Yes, Erik, it’s just “how conscious we use our language”. Sorry to point that out but you continued to stick to words and their meaning all through our too long discussion. Reapeating over and over again what a fact is, even, if as, James said, we were expressing the same concept.
You have already clarified it in a wonderful way, then why insisting on it? You only need to re-read your posts and you can see what I am pointing to you. Contrapposition means: you say this, I say that, and if you read what you have written, you did just that. So to me there was no need to continue with that song and I felt I needed to sing a different tune. When I did just that you said you had understood my point, then why continuing insisting on the “what a fact is” song?
Don’t you see the relationship between what I have done in repling to you and the two kinds of intelligence? Quoting them was a way to attract your attention to the way I acted and why. But, in spite of your statements you have not understood the reason behind my example.
I’m a very direct person Erick, and I think in these matters one has to be direct. In your job you cannot be direct because your patients are not prepared to accept a direct discourse. A person with some pscyhological disturbance has not the necessary awareness to understand a direct affirmation. But here one is supposed to be healthy and keen to explore even unpleasant or unusual statements or points of view.
I am sorry Voyager, but I have to say, you get lost in conclusion. What you say in your last paragraph is not true, at least for the work I am doing. You are wrong because you know nothing about me and my work. But that is not the place here to go into it. And I have to say you neither understood why I refered to the subjet of “facts” and what I wrote about separating intelligence. It is obvious we do meet here at the moment. So do not bother about it anymore. Warm wishes.
Unfortunately I was busy with work today, so I haven’t been able to follow everything that has been taking place. But I still feel that you are overcomplicating something that doesn’t need to be so complex, Erik.
You said earlier that
but I do not think that this is what Voyager was saying. An idea is just an idea, right? It isn’t sacred. An idea can be coherent and useful, when (for instance) we want to get a rocket into space. But in itself an idea is simply a neuro-electrical movement in the brain, whose content will never be more than a representation, an image, a ghost. When we live in ideas, we are living in a ghost town. That’s all.
As Voyager pointed out, sometimes this ghost-town can be a pleasant distraction from a prosaic situation (he talked about daydreaming while waiting in a hospital waiting-room). But it is still a ghost-town: by which I mean, the people in it are not real, they are just images, and this has its own consequences.
The interesting thing that Voyager shared about his daydreaming experience was that,
In other words, he saw that the daydream - however pleasant - was a distraction from the actual present situation that he was living; which contributed to - and confirmed - the negative judgements he already had about the chair he was sitting on, the people nearby, and the “dreariness” of the room. In other words, he saw that he was being controlled by mere images (ideas) in his mind. But as soon as he
That is, by turning towards the actual living situation he was in, and meeting it without an escape, the images that had been “controlling [Voyager’s] mood” fell away, and the situation became itself bearable, interesting. That’s an interesting observation, right?
So there is the power of the image to create both pain and pleasure (the negative images of the waiting-room, and the positive images of Voyager’s daydream of swimming in the sea), which is one fact. And there is the power of meeting the actual present situation (the hospital waiting-room) without images, which is another fact. Both are facts, but one fact - the actual present without images - is primary; while the other fact - the negative or positive images - is secondary.
I don’t think you would disagree with this Erik, so I don’t quite understand the need for greater elaboration on the subject?
By elaborating on the nature of facts, there is a danger of missing the bigger picture (the bigger fact!) - which is that in daily life we are often lost in ideas, in images, in daydreams (the content), and so do not give as much attention as we might do to the primary fact of our actual present situation (which is inclusive of the secondary fact of our ideas and images). Do you see what I mean?
And when two very different personalities (as you and Voyager exhibit) elaborate too much, misunderstandings are bound to take place - which is what I feel happened here.
I understand you very well James. What I question is the differtiation in primary and secondary fact. That is where we introduce dualism. In both cases there are just facts. And if we see what they are we do not follow what brings conflict. I actually think we miss the bigger picture if we start to break down the bigger picture into pieces, primary, secondary and with it good or bad, right or wrong or whatever. We are then concerned with the details, the particular and not the whole. The misunderstanding simple comes if we do not clarify about what we are talking.
