The full dialogue covers the period from December 24, 2007 to May 4, 2008.
For the previous dialogue to below, see Archives & Archives 3
| There is only ever one insight (continued)
Paul: But such an awareness hasn’t worked. A new way of living still remains a theory. Therefore, what comes first, the awareness or the new way of living? Or both are one and the same thing, not two things divided in time. Are we aware that we are lost? Are we aware of this whole monstrous structure of the self? I’ll stick with that phrase because the self is a monstrous thing - any history book will show us that - and it is an awareness of that only which will ever end the monster. Yet everyone looks at this monster and either indulges it or punishes it as though it were outside of them. So we can’t end it by inventing something better, which is what we are doing if we talk of understanding the self through choiceless awareness. In fact, we can’t do a thing about the self. We can’t change it, control it, understand it, explain it, capture it, or even learn about it. We are caught in it - that’s all we need to see. Now do we see that fact? It’s a very simple fact. Linguistically, too, it is a very simple problem: that we are caught in the self. Whatever we do, whatever we dream of or invent here, it will be the same problem for us both tomorrow morning. So do we see that fact and end the whole problem?
The awareness comes first. Awareness is paramount as you need awareness to live - try driving a car without it. It is the quality of awareness that it comes down to; the self aware of itself obviously does not work. In a sense, the term "choiceless awareness" can be an invention of the mind with motive. However, most people at one time or another have been, albeit fleetingly, fully involved in the present moment, where the chooser is absent - there is only just being. In this sense choiceless awareness is definitely not an invention, as it can actually be experienced.
When the phrase is used, 'seeing the fact', then seeing here is being aware, is it not? To see a fact is to be fully aware of a fact. Because it is clear that seeing does not involve the word, or intellectual analysis. When the word is absent, when all the noise of thinking stops, what is left in the mind? Surely, just awareness. Sometimes this state is called pure consciousness and other terms, but it all amounts to the same thing.
So, seeing the fact has also not worked, has it not?
Paul: Let’s find out. After all, what is the fact? What is it all about, this dialogue? What is the actual fact of our relationship with one another? Here are two people on opposite sides of the globe who are not meeting one another except occasionally very superficially through the use of a few words. But essentially we are not meeting. Now if this is a fact for both of us then we have solved all our difficulties and all our differences. But is this a fact for both of us?
Depends on what you mean by "relationship", does it not? Are we not learning together through words and the meaning behind those words?I have been learning all the time through this dialogue, by watching all the reactions and conditioning that arise in the mind.
Life is learning, after all. Is this the case with you? It depends upon what you want out of this dialogue. And what is meant here by "not meeting"? Are you alluding perhaps to a communion, a full meeting of minds that are on the same level of understanding?
Paul: Except for the simplest dictionary definition, I really don’t know what this word relationship means. But I also feel that relationship is something enormously important in life. In fact, I’ll put it much stronger: that there is nothing more important in life than relationship. I am not talking about one particular relationship above all other relationships, but about what it means to be related - to you, to my wife, to my husband, to my friend, to my father, to my mother, to a stranger, to a neighbour, to a child, to an animal, to a flower, a stream, a tree, a house - the whole field of relationship. The dictionary meaning implies a connection or an association between two or more separate entities. In our case, it would be about you here in the southern hemisphere and me there in the northern hemisphere. Physically, we are separate; and we accept that separation because it is a verifiable fact. But why do we so easily accept psychological separation from one another? In other words, is there a simple psychological fact that we both can see together just as clearly as seeing a physical fact? The simplest fact of all is that we are lost - we are lost human beings, a lost generation. When people are lost, they attempt to solve the problem in all sorts of ways, but ultimately they are all rather neurotic solutions that serve only to reinforce the very centre of the problem and perpetuate it in different forms. Instead of seeing the fact as it is, we see only our reactions to it, which are the reactions of the old impinging themselves on the new. Therefore, for most of our life we remain psychologically separate from the rest of the world.
