There is no moment of immense fear separate from the everyday fears. Fear is embedded in our brains; it is working all the time. As we said, there are moments of danger, which demand instant action. There are very few such moments throughout the course of our entire existence. On the other hand, fear operates throughout the whole system of the brain cells on a daily basis because the brain is working on the assumption that time is necessary, even though the brain itself has invented psychological time. First, it has collected and stored a bundle of important memories; then it has attached itself to those memories as its psychological identity; and finally it has developed various ways to protect this identity. The brain cells are operating at this protective level all the time: even when the body is sleeping, the brain is still doing this. So any moment of fear comes about as a result of this daily activity, which is working away constantly in the background. This activity of thinking is what creates the fearful scenario. The brain cells have got used to this pattern, even though itās a wrong pattern. And there is no right pattern to replace the wrong because any pattern inevitably makes the brain mechanical. The mutation of the brain cells comes about only when one finds that there is a way of living free from every psychological pattern. And, as we said, the greatest pattern of all the patterns that we have established as human beings is the belief in the power of our own understanding, of solving a problem by the process of looking at it and understanding it. But if the problem itself stems from the same entity that is struggling to effect this understanding, itās a never-ending process.
Letās put it bluntly: a conditioned mind cannot realise a thing. Thatās the whole point.
Rightā¦it operates within the prison of its own conditioningā¦ONLY. It canāt escape by itās own efforts which are conditionedā¦the result of the conditioningā¦and perpetuate the conditioning. The āmeā is totally blindā¦ and bound.
I am biased by the angerā¦fear, etc.
āThe analyzer is the analyzed.ā Begin around the 5:30 point. The observer of the anger is biased by the anger. Same with fear, of course.
Thanks for putting that talk up Tom. I had the impression that Dr Bohm did not grasp what K was telling him about not being separate from the āqualities āā¦basically telling him that the āperson ā DB imagined himself to be, actually didnāt exist! It may be that DB was playing the ādevils advocate ā for the audience but it seemed that he was only understanding āthe observer is the observedā intellectuallyā¦earlier in the video K said that the highly educated āwouldnāt listen ā among other types of people.
I think i should support my previous statement to Dan with a citation as this is a frequent error i have noticed in many. Taking into account how we depend and believe on our bodies, which is tied to our unconscious desires for immortality of one kind or another,it makes sense why these errors happen.
The real issue is the quality of our mind: not its knowledge but the depth of the mind that meets knowledge. Mind is infinite, is the nature of the universe which has its own order, has its own immense energy. It is everlastingly free. The brain, as it is now, is the slave of knowledge and so is limited, finite, fragmentary.Letter to Schools, Vol 2
I could be wrong but i think he has also said that a brain in contact with a free mind might reflect some of the mindās qualities, but that doesnāt make it infinite since itās a biological organ. This is a bit of a tangent in interest of clarifying an important point.
As i recall the talk with her, which I listened to a week ago, I was struck how he came to that as if he was seeing it for the first time. That when the brain is free, it is the Mind. The Mind he said was the cosmic mind ā¦as I recall it.
So what is the energy that frees the conditioned mind? Hope? Self-confidence? Or is there another energy altogether that doesnāt have its origin in the conditioning? Then we really are seeing something for the first time, just as K was seeing it, because we are not operating in time. Therefore the brain cells have already begun to change.
There must be if we are to change. Intellectually at least, this is obvious. But itās unknown. Anything known is conditionedā¦is conditioning. So we are open to the unknown. Thatās all we can do. We can understand the bounds of the knownā¦speaking psychologicallyā¦knowing what to doā¦knowing my problemā¦knowing who or what I amā¦ for instanceā¦all the labels and ideas and beliefs and assumptionsā¦KNOWING or concluding anything at all about the self/me. All that knowing IS the me.
From my reading and listening, K has made it clear that the āenergyā for choicleless awareness is already available but is being wasted in the conflict that has its source in the continuous mis-perception of a separation between the observer and the observed.
Iāll put it in a perspective that Christians might understandā¦intellectually at least. God doesnāt have his being in the dimension where humans liveā¦in the intellectual dimensionā¦the emotional dimension. He has his being in an entirely different dimension. and living in our human dimensionā¦with the āmeā in chargeā¦we canāt touch this āotherā, a word that K used for the dimension beyond the self.
So are we looking at this problem for the first time? Or are we bringing into it all that we have already discovered, which is the known? Are we meeting the fact that we are conditioned through and through, with no special fragment that is separate from this conditioning? In other words, are we facing the fact that what constitutes the essence of ourselves - as the āmeā, the ego, the self, the personal identity, the ambitions, the hopes, the plethora of desires that drive us on ā the essence of ourselves is already a dead energy, limited, bound in time? Are we actually looking at this fact without any idea of another form of energy?
Letās be very clear what the fact is that we are considering or deliberating about: that the conditioned mind is incapable of freeing itself from its conditioning by any action whatsoever. Thatās the fact. And the problem is to be free of the fact.
But we want to be free of the problem, not free of the conditioning. I doubt that we see that the conditioning isnāt separate from the problem. That is is the cause of problems.
Letās say weāre poor and we want to solve the problem of poverty. Can the conditioned mind help solve our problem. We obviously feel it can even though we may struggle for many months or years even with our problem/s. We want to be free of povertyā¦we dontā normally consider that our poverty is related to our conditioningā¦to manās conditioning.
I agree. āThe problem is me.ā At the heart of it, that is what we are saying. But even if it makes intellectual sense, no real change seems to occur. Therefore I question even that it makes intellectual sense. Because if it made sense then the intellect would be completely quiet; and that never seems to happen.
The intellect is the source of the problem; yet the intellect is incapable of realising it. Isnāt this the whole thing in a nutshell?
Right. The intellect, for miIlenia, has been seen as the tool to solve problemsā¦like it does in the material world. I solve the problem of being cold by learning how to gather wood and make a fire. But then we have the problem/s in āmeāā¦my fear or anger or greedā¦violence. Does the intellect have a role here at all? We see the problem of anger as separate from meā¦and we try to act upon it. Like when weāre hungry we act to find food. We donāt sit quietly and observe our hunger. Yet K often has suggested that we quietly observe the psychological problem/s.