Erik, surely it isn’t a matter of dualism, but of seeing the whole in which all the parts have their place. No? To use K’s language, in the actuality (the primary fact of the hospital waiting room, with real people and objects, etc) the reality (of thought - the secondary fact of daydreams and negative images) has its place.*
Primary and secondary are just words - so please don’t get hooked on them. But the fact is that without your actual brain Erik, there would be no thoughts. Without a physical, actual world to exist in, the recognition of an idea - its reasonableness or illusoriness - could never take place.
When a thought takes on the weight of reaction, becoming bodily sensation - such as our fears and anxieties, our hurts and sorrows, our pleasures and desires - then we might call this phenomenon (after K) an “actuality in the field of reality”. (This is related, btw, to what you were referring to earlier in discussion about the power of illusions to create actual consequences in the world).
So the content of an illusion - or even of a coherent and useful idea - is never actual. No matter how much we may want it to be actual - as when, for instance, people pray to God or believe strongly in an ideal, in an ideology of some kind - the content of an idea will always remain a ghost, a phantom, something unreal, untrue, unfaithful to what is; because it is merely a reality (created by thought) and not an actuality. Do you see the point? So the reality of the idea depends for its whole force on the actuality of the brain and body (and world of nature) that it exists in.
Without the human being sitting in an actual waiting room (filled with other human beings) there would be no daydream, no positive or negative images, and no opportunity to meet the actual present situation (of the waiting room) without images.
I think this is roughly what Voyager was pointing out in the discussion.
*If you are not familiar with K’s short-lived use of the words reality and actuality (during the late 70s) I will leave it up to you to investigate it for yourself. But, very simply put, reality = thought, and actuality = nature, what is.
Dear James, I understand you well and I agree what you say about illusion. As well I am familiar with what K said about reality and actuality, though he sometimes used it differently. Still I think you are not correct and you are also interpreting K. Thinking, thought is bound to the brain, which is nature and therefore an actuality. That also means that thinking is nature, because it is the function of the brain to think. And thinking covers much more than just to form an idea. Thinking is an actuality because without thinking we will not be able to exist. The content of the idea though is a different thing. This is bound to the past and the setting etc. This content can represent the actual or can be completely imaginative. And here is the difference, I believe of what we are talking about. Though the content of the idea never is the actual, it can represent it and be born of the actual. Then an idea and thinking have a different quality. If the idea is born out of an idea then everything you say is absolutly so. I feel, as I am writing this, that is what I wanted to make clear. It is the state of our mind that matters. If our mind is based on an idea, illusion e.g. that the self exists then our thinking too gets lost in illusions. But if it is base on observation and not an idea, our thinking is clear, representing the actual. Does this make more sense to you?
Erik, I think we have already gone over these matters above, haven’t we? So I’m not sure, despite what you say, how closely you have read what has already been written.
We already said that thought is part of an electro-chemical process in the brain, and so is an actuality in that sense.
We also said that the content of thought is not an actuality in the same way that the neuropsychological nature of thought is an actuality; because the content (whatever it may be) is merely an abstraction, an image, a limited conceptual representation of the actual.
We even said that the content of thought can be reasonable and coherent (and so useful - as in the memory of how to return to my home); or that it can be illusory, and so create real but negative consequences.
So we have already been over what you are saying here in your reply. So I do not see what you are still objecting to or wanting to add to or draw attention to by going on like this?
You seem to be wanting to say that when the content of thought is coherent and reasonable (like the correct representation in one’s memory of how to get back home), then
Okay: so there is a different quality that goes with having a coherent memory of how to get back to my home, and having an abhorrent or incoherent memory of how to get back to my home (something that can happen, for instance, when we are confused, intoxicated, in a fever, or when we are dreaming, etc). But so what? I don’t know what you are driving at through this? The quality of sane thinking and insane thinking is a different quality; but they are both still thinking, correct? - And the content of any thought (whether sane or insane) is still just a phantom, a ghost, something not actual. Do you see this Erik? Why are we still discussing this?
To say it again: the content of the thought - even the most accurate, reasonable, most coherent thought - is still only an abstraction, a ghost, a relative unreality. One cannot bite into the idea or image of a mango. Whatever quality an accurate image of a mango might have in my mind, I cannot taste it, I cannot eat it, can I?