Let me put it another way, if I may. Life is a problem. Living in the world for sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years is a problem for every human being. And the traditional approach has always been to tackle that problem gradually, progressively, in stages, in the hope of moving from confusion to certainty, from fear to fulfilment. That’s also what happens in dialogues such as this, let’s face it. The fact is of fear, confusion and of being lost - and we really don’t know what we are talking about for the most part. That’s not a criticism of dialogues; dialogues are absolutely necessary and vital. But without real action, all the talking in the world won’t change a bean. So seeing all this - really seeing it as clearly as we see any little object in our immediate view - what is the right thing for us to do? That’s really been my question all along since we started. What is the right thing for us to do as two human beings who share this same earth? We can’t wait for some special insight into it. We can’t postpone the problems of living. We can’t rely on an old dogma or formula. So what is the right thing to do?
Not having an answer to this question, the habit is to impose an answer. Then we can pretend we are not so lost, at least for a while. But what happens if we don’t accept any answer at all? I really mean this; I’m totally serious. What happens when we demand and yet never accept any answer to our real human problems? I’ll tell you what happens. We shall find that very demand for an answer is itself the answer.
Yes, but is it that this right thing, or right action, is actually an incorrect question, a wrong approach - putting the cart before the horse? Surely there is seeing first, then one will know what the right thing is to do in life. The seeing itself is action. If however you are referring to right seeing, then this is closer to the mark. You started this dialogue by saying there is only one insight, which is seeing clearly: direct and instant perception. Why do you and I and people generally not have this insight? Why is this insight limited to only a select few in history?
What is it in our state of mind that prevents this insight from taking place?
Paul: How can it be a wrong question to ask what is the right thing to do? In that question is everything we need for the resolution of our problems, but only if we listen to the question and reject every answer that comes to mind. Answers come from us, from our collected and limited knowledge and experience. But when there is no answer - to poverty, to fear, to your pain or my pain, to war - then there is no you or me there at all; there is only the fact, which is then free to flower, wither and die away.
There is this very simple fact: we are lost. Not you personally or me personally, but every human being who walks this planet. We don’t know who we are, where we are or what we are. So what is the right thing to do? The traditional approach has always been to invent the answers. Time and time again this is what we have actually done, through religion after religion, through social reform after reform, through hundreds of philosophical, psychological and moral theories. After all that time and effort the world is still a mess, however, and so none of these answers have ever really worked. Yet another answer - in the form of choiceless awareness or right seeing or anything else gleaned from the teachings of K - also won’t work. Therefore, what will work? Is there anything at all that will work for us? Is there anything that is right for you, right for me and right for everybody? I say there is something. And it comes into being when we are both asking these questions together for the first time, which is now.
There is a holding of the question, without seeking any answer. This produces a different state of mind from the usual one of seeking answers, of reacting automatically from past knowledge. This is precisely why there is in the talks what is called "the impossible question", beyond the logic of all intellectual reactions - what is known as a koan (The Koan). What I am simply saying is that there is a possibility there are right and wrong questions that can be held in the mind. Equally, there is a right and a wrong approach to the problem of the mind: the wily deception and endless seeking of thought - which is the total human problem.
So, there is complete non-action in the mind and only the seeing of the fact. Is this what is being referred to?
Paul: That’s part of it. The fact that we are separate, how do we see this fact? Separate because of our different personal experiences, histories, opinions, ideas, prejudices, preferences, language, knowledge, expectations and so forth - psychologically separate. That’s one question. And the other question is, what are we prepared to do in order to meet one another? What will we do in order to put an end completely to our psychological separation? And, do we want to meet at all? Do two human beings ever really want to meet one another?
You see, to meet you is to meet myself, isn’t it? That’s really what it means. But because our lives are based on an avoidance of meeting ourselves, we have made our relationships with other people into something terribly important, something on which we depend enormously for our sense of security, well-being and esteem. It’s a kind of insane game in which we all seem to collude, literally hiding behind one another. Why? Well, we can say it’s because of our insufficiency, doubt, lack of confidence, fear, confusion, uncertainty - all these things and more - and so the cause is quite obvious; it’s very easy to find explanations for our strange behaviour.
