But that one part may the whole of it. There may be nothing else alive in consciousness at that moment but one part, one concern. This one living, urgent concern may be connected to a lot of dead issues, which is what gets revealed by insight. In other words, our consciousness itself is very tiny.
This is how I see it too. (I thought you meant something like universal consciousness by “the entire area of consciousness.”) Insight illuminates your whole consciousness, quite possibly even a sizeable chunk of your unconscious.
Yes, that’s right. Let’s leave aside the unconscious for the moment. Because we can see now why there is no need to accumulate. Insight reveals the whole picture of consciousness, which includes the desire to accumulate. That desire is seen for what it is, which is the false movement for security through accumulation.
I find these words from David Bohm interesting:
“I propose that the essence of insight is this mental energy which perceives these subtle and powerful forces of knowledge, the emotional, social, intellectual, and still others that are beyond description, which make us very reluctant to give up fixed beliefs.”
Normally we think of an insight as arriving suddenly, unbidden, a flash of instant holistic understanding. But what Bohm seems to be suggesting is that insight is a mental energy that is always available. Same for learning and meditation.
Knowledge prevents learning - that’s what he seems to be saying - so surely that energy is available to a mind has abandoned every scrap of psychological knowledge. But what comes first, the insight or the abandonment?
Sounds like he’s imagining some kind of agent - a consciousness with content; some kind of floaty mind.
The falling away of self is an insight - as in a change in perception. What comes first when we switch on the light? What we see, or the ending of darkness?
And that the essence of insight is the mental energy that recognizes the danger of knowledge getting us stuck in belief systems that undermine the learning process.
What is it that switches on the light? That’s really the question. Have we only abandoned psychological knowledge because of insight? Or, we have had insight only because we have abandoned knowledge. In other words, the insight confirms right action.
I feel this is a most crucial point. We have to look at this very carefully.
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Aah, I see. So the knowledge does not disappear, it is more about qualifying if the knowledge is useful or not. Thank you
When inquiring into learning, it becomes clear that thought does not actually learn anything; it only accumulates information, experiences and time. So when the mind is on its own place, there is insight to what learning is, and that insight is learning.
This means that learning is not of the mind and not of time. When we see what is, there is learning. And that learning is action which is whole.
Are we seeing this together, or we make it into a theory?
This is intriguing. Though it seems that once we see the structure of the mind and psyche, we see the whole nature of knowledge and time, which means we are aware.
Is there pain in awareness?
No. Pain is a signal in our nervous system that something may be wrong. This means that pain is always materialistic and mechanical. Pain also implies an experiencer and time.
We can imagine different ideas of pain (existential, spiritual etc), which only means that it’s put together by the mind, hence psychological or physical.
Why?
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Does pure being, being without psychological time or content, feel like anything?
Are you looking and investigating? What takes place?
There is no point or value in sharing experiences or ideas or theories. Without time, there is no language, no concepts and no conclusions. Feeling something or anything implies someone feeling and something to be felt, which is an idea, definition.
I’m afraid finding out what is, requires (self-) awareness. It cannot be known.
I always investigate existential questions! When I am in a state of pure being (or what passes for that state for me), there is almost feeling associated with it. Whether the feeling is somehow in the state itself or arises as a kind of epiphenomenon from thinking about the state I cannot say.
Yes, and pure being implies no subject or objects. Which adds credence to the notion that the feeling of pure being is a product of thought, not pure being itself. But the jury is still out for me.
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Is there an action which is prior to insight? Insight may be a fruit of learning. But what is the seed, which of its nature already contains the fruit?
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I’m not the right person to ask about insight, since I rarely use the term and when I do I probably mean something quite different from you.
Alright, forget that word. What is the action that brings about learning? The mind that wants to learn, what is it to do?
Let’s be clear what we are seeing. Thought has nothing to do with learning. Thought accumulates, measures and compares. It can present a version of the truth that is the product of its conditioned background of knowledge. But thought can never provide the whole thing.
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To learn (in the not-of-time sense) the mind simply watches its stream of consciousness: perceptions, feelings, emotions, sensations, and so on.
It will find out how to learn because learning is what it exists to do.