So I’m afraid I really don’t get what you are wanting to say Erik. I feel that you are being unnecessarily complicated, or obstinately narrow-focussed, or at best completely unclear in your explanations of what you are trying to say. And in sticking to this complication or narrow concern, I feel you are are ignoring the bigger picture of awareness and what it means to be aware that I think Voyager has been wanting to explore.
Indeed it is unfair, because as you said you have not understood what I want to convey. I am not complicated and it is not my intention to do so. That is also why I do not write very long posts. I do not object what you are saying. But I want to point to the fact that the quality of thinking can change. It is still thinking but also at the same time it is not the same as if we are caught in ideas. It is like with us. If we understand something about ourselves, maybe we have done something wrong for example, and change our behaviour and our way to percieve then we are actually not the same person anymore even if the body has not changed fundamentally. (Though the latter often also changes if we inwardly change). You are not the same person as you were 20 years ago. If thinking does not get caught in ideas it is part of the whole. Separation does not exist then and action is based on the whole. I feel that it is very important. Because then content of a thought is still just a discription but it cannot be separated from the whole of the situation and perception. It is part of it and functions just as a tool, an important, even necessary tool to act. But it is not the dominant factor. In the same way we would never separate a hand or leg of our action. We know that they are limited but they are part of the whole. Separation is only there if we are caught in ideas and treat ideas and thinking on the basis of an idea, an idea about what thinking is or should be etc. The quesion of the quality of thinking is also a question if we see things as a whole or not. Does this makes things more understandable? I am sorry but this is a question where I find the forum very limited and it would help to meet personally. Also I am trying to address something which goes beyond what we discussed up to here. Maybe your example of the Mango can help. If thinking has this other quality we would never think about of taking the image of the mango for real and try to eat. It simply would not make sense. Thinking then would only serve acting in the moment.
Erik, forgive me, but it has taken you several days to attempt to communicate something that is still not very clear. Is that not complicated?
If all you are saying is that the perception of thought as a tool has a different quality to the identification with a content of thought, then why not just be simple about it and say that. (Voyager already said this in post 204*).
I do not see anything in what either Voyager or myself have said that would disagree with this. In fact, Voyager’s example of his experience of being in a hospital waiting room was a very good example of just this thing that you are (apparently) wanting to say: namely that the perception of thought as thought, once seen, allows for a direct meeting with things as they are (the what is).
Why make it more complicated than this?
Do we need to have a long drawn out discussion about whether the idea of the mango is sweet and edible? It gets too absurd.
To be honest, I couldn’t give two hoots about the quality of thought, because thought is not actual (i.e. the content of thought; not, of course, the electro-chemical nature of thought).
In choiceless awareness there is simply an opportunity to be aware of thought as it is happening, of sensations and feelings as they are happening, without engaging with these things or identifying with them. Just watching them as they happen. (And, obviously, if we do engage with them, identify with them, then watching the consequences of that engagement).
And this watching of the “inner” is not separate from the watching (choicelessly) of the room in which we sit, of the trees and sky outside the window, of the birds flying by or other people’s voices next-door, etc - the “outer”. Awareness is both of the inner and the outer.
So all of this is part of the quality of awareness - which is the only quality that presently interests me. Is this clear?
Dear James, no I do not think it is complicated because we are dealing with things that are hard to put into words as it is like you said, the words and the content of thoughts are not the actual. And part of the exploration, at least to me, is to find the words which might represent the things we are discussing best because it is a way to understand and question. I understand you and your argumentation is logical. But you leave something out. You for example quote Voyager with “the perception of an abstraction is a fact, the idea in itself is not”. And I say no. The idea in itself is a fact as well as thinking. Its content is not. Ideas and thinking exist and we deal with it in the way that we constantly react on it, the idea about ourself. We constantly behave as if we could eat the image of bread. Percieving what an idea actually is, puts it and thinking into its place as part of the whole. And to percieve with that quality you are interested in means that thinking too must have a different quality. As you talk of choiceless awareness again I use it here also. In it we can be aware of thinking but also of our heartbeat, of all the different things happening in our body and they are nature and are actual. The same counts for thinking as part of the organism. But the product of thinking, its content, that is not the actual. I am sorry that I get on your nerves but I insist on this, in this perception things change and that counts for thinking too. It has a different quality and it is not the thinking that is based on an idea, the idea of a self. It is not just a diffrent quality to the identification with a content of thought. So either we leave it there. I really do not want to make you angry. But to me you leave something out and which I obviously cannot convey here in this forum. And this missing part is about percieving, percieving what is. Have you ever worked with people who have autism? And if so, have you found out about their thinking?