But the strangest behaviour of all - I wonder if you see this - is ever to accept a single explanation about such behaviour. For the explanation of disorder is not order, the explanation for a lack of intelligence is not then intelligence. And, love - why don’t we love each other? What’s the problem with it? Why do we make such a big deal out of it and destroy the very thing we supposedly yearn for? And there’s nothing else worth having, because love opens the door to all the heavens.
Yet still we don’t love one another, and so we are forced to keep living through charity.
It is clear now that there are three central constructs of the human mind: attachment, pleasure and fear. These are all intimately interconnected and they underpin the self. We have touched briefly on fear, but we haven't even broached pleasure. One of the main reasons we don't meet each other psychologically is because we are always seeking pleasure, are we not? Watch the stream of thoughts in the mind - thay are bent on achieving, conquering and "winning", which are all pleasurable pursuits. And then, as well, everyone has their own particular avenue of pleasure, which they endlessly indulge in even though it gives them nothing but pain.
Have you seen how you only choose friends and acquaintances who gratify you in some way? If they challenge you, if they disturb your comfortable thought patterns, you quickly drop them. To see how you are gratified in all your relationships is to see yourself in action in relationship. Can we see the plain fact that the self is only pursuing gratification and nothing else (certainly not love, whatever that is)?
Paul: The self has nothing else it can pursue but gratification. Therefore its very movement is pointless, a total waste of energy. It might be a wonderfully invigorating movement at times, but because it is a cyclical movement like on a fairground ride, the very repetition of that excitement eventually becomes dullness and distaste. Now the self won’t ever see this fact that it is pursuing gratification, however plainly it might be put, however carefully it is laid out and explained. Instead, it will immediately get to work on changing the fact so that the fact can be incorporated as another form of gratification, albeit on a different level. This is what the philosophers do and the theologians and the psychologists - they discover something obvious about human nature and turn it into a theory so that they never have to face the fact of what they have discovered about themselves. The moment we start to say, ‘We pursue gratification because…’ it is still the self speaking and we are again caught in a web of self-deception, thinking that our next explanation will be the key to unlock the puzzle.
The self has nothing else it can pursue but gratification. And gratification is a movement of despair. That isn’t my statement or your statement - it is a statement of fact. Our intelligence has discovered it, not your intelligence or my intelligence. And the same intelligence says, ‘Leave what you have discovered alone - don’t mess with it; just look at it - the beauty of it, the symmetry of it.’ It is then quite obvious what love is. Love is that different movement which enters when the self is entirely absent, when it has stopped interfering, pushing, manipulating and controlling. Therefore love is not attachment, it is not pleasure, it is not touched by fear or desire, jealousy, envy, anger or greed; love is not seeking to enlarge or improve or to change itself into something else. Love is not mine or yours to give.
Given all this, it should be a clear case of logic to just give up the self and be at one with universal love, would it not?
Yet no-one wants to do it. As is said, we prefer resistance to freedom. For if you watch closely, you can see that thought shrinks away from that full realization that will end itself. The fact is, we are so attached to the self in our daily life. We prefer the 'security' and 'certainty' of the ego to the complete uncertainty of freedom. And is this not because we are so attached to time - that we are not living fully in the now?
It is clear: love is the timeless mind, love is now. We don't want the now, we are so dependent on the habit and idea of tomorrow; the conditioning is complete. This really is one of the most astonishing things to see, is it not? - the fact that there is actually no tomorrow.
It is only astonishing for the self that lives in time. Otherwise, it is a commonplace affair, a daily fact, and not worth making too much fuss about. One can all too easily get caught up in astonishing things and start to invent equally astonishing ideas, which then means one is again living in time, hoping for something marvellous to happen either to oneself or to others. So the fact that there is no tomorrow is not astonishing at all. Why should the truth ever astonish us? It’s the truth; it’s a fact – move on.
