Yes, to the first question, No, to the second. I don’t doubt that Socrates thought things through before he posed his questions to his students.
**Here’s how I might try to describe it: First, it’s really quite simple. It’s not a meta process, if you mean some sort of model. It’s about choieless awareness. A listening and looking together. And alone, one can listen and observe the thoughts arising in us.
K pointed to the choiceless awareness, the deep listening and looking, by opening many of his talks in the following manner, which you may have seen:
K: We are two friends sitting in a park on a bench, talking over together our problems, friends who are concerned deeply with what is going on in the world, with the confusion, the chaos that exists throughout the world. I wonder if you have a friend with whom you talk, to whom you expose your own feelings, your concepts, your ideas, disillusionment, and so on. We are going to talk over together in that manner – exploring, enquiring, without any bias, in great friendship, which means, with great affection, respecting each other, without having some kind of hidden thought, hidden motives. - Brockwood Sept.1975
**Over the years of trying to give friends a sense of what dialogue is intended to be, the closest example was how we listen and look with a close and trusted friend, where there is a real sense of openness and sensitivity, to observe together what’s actually going on in our lives.
David Bohm tried to encourage a choiceless awareness by suggesting the following excerpt from his Dialogue Proposal:
Suspension. Suspension of thoughts, impulses, judgments, etc., lies at the very heart of Dialogue. It is one of its most important new aspects. It is not easily grasped because the activity is both unfamiliar and subtle. Suspension involves attention, listening and looking and is essential to exploration. Speaking is necessary, of course, for without it there would be little in the Dialogue to explore, But the actual process of exploration takes place during listening — not only to others but to oneself. Suspension involves exposing your reactions, impulses, feelings and opinions in such a way that they can be seen and felt within your own psyche and also be reflected back by others in the group. It does not mean repressing or suppressing or, even, postponing them. It means, simply, giving them your serious attention so that their structures can be noticed while they are actually taking place.
I would suggest that it’s taking place in awareness. It’s an awareness of what each person is saying, a looking internally to see if the suggestion reflects our actual experience. Here’s how K put it:
K: I hope you are not merely listening to words, because then they will be another distraction, a waste of time. But if you are really experiencing the things that we are discussing, then they will have an extraordinary significance; because though you may follow words with the conscious mind, if you are experiencing what is being said, the unconscious mind also takes part in it. Given an opportunity, the unconscious mind will reveal its whole content, and so bring about a complete understanding of ourselves. - On Love and Loneliness
**I would say yes, even by oneself there can be an exploration of one’s conditioning. There can be an awareness of the psychological thought that has been stored in the brain. And the incoherence in the stored thought patterns can be observed.
**If there’s no sensitivity, that reflects a lack of the openness that’s needed to openly observe.
**Dialogue becomes more challenging the larger the group. But we can listen to each other, and observe our responses through the internet as well, with people around the globe. Face-to-face seems to be the best way, but if there’s seriousness or earnestness, it can be done online as well. That’s my direct experience.
Do you mean dialogue between partial ‘I’ and another partial ‘I’ ?
What he means is being acutely aware of your thinking, your reasoning, with awareness of how mistaken, distorted, and biased it can be when it isn’t under close and constant scrutiny.
Yes. But the awareness itself may be conditioned. It may conclude incorrectly, that I’m that. If you are aware, there is no I. Then what remains is pure Consciousness. In the state of consciousness, there no dialogue takes place. It is free from everything
I did not say ‘acknowledgement’ - you have added this in. When I acknowledge or accept, the resentment is still there because it maintains the division between me and it, between me and the resentment, me and the fear, me and the violence. That’s my whole point: it then becomes about something I have seen and done, my action. Perception of resentment has nothing to do with me, so I don’t need to act upon it. Perception itself is the whole action.
Can you elaborate a little more? the very definition of perception is that it’s an act of establishing relation between ‘me’ and the object. So when we say perception has nothing to do with ‘me’, what happens to the ‘me’ which arises along with the cognitive processes or rather what happens to the cognitive processes themselves? if there is not to be a separation between seeing and action at any level, what is the state of the ‘me’ as the physical? As I see, what is referred then by perception as without a ‘me’ is the complete stillness of body and the movement as mind (as defined by the cognitive processes) or is it in an active endeavor of dialogue where the entire possibilities of cognitive processes is collectively or individually exhausted and a falling into silence by an understanding of it’s limits. Maybe, is it more accurate to say that there is no ‘me’ outside perception, continual perception is therefore the doing, till it falls?
I am the object: I am the resentment, the fear, the violence, the greed or whatever else it is. There is no other me. So there is no relationship to be established. It is only when we reject the fact of being violent, rude, aggressive, greedy, that we seek to form a relationship with it because in that relationship we believe we can gain control over it and change it. The ‘me’ that is seeking this control is still a centre of violence and greed, but it has now developed and refined this violence into all sorts of abstractions, including the idea of the perfect or enlightened me who is free from all this mess.
Your definition of perception includes the perceiver; therefore it must always be distorted perception.
What do you mean ‘free’? is it ‘free’ from ‘sufferings,pain,pleasure,etc…’?
No, because it is just an idea. We escape from our sufferings through ideation. It is a dead-end. There is no escape through ideation.
The implication is an idea that there is a ‘me’ that evolves, maybe so, but towards an end.
Why not say ‘limited’ perception instead of positing a ‘pure’ perception?
So it means - ‘I’ is sufferings,pain,pleasure, and we can’t be free from it, through ideation. Then, how can we deal with it?
The ‘me’ cannot evolve; it is eternally shoddy. Perceive this and you have the full treasure.
Limited perception is distorted by its own limitations. You end up seeing what you want to see.
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This is the whole purpose of dialogue: to discover whether or not it is possible to be free of sorrow. So we are dealing with it now directly as we converse with one another; there is no other topic under discussion. The centre of the self, the ‘I’, the ‘me’, has come up with many solutions and none of them have worked. Therefore, how are we to deal with this fact first, that the self in spite of its vast store of knowledge and ideas is incapable of putting to an end the tragedy of human sorrow?
Yes. One can see the effects of it. If we have Images & beliefs, we can’t have ‘pure relationship’. So, how can one throw it away. When we aware of it, what happens?
What happens when you are aware that there is nothing you can do? You stop. That’s it.
Stop means - there is no ‘thought’. Right?. And is it ‘Love’?
No, it is not love. See what is happening here: thought will come to a stop only if it thinks it has arrived at a better place. Therefore it is still very active.
Sir, I see it. When I see a beautiful woman, thought arises and says “I need her”. right?. I can see, what it does, where it arises. Can you see that too?
You are going off to something else. What is it you see?