Erik, I think it is simply a matter of English language comprehension. Even though Voyager is not using English as his first language, it was immediately clear to me from the context of his whole post that, in this case, he was talking about the content of an idea.
He made a distinction between “the perception of an abstraction as a fact”, aka, the actuality of thinking taking place objectively; and “the idea in itself” - which he clarified to mean the content of the image, such as our “image of bread”, which we obviously “cannot eat” (his words). The image of bread in our mind, like the image of a mango, is not real, not actual, it is a ghost. It can be a useful ghost if it helps me to buy bread or mangos at the market, but I cannot eat a ghost. (I am using a metaphor here, so please don’t object to my use of the word “ghost” on this account).
So the misunderstanding seems to have begun there, which then continued in your replies. Because you missed the larger context of what Voyager wrote, you focused on Voyager’s particular usage of words so as to make clear your objections. But your objections to Voyager’s words were based on an obvious misunderstanding from the start which you didn’t see - even after it was pointed out to you repeatedly.
So no-one is disagreeing with what you say here:
This is precisely what Voyager conveyed - to me at least! - with what he originally wrote; and to make it more explicit, he followed it up in his next posts with an example from his personal experience (his experience of waiting in a hospital rating room and daydreaming/having negative images of the waiting room).
So why wasn’t this clear to you Erik?
I am a little annoyed because I hate having to spend so much time clarifying a misunderstanding that someone has had based on their non-native English language skills (which is simple enough to correct), but also because you did not pay attention to the whole context of what either myself or Voyager have written. It feels like a waste of words over something that we basically do not see all that differently from each other.
However, if, in addition to this misunderstanding (i.e. about the non-actuality of the content of thought, which we all now agree on) you have a personal interest in exploring the “quality of thought”, then go ahead. You can start a whole new thread on the subject and discuss it at length. But I do not see how it is relevant in the context of this present discussion - about awareness.
If the subject of thought matters to you because you are working with autistic patients, okay, then maybe start a thread looking into that. But as neither myself nor Voyager are clinically autistic (as far as I am aware), it is probably tangential to the present situation.
I suggested to you to leave it at that in my last post, which you obviously cannot. Why are you annoyed? Because I am not fullfilling expectations? You obviously cannot take my questions seriously and react with a lot of conclusions. You are very quick in interpreting. I never said that I am interested just in exploring thought. If you have followed my post you would have realized that for me in order to understand perception, understanding thinking is important. So raising these questions for me is a question about exploring perception. You seem not interested in that which is fine for me. And I can only say again, I am not bringing these things up to annoy you but to explore. But you even not ask why I bring that up but jump immediately into conclusions. By the way the same did Voyager. So where is the perception you are talking about, where is the whole picture you are talking about? I am sorry if got on your nerves. I will not bother you anymore. Take care and warm wishes, Erik
Can each one of us here forget completely what what has been said and all the psychological reactions that (probably) we all had and start anew the whole matter?
That is (to use A K’s expression) can we die to the past?
After all we are only small atoms agitated, shaken, tossen in this mysterious infinite universe. We don’t know what we are, we don’t know where we are going, we know nothing… So what sense it has to make a fuss for a set of words? Words, like all memory are just “the dead ashes of the past” as K. poetically put it.
So, if we, you, are willing to do that, just like an experiment, how shall we proceed?
If communication is to meet each other, where we can meet? Words have divided us, so it’s obvious that we cannot meet there, we can’t rely on them. But at the same time we can’t discard them because we have no other way of communicating. So what has one to do? The only place we can meet is staying deeply rooted in the now and from there look at the thoughts, ideas, reasoning which come in our minds. Everything we need to understand can be understood solely starting from the now, otherwise it will be a fragment of the past trying to understand another fragment. The past can never understand itself, thought can never understand either itself or something which is completely outside itself like perception.
Do we see this point? It’s the base of all K’s teaching. And of course thought can never understand awareness.
So, you (said) you want understand perception, with what tool do you want to understand it?
You said it’s important to understand thought, OK, with what tool do you want to understand it?
