre not (for the most part) talking about clock time here, rather subjective time. Subjectively, we sense things when they occur. When someone speaks to you, subjectively you are hearing their voice in real time (now) without a lag.
Note that I said subjective time, not psychological time. Seems there are (at least) three types of time: clock time, subjective time, and psychological time.
I thought you might be referring to this again, and do wonder why (of course it could be really important in dangerous or subtle faster than light situations) .
However, what does seem important (in the context of understanding conflict) is that our popular idea of time (eg. concepts of now, past future etc) is just one idea - an idea that cannot be used in many cosmological or quantum predictions.
âNowâ exists like the âselfâ exists: subjectively. Our feelings of now and self are both strong and ubiquitous(ish), they both seem self-evident, to doubt their existence seems ridiculous. But, look for them, and you come up blanko, thereâs nothing substantial there, just thought and feeling!