Dear Voyager, an idea in itself is a fact. It is a product of thinking which is also a fact. But the contact of thinking or an idea is a non-fact. It is jus a description and we are used to react to that. This reaction produces feelings, which we might call resistance. But these feelings, once we feel them also are a fact. They are there and exist. But they are based on an idea, on thinking. Do we see the fact of what an idea is? If we do, we would not follow or react on it, would we not?
Erik,
I know all the distinctions you have made verbally.
That is what I meant in my preovious post. At every moment, in our daily life, we switch from perceptions to abstractions and viceversa. The perception of an abstraction is a fact, the idea in itself is not. The idea, the image or whatever we instantly create in our mind, is not something we can deal with, like we cannot eat the image of bread. We can use ideas to communicate with others, or to understand technical things but we can do nothing to modify the ghosts which appear in our consciousness.
therefore I have said:
I feel I am managing to switch quite easily from abstractions (or non-facts) to perceptions with the necessary clarity, that is why I said: so far so good.
But the grip of ideas is very strong and there is always the danger of being caught in abstractions in other situations, so one must be very watchful.
I agree with you, but I really would distinguish one thing. The idea like a thought in itself is a fact. If we think something, that is a fact. We can observe that thought or idea. It exists. But the content of the thought or idea is not a fact, it is a description. And a description is not the fact, it is describing something. Though the existence of a content is again a fact. We easily condem the idea. But the existence and creation of an idea is a fact. It exists. Still an idea does not exist without its content. But the content can change and the idea still always remains what it is. I feel it is important to make that distinction here. Ideas have its place for example in developing technology. And there we always are clear that its content is not a fact but a description of what is possible and has to be put into existence. I hope this does not sound too confusing.
Whatever is meant by I, it would made clear that there is a connection with the world or even with the universe!
I understand and I agree with you. But if life truely renews itself, that newness can not come out of the existing, the old. Therefore it would also come into the world.
“Life” doesn’t “renew itself”. Only its manifestation? New grass doesn’t come into the world nor do new people animals etc. Life itself is perhaps eternal and everywhere? Its manifestion depends on the environment, circumstances.
How do you know? Life is never the same, it is always new. The new spring is not the last one. It is new.
Who knows about life ? But this idea about newness, coming into the world, etc is responsible for our suffering and fear of death. We wonder if we ‘came’ into the world, where do we ‘go’ when we ‘leave’ it? Like leaves fretting when they fall in the autumn, “what will become of me?” The human ‘cult of individuality’, not to mention all the fantastic ‘religious’ myths all stem from this ‘coming into the world’ rather than the more mundane explanation of a recycling, regeneration of energy?
In order to answer all these question we would have to clarify what we are talking about and what we mean by life and newness. Suffering and fear of death for me have nothing to do with newness. Also a cult or recycling has nothing to do with newness. At least to me. So we would have to clarify what we are talking about before drawing any conclusions.
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We surely don’t know how to think but we can surely write English all right.
Let’s look at real life, perhaps it will help us to put things in the right perspective.
Just a simple real example.
This morning I had to accompany my wife to the hospital for a check. I waited for her more than two long hours in a dreary room. After a while my mind began to daydream about beautiful natural places I know, of swimming at sea, etc.
Was I dealing with a fact? Was I staying with what is? Was I flowing with life?
You tell me.
Now, once you reply to that, don’t you realize that all those questions deal with definitions of words and so can be a matter of interpretation? And this is the most popular hobby here in this forum: an endless and useless running around words and endless and useless attempts at interpreting K’s words.
If we don’t stick to words and face real life, the only useful question to ask in my situation was: which is the more intelligent way of tackling the situation, the one which makes me feel really better?
Erik, it isn’t clear to me what you are objecting to (if you are objecting to something) in your reply to Voyager?
You seem to be replying to Voyager’s statement that
I think this is clear enough, isn’t it? From your reply, you seem to be saying that the content of an idea has its place in practical affairs. I don’t think that Voyager, or anyone else, would deny this. The content of my idea about how to get back to my house is clearly relevant to my practical need to return to my house. If that content is grossly inaccurate, then it is useless.
Science works on the same basis, and so ideas (and their contents) have relevance there.
I think Voyager was just talking psychologically; he was saying that the idea (which includes its content) of bread will not feed me. That’s all I understood Voyager to be talking about. The idea of bread is a fact, but the content of the idea itself - even if it is an accurate representation as an image of bread - is not a fact.
Perhaps sometimes we over-complicate things that do not need to be complicated, and so misunderstandings occur?
Man cannot live on the idea of bread alone 
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Dear Voyager, the fact was that you daydreamt. But the content of the dream was not a fact. The fact was, you were dreaming, imagining. I think that is all one can say. You are dealing with that fact, if you see that the movement of your thinking was just dreaming. And if one does, would daydreaming then be a problem?
That is absolutely right. But the existence of an idea is a fact. That is all I wanted to say. We very easily condemn the idea completely or say it is a non-fact, which is over simplifying things to me. Out of it comes often then the wish not to have ideas or thoughts etc. As your intention was, so far I understood, that it is about perception, then we have to see the fact of an idea, its existence and its content. In the same way it is a fact , that an illusion exists if someone follows it or behaves according to it.
First of all I never said that daydreaming was a problem, and in my real, actual situation I didn’t lived it as a problem. So this closes the matter, doesn’t it?
Second: there were two facts at the moment, or better three: the actual external situation, my dislike of it and my going into immagination. If you focus only on daydreaming as you did, you are not seeing the whole picture, the whole actuality, and this can never awaken the needed intelligence to act in the right way. Each one of those three facts has its importance and so deserve attention. And the quality of that attention will eventually awaken intelligence and not the speculation whether an idea is a fact or a non-fact.
