**Hello Paul - Inquiry was correct in suggesting that fear also occurs outside of relationship. If we’re talking about human to human relationship. We’re always in ‘relationship’ to what is. One of Bohm’s favorite examples of fear was seeing a shadow on a dark street and thought interpreting the shadow as a possible mugger. But as soon as it’s seen that it’s not an attacker, the fear dissipates. But fear can be generated by thoughts when we’re alone in our own home. Thought can project the idea of some intruder when some noise occurs from the wind. The value of observing ourselves in relationship is that it brings out reflexes that aren’t revealed by observing oneself alone. Someone will question some statement we make, and a defensive response may be revealed. And, as Bohm pointed out, we all have thoughts that are stored as “unquestionably true,” so we never question their coherence. And in a dialogue someone may question our “unquestionable view,” and reveal an incoherence in it.
In that moment, if it occurs, we are stripped of some ‘armor’ we didn’t know that we had. We feel vulnerable, naked, insecure…All good things if we want to know the truth about ourselves. Rumi: “Be thankful not for the friend’s kindness, but for his tyranny…etc.,etc.”
And there are ‘gurus’ who do just this. Make it all into a racket.
Yes, ideally…
I have left it (you) alone. But now that you’re addressing all of us…
Yes I appreciate that and can see what Paul is talking about, but I am questioning the validity of that as an idea of dialogue, and consider it largely inoperable. I am pointing out that I can look deeply into that thing called ‘isolation’, ‘loneliness’, ‘fear’. I can look deeply into what it feels like when there is only myself, with no one to help, and no actual communication, and I can learn all about the fear humanity is experiencing, and understand the impact of it all on anything called dialogue, or relationship. And all of this can occur without any specific exchange with any other, who is not necessarily capable of keeping up, and makes clear through speech and behaviour, that they cannot cope. What dialogues did Krishnamurti have with others to realise all he did? Have you never noticed how in all those filmed dialogues Krishnamurti held with people over decades in different parts of the world, how he hardly got anywhere with any of them, and do you not consider that he could have pointed out many things to them, that would have disturbed them greatly, but that he took the ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ approach since it is up to each person to see it for themselves. All this seeing together is largely a fudge.
Have you ever considered that there is an experiencing of ‘fear’ that does not need to be brought to a head by any specific contact with any one in particular, and that when you are not in dialogue with fear unless some specific stimulus is present, that you are in fact suppressing it, and that your curated happenings mean you have no true insight into things, which is intentional?
As for dialogue, I am having a dialogue, which is not defined by you, and your notions of when it is and is not.
I have never had insight; so there is no background knowledge arising from experience - personal, communal or cultural. So I have nothing to share: no opinions, no theories, no beliefs, nothing. Therefore one is free to look at the world. Things can only truly be shared in freedom, otherwise it is just another shabby transaction taking place between two mediocre human beings.
Even so, we may still be deceiving ourselves.
Not quite. Can we face fear together? Just as we come together in a time of great crisis, as they are doing now in the face of this pandemic, can we look at fear together, which is far greater crisis? Fear is our baby and its runs amok throughout the world. It is not my fear or your fear; it is fear, the deepest and oldest crisis in consciousness.
The mugger and the intruder are other human beings, just like the other participants here about whom we may feel defensive or aggressive. What I am saying is that our human fears have their roots in relationship - probably from the earliest days in the cradle - and they are generally about what other people may say or do to us. As you say, a dialogue can bring all this out into the open.
It doesn’t matter what I have or have not considered. Shall we have a dialogue about fear? Then such considerations are academic because we are looking at it afresh.
Hello Paul. What you say here seems very reasonable. Like some others, I don’t understand the need to agree to any other pre-conditions before starting a dialogue.
Hi Paul,
Discussion is the denial of reality. Why then continue in denial, what does discussion give one that is absent in reality. Remembering ‘ that opinions are for fools’ . Also’ all thought is illusion’. Why the preference for illusion, could it be that the delusion of identity is preferable to the nothingness of reality.
Why do you say discussion is the denial of reality? Doesn’t it all depend upon what we mean by ‘discussion’ and ‘reality’? We have already said that a discussion is limited. In a discussion we tend to bring in our knowledge, opinions and ideas too readily. A dialogue is not necessarily a discussion.
What makes a person think that something they call ‘dialogue’ has not ‘started’, or that they are not ‘in’ such a thing even as they live and breath, and what does it say when they are in dialogue, that they speak of starting one. When they are not even cognisant of the one which is ongoing, how will they be cognisant of the one they effect to start? Are you also going to start space/time?
Because we are using a very specific word in order to differentiate this activity from our usual modes of enquiry. A dialogue explores uncharted territory. Is this what we want to do?
Well, I think that Paul is in a dialogue about dialogue and is now proposing starting a dialogue on fear. Maybe we could talk about fear of dialogue and that would please everybody or nobody.
One of the ironies of psychological fear is a non-existent ‘self’, being afraid of one day, not-existing!
Yes please. Lets go. Maybe its best if you start us rolling? (because I don’t know how)
If thought had to choose words to describe itself, one of them would have to be, ‘incontinent’.