Time and the mind's attachment to things -which is really the subject under discussion - are central to the understanding of the mind. It was this man who titled the seminal David Bohm dialogues as "The Ending of Time", which shows the crucial importance of it in self-understanding. A fact that can be validated by looking into one's own mind. But of course, there are very few people who are actually interested in all this. So, there appears to be key issues not being explored here, which results in a circular dialogue, without any clear value to anyone.
You are right, it is indeed time to move on. This four-month plus dialogue is rested.
~~~~~~#~~~~~~
For the previous dialogue to below, see Archives & Archives 3
| There is only ever one insight (continued)
Paul: But such an awareness hasn’t worked. A new way of living still remains a theory. Therefore, what comes first, the awareness or the new way of living? Or both are one and the same thing, not two things divided in time. Are we aware that we are lost? Are we aware of this whole monstrous structure of the self? I’ll stick with that phrase because the self is a monstrous thing - any history book will show us that - and it is an awareness of that only which will ever end the monster. Yet everyone looks at this monster and either indulges it or punishes it as though it were outside of them. So we can’t end it by inventing something better, which is what we are doing if we talk of understanding the self through choiceless awareness. In fact, we can’t do a thing about the self. We can’t change it, control it, understand it, explain it, capture it, or even learn about it. We are caught in it - that’s all we need to see. Now do we see that fact? It’s a very simple fact. Linguistically, too, it is a very simple problem: that we are caught in the self. Whatever we do, whatever we dream of or invent here, it will be the same problem for us both tomorrow morning. So do we see that fact and end the whole problem?
The awareness comes first. Awareness is paramount as you need awareness to live - try driving a car without it. It is the quality of awareness that it comes down to; the self aware of itself obviously does not work. In a sense, the term "choiceless awareness" can be an invention of the mind with motive. However, most people at one time or another have been, albeit fleetingly, fully involved in the present moment, where the chooser is absent - there is only just being. In this sense choiceless awareness is definitely not an invention, as it can actually be experienced.
When the phrase is used, 'seeing the fact', then seeing here is being aware, is it not? To see a fact is to be fully aware of a fact. Because it is clear that seeing does not involve the word, or intellectual analysis. When the word is absent, when all the noise of thinking stops, what is left in the mind? Surely, just awareness. Sometimes this state is called pure consciousness and other terms, but it all amounts to the same thing.
So, seeing the fact has also not worked, has it not?
Paul: Let’s find out. After all, what is the fact? What is it all about, this dialogue? What is the actual fact of our relationship with one another? Here are two people on opposite sides of the globe who are not meeting one another except occasionally very superficially through the use of a few words. But essentially we are not meeting. Now if this is a fact for both of us then we have solved all our difficulties and all our differences. But is this a fact for both of us?
Depends on what you mean by "relationship", does it not? Are we not learning together through words and the meaning behind those words?I have been learning all the time through this dialogue, by watching all the reactions and conditioning that arise in the mind.
Life is learning, after all. Is this the case with you? It depends upon what you want out of this dialogue. And what is meant here by "not meeting"? Are you alluding perhaps to a communion, a full meeting of minds that are on the same level of understanding?
Paul: Except for the simplest dictionary definition, I really don’t know what this word relationship means. But I also feel that relationship is something enormously important in life. In fact, I’ll put it much stronger: that there is nothing more important in life than relationship. I am not talking about one particular relationship above all other relationships, but about what it means to be related - to you, to my wife, to my husband, to my friend, to my father, to my mother, to a stranger, to a neighbour, to a child, to an animal, to a flower, a stream, a tree, a house - the whole field of relationship. The dictionary meaning implies a connection or an association between two or more separate entities. In our case, it would be about you here in the southern hemisphere and me there in the northern hemisphere. Physically, we are separate; and we accept that separation because it is a verifiable fact. But why do we so easily accept psychological separation from one another? In other words, is there a simple psychological fact that we both can see together just as clearly as seeing a physical fact? The simplest fact of all is that we are lost - we are lost human beings, a lost generation. When people are lost, they attempt to solve the problem in all sorts of ways, but ultimately they are all rather neurotic solutions that serve only to reinforce the very centre of the problem and perpetuate it in different forms. Instead of seeing the fact as it is, we see only our reactions to it, which are the reactions of the old impinging themselves on the new. Therefore, for most of our life we remain psychologically separate from the rest of the world.