Again let me repeat that sticking to words, however wise or well thought and to the person who said them will not help us. In observation I can discover what actually I can do, and that will be different from one situation to another.
What I did was to see that my daydreaming, however pleasant, could never substitute or cancel the ongoing outward situation if not for one or two seconds, so it was not an effcient way to tackle it. Illusions can never substitute reality (in spite of K. affirming that even illusions are reality) and we are cheating ourselves when we think to overcome an unpleasant situation by taking refuge into an illusion. So again, I dare say that my daydreaming (and so imagines or ideas which are made by the same stuff) was not a fact because I could not deal with it the way I could deal, practically, with the room I was in, with the uncomfortable chair I was seated on, with the other people present and so on, and also with my dislike of all that. We can only undergo an idea or immagination and that is why we are conditioned by it. Unless we are aware of this we have no choice but to be subjected to it. I call a fact something I can act upon, something I can interact with. Perhaps this definition of mine is wrong and you or K may have a better one, But at the hospital there was not either K nor you or any other person to “help” me with the right definition and only my seeing could reveal what was the right action.
So I started observing the room, the people, etc. and asking myself why I disliked all that and wished to be elsewhere. The answer of course is granted, it’s better to be at sea than there, no doubt, but what if I didn’t compare? Then, with no comparison, only one significant fact remained: the room and all it contained. I had called it “dreary” so I had already formed an image of it and that image was controlling my mood, I was being subjected to it. But the moment I really started to observe all the things which were there “without the word” there was not anymore any reaction of dislike and so no need to escape into a dream.
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Dear Voyager, I understand you very well and I am not contradicting what you wrote and experienced. I am not just taking one think out or focus on one thing. Maybe we should first clarify what a fact is. To me it is something which exists now. It can be something I can act on but it must not be. The earth we are living on is turning, the air is maybe polluted and I can not act on it in its entirety. To me a fact is something that is there, exists. And all I wanted to say is that the image as well as the illusion are existing. That is not a speculation. It is is a fact that we humans live according to ideas or even worse according to illusions. They are actual and direct our action as humans. The fact is also that an idea like the word are just describing something and they are not that what they describe. An illusion goes even further and describes something that does not even exist. You said that when you observed only one significant fact remaind, the room and all it contained. You could also say a lot of facts interrelated at the time. All the organs in the body and the body in the room through the senses etc. Do we not reduce again the whole when we say there is only one fact? What you describe to me is more that you just were percieving the factual without psychological interfering, interfering through thinking. All I wanted to say is, if we see what an idea actually is, if we see the fact of an idea or illusion, we will not follow it. And from what you describe it seems that is what you have done.
Erik,
Man has two types of intelligence (when referred to reasoning) according to neuroscience (I forgot how they call them), one is the capacity to solve or tackle a problem within the context of the discussion, the other is the capacity to find a solution outside the boundary of what we are talking about or focusing to. Both are necessary but for psychological or spiritual problems only the second kind of intelligence is decisive, crucial. K was often a complete stupid regarding the first kind but was a genius at the second. Actually, very often the solution lies outside the field which created the problem.
I offered you a simple example just not continue on the contraposition between fact/non-fact (which by the way, as James remarked, was something quite clear both to you and me in the previous posts) but to see the whole problem in a completely different way from that which we started our discussion with. And I wanted to put the stress on the doing and not on defining.
I’m glad you understood my point of view.
Dear Voyager, I am not concerned with a contraposition and this is really not my point. I was trying, as you said, to look at the whole topic from a different perspective but I have the feeling that I could not convey it to you. I am not concerned with the defining. The doing is only possible if we percieve facts and stay with them. What I do not understand: What makes you so sure to judge K as stupid in something? And the second - I am very familiar with neuroscience because of my job -, what is stated in neuroscience are basically theories and hypothesis and usually they are not concerned with the whole picture. That is not something we should rely on to judge anybody anything.
Again, don’t stick to words but see facts. I’m not judging K., “stupid” was just to meant “not keen on that”.
The facts can be seen in many if not all of his dialogues or questions & answers meetings. When someone asked him a question or posed a problem to him he never replied within the context of the question but introduced a completely different factor or factors which the questioner didn’t bring in. This made made many people affirm that he didn’t answer to the question (actually in many cases it seems like that). But what he actually did was to answer in the only way that solved the problem. A solution which many people didn’t like!
Again don’t stick to words, I’m not sure it was neuroscience, I don’t remember where I have read it. Anyway, neuroscience, like all science, involves theories but also a great deal of observation and experiments so I wouldn’t exclude it tout court. (By the way: may I know your job?)
However I have quoted the two kinds of intelligence because I have observed them operating in real life and in discussions. If you observe how a discussion is managed here for instance in this forum maybe you can discover the second type of intelligence, even if the first is the more common, granted there is a person who reasons in that way and we are able to grasp this way.
I am working in journalism, teaching and psychological couseling. For me it is not a question of sticking to words. It is how conscious we use our language and as we cannot percieve each other here whole and just are face with words and thoughts we should be very careful how we use our words and if they represent what we mean. I am familiar with the splitting up of intelligence and it could even be splitted further. I have witnessed that in many companies and talked to neuroscientists about it. I do not think it is very helpful to define different types. Why do we want to create these differences? And on which basis? I for example never had the feeling that K did not answer a question. I always felt he did exactly that, but he did not follow the expectations of the other people.