If you start from the now, then only perception, observation, awareness is there, and it will be perception which will understand itself and thought. But of course it’s not the kind of understanding we are used too, it’s not an intellectual understanding, even if it is necessary to have an intellectual understanding.
But the great difference between the two kinds of understanding is that intellectual understanding is subjective and therefore it may vary from person to person, and so it divides us, while the understanding which preception brings about does not create such division.
To me the whole matter depends on our approach. What is normally meant for a discussion is approaching a topic through thought, and look at all the divisions it created!!!
If we understand this point, then a forum on K. is just a way to move away both from K and from reality.
None of us can never find the truth of anything discussing it here. Discussions are just one of the favorite games of our egos.
To aproach it from the now means to be silent and just observe like an idiot would do.
And how stress-free is to be such an idiot!!!
Dear Voyager, oh again a lot of words and explanations. The root meaning of idot is from greek for simple man and also someone without knowledge and no experiences. So are we that or are all this just words and explanations which sound logically brilliant.
What Voyager has pointed out - using words of course (this is an online text-based forum after all) - is that words are limited. So when you write
he is in part agreeing with you, and admitting the limits of exploring through words.
But essentially he is saying that in order to understand perception (or awareness) one must use an appropriate tool. The appropriate tool to understand perception is not thought, analysis, thinking - but perception (just as the appropriate tool to understand awareness, is awareness).
As I said we can’t rely on words but if we want to partecipate in this forum we are bound to use them. So your exclamation (oh again a lot of words) cannot be meant unilaterally, that is: addressed to only one person, because we all have spent a lot of words. Haven’t we? Perhaps you want to mean: useless words? Yes, perhaps most of our words were useless, we are only humans and so we are bound to say something which is not so important after all. What is important is what lies behind our words: that is, do we really want to estabilish a communication? Not to determine who is right or who is wrong, that has no importance at all in looking for truth. And what keep us here? It’s very difficult to feel whether in the other here there is sincere affection like when people sit in front of each other, and I was told that you were an affectionate person when talking with Zoom, so can we be affectionate here too and not cultivate distrust towards the other?
You ask: Are we that (an idiot) or just words and explanation?
This is a very good question. Really good.
How do we find out?
In my view the only way to find it out is to veryfy in ourselves and for oneself if what the other has said is true or not, just like K. asked to do to his listeners. And to veryfy in ourselves means to have a direct perceptions of what is the crucial point of the discussion.
Just to explore this intellectually for a minute, thought, thinking - as I understand it at least - is clearly an outgrowth of the body (of the brain). It is responsible for the existence of a functional self (the little ‘me’) that we all possess.
Within limits, this functional self (with its thought) clearly has its natural place, as a functional physical centre: to seek the body’s protection and survival into the next moment (the future), and to accumulate whatever relevant knowledge (from the past) is conducive to this survival - all of which are accomplished using thought.
The body does not want to be hurt, or to die; and the genes themselves seek to reproduce themselves in the next generation, giving rise to physical desire and physical self-interest.
And, as far as I can see, there is nothing essentially ‘wrong’ or unnatural about this.
What is perhaps unnecessary is what our thinking then does with (or what it adds to) these physical fears and desires: it elaborates upon them without being aware that it is doing so, creating an exaggerated self-image that it then needs to defend and protect; and in so doing constructs a complicated network of fears and desires that are wholly intellectual and artificial in nature…
All the while experiencing them - through bodily sensations and psycho-physical reactions - as though they were as real as the actual physical needs and requirements that the body has.
That is, thought plays its tunes upon the instrument of the body: so fear and pleasure, desire and suffering, are elaborations on the theme of physical continuity and the fragility of the organism, that are continued artificially through thought and memory.
Nevertheless, if we can step outside of this mental stream (of fears and desires, etc) for a single moment - which we can only do, as Voyager says, in the now - we notice that our awareness is not itself limited to the narrow activities of such thinking.
Ordinary, open awareness reveals the space outside (the space of nature - of the sky, the stars, the galaxies), as well as the space inside (the inner and the outer space are part of the same space). It is this space of awareness that allows us to see the activity of thought for what it is.
So from awareness - which always takes place now, in the present - we can learn about, explore, the inner and the outer world.
But if we remain within our thinking alone, we will forever be subject to the dictates of our mental space, with its self-preoccupied fears and desires that incessantly cast a net over every perception.
