It looks like they’re applying a standard to you while rejecting the responsibility of holding that standard themselves. If you’re able to see the insight you provide written here by yourself, without it being a mere response of memory, then it isn’t seeing the ideal. It’s seeing the fact. And by even making an assertion that you’re mimicking krishnamurti is just mimicking an ideal. And when people think in groups, it’s usually used as violence. To try silence someone. But if anyone here is looking to gain respect then they are violent, aren’t they? Like you said there is always the possibility of the opposite then.
This is all part of it. We look for something that verifies or validates the relationship. Therefore, we are looking outside of the relationship first for something reliable, solid, known, and then going further into it. But you’ll never know me and I shall never know you. We’ll never even know ourselves. Therefore, to make this ‘knowing’ a condition of relationship is really the wrong way round. What we are really saying is, ‘I know enough to feel safe.’ That’s just like any transaction in daily life: we go into the bakery to buy our bread; we don’t go into the shoe shop. So we are choosing to form and develop a relationship based solely on what we know given the signs and signals that the other person is displaying. All this sounds quite sensible, of course, and for daily life it is perfectly sensible.
But we are still left with the fact that whatever we do, our relationship must always be limited by all its intermediate elements: what we know, what we feel and what we think. And is this really a relationship when we can get so much of it wrong? We are connected - there is no doubt about it – but does connection itself really matter once we see that it is in fact all so very limited? Have we been looking at it the wrong way round? This may not be about being connected at all, but about being totally isolated. That is, we would be meeting the issue of death first, not bringing it into the relationship as a problem.
Yes, that’s it. We seek to gain respect in order to feel safe within the group, whatever the group is. Violence is then built into the group from the start. Society is all about giving precedence to the ideal over the fact, because society itself is a fabricated idea. There is really only me. And what I am, society is. And God knows what I am - I really don’t know - so any society that starts to form itself around anything else is heading for trouble.
But is this a fact or just a wonderful idea, description, explanation.
The fact is I don’t know what I am. This is the same fact for each one of us, isn’t it? When we move away from this fact, we find that this movement away has something to do with ideas. Either there is an acceptable ideal towards which we gravitate or else there is a reaction away from the image of what we think it means not to know, not to be certain, not to be secure.
This is the interesting aspect of some dialogues: that we can actually see the game we are playing right in front of our own eyes. Because whatever we are, psychologically, it is bound to come out in our engagement with other people. Our greed, our fear, our ambition, our anger, our insecurity, our attachments - none of this is ever very far beneath the surface. Yet something very strange happens in some dialogues with other people: it no longer matters what I am or what you are. All of that disappears.
Stating alone, that something is a fact does not mean that it is actually a fact for me. The words are not the fact. They are only a description of something. Still it just can be an idea, a conclusion. A person who smokes and says that it is a fact that smoking is dangerous for the health it not dealing with a fact. For this person it is just an idea.
Sorry, Paul, I’m having trouble following you. Try again?
So what is the fact for you? Is it different from ‘I don’t know’?
There is no doubt that we are connected in some way, is there? We have our shared history, if nothing else. Does our connection define our relationship? Or is relationship about something entirely different from connection?
Now that we are talking about it, it seems that relationship should really include all the facts, not just the visible forms of connection and disconnection, which are fairly obvious to those of us who are looking for evidence that they are related to other people.
Suppose we have the most marvellous relationship, full of vibrancy and joy. Yet one day it will all come to an end. Death will intervene. Can we therefore include death in our relationship, not push it away as though it doesn’t matter?
The fact for me is, that first of all we exchange here words and noone can be sure if what someone says is really true for the other. If you or I say for me the fact is something we cannot know if that is true or simply an idea. I would have to live with you to find out if that would be true for you what you are saying and vice versa. That by the way counts for the saying of K. We do not know if it was true for him or not and it does not matter because we can only find out for ourselves if something is true or not. With that I will not say that it has no meaning to talk together about topics and explore. On the contrary. But we can only explore if we do not start with a certain direction. I have the feeling that the constant refering to K blocks the exploration because one is not free to explore but starts with an assumption that what K said is true. But how do I know? I can only say that if I have percieved that as well but then I do not need to refer to him because the things are true for myself. Otherwise I simply do not know if what he said refers to truth and facts or not. I use the word “refering” here because his words are not the truth. They might refer to it, describe it, but they themselves are not the real. So can we start completely free inwardly and explore ourselves as human beings and do not analyse K and compare what he said with others?
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How do I ‘evaluate’ myself in this moment? What is the ‘scale’ based on?
How do I evaluate my situation in this moment? Does it leave ‘something to be desired ‘? If it does then that is what my ‘future’ will be.
There you go again, mimicking K. What does that mean "you are the mirror "?
I am not here to show you who you are that is foolish , I am here only for the teachings.
It seems ‘relationship’ as it is conventionally understood suffers from the same thing ‘self’ suffers from: They are dependent on, artifacts of the past, the known. If time were removed from the equation, if there were no past, no future, just whatever is happening between us now, would there be a relationship? A connection perhaps, by virtue of sharing the present moment. But relationship seems to imply/require history.
Suppose we have the most marvellous relationship, full of vibrancy and joy. Yet one day it will all come to an end. Death will intervene. Can we therefore include death in our relationship, not push it away as though it doesn’t matter?
Yes, death should be included. It demands to be included, though we might ignore or repress that demand. Impermanence, sorrow, fear, loss, ending, these are all part of the relationship package.
And we: onlookers, always, everywhere,
always looking into, never out of, everything.
It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses.
We arrange it again, and collapse ourselves.
Who has turned us round like this, so that,
whatever we do, we always have the aspect
of one who leaves? Just as they
will turn, stop, linger, for one last time,
on the last hill, that shows them all their valley - ,
so we live, and are always taking leave.
– Rilke, from the Duino Elegies
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It is not about that. Do you know exactly who you are and where you are and why you are here? This is the question. Do you have any answer to this question that is different from, ‘I don’t know’?
I am a little lost, sorry; I am struggling to see how this relates to what came before.
Why not? You have asked me to look in the mirror. That’s what I am doing when I come here, when I face you and all the others. You have already told me I am a copycat. Why not also show me I am foolish? I don’t see any difference. What other mirror is there?
To show me is far more effective than to tell me. Show me.
Already something changes when you say this. It means you have listened to or read me carefully. We have started to include death, not just shut it out.
Yet death is also the total absence of history. Death and dying is about something other than time. And life without dying is no life at all.
Because it is foolish.
You don’t know any more about death than I do. We can speculate and talk about psychological death, however, regardless of whether such discussion is a worthwhile exercise or a waste of time.