Let me put it another way, if I may. Life is a problem. Living in the world for sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years is a problem for every human being. And the traditional approach has always been to tackle that problem gradually, progressively, in stages, in the hope of moving from confusion to certainty, from fear to fulfilment. That’s also what happens in dialogues such as this, let’s face it. The fact is of fear, confusion and of being lost - and we really don’t know what we are talking about for the most part. That’s not a criticism of dialogues; dialogues are absolutely necessary and vital. But without real action, all the talking in the world won’t change a bean. So seeing all this - really seeing it as clearly as we see any little object in our immediate view - what is the right thing for us to do? That’s really been my question all along since we started. What is the right thing for us to do as two human beings who share this same earth? We can’t wait for some special insight into it. We can’t postpone the problems of living. We can’t rely on an old dogma or formula. So what is the right thing to do?
Not having an answer to this question, the habit is to impose an answer. Then we can pretend we are not so lost, at least for a while. But what happens if we don’t accept any answer at all? I really mean this; I’m totally serious. What happens when we demand and yet never accept any answer to our real human problems? I’ll tell you what happens. We shall find that very demand for an answer is itself the answer.
Yes, but is it that this right thing, or right action, is actually an incorrect question, a wrong approach - putting the cart before the horse? Surely there is seeing first, then one will know what the right thing is to do in life. The seeing itself is action. If however you are referring to right seeing, then this is closer to the mark. You started this dialogue by saying there is only one insight, which is seeing clearly: direct and instant perception. Why do you and I and people generally not have this insight? Why is this insight limited to only a select few in history?
What is it in our state of mind that prevents this insight from taking place?
Paul: How can it be a wrong question to ask what is the right thing to do? In that question is everything we need for the resolution of our problems, but only if we listen to the question and reject every answer that comes to mind. Answers come from us, from our collected and limited knowledge and experience. But when there is no answer - to poverty, to fear, to your pain or my pain, to war - then there is no you or me there at all; there is only the fact, which is then free to flower, wither and die away.
There is this very simple fact: we are lost. Not you personally or me personally, but every human being who walks this planet. We don’t know who we are, where we are or what we are. So what is the right thing to do? The traditional approach has always been to invent the answers. Time and time again this is what we have actually done, through religion after religion, through social reform after reform, through hundreds of philosophical, psychological and moral theories. After all that time and effort the world is still a mess, however, and so none of these answers have ever really worked. Yet another answer - in the form of choiceless awareness or right seeing or anything else gleaned from the teachings of K - also won’t work. Therefore, what will work? Is there anything at all that will work for us? Is there anything that is right for you, right for me and right for everybody? I say there is something. And it comes into being when we are both asking these questions together for the first time, which is now.
There is a holding of the question, without seeking any answer. This produces a different state of mind from the usual one of seeking answers, of reacting automatically from past knowledge. This is precisely why there is in the talks what is called "the impossible question", beyond the logic of all intellectual reactions - what is known as a koan (The Koan). What I am simply saying is that there is a possibility there are right and wrong questions that can be held in the mind. Equally, there is a right and a wrong approach to the problem of the mind: the wily deception and endless seeking of thought - which is the total human problem.
So, there is complete non-action in the mind and only the seeing of the fact. Is this what is being referred to?
Paul: That’s part of it. The fact that we are separate, how do we see this fact? Separate because of our different personal experiences, histories, opinions, ideas, prejudices, preferences, language, knowledge, expectations and so forth - psychologically separate. That’s one question. And the other question is, what are we prepared to do in order to meet one another? What will we do in order to put an end completely to our psychological separation? And, do we want to meet at all? Do two human beings ever really want to meet one another?
You see, to meet you is to meet myself, isn’t it? That’s really what it means. But because our lives are based on an avoidance of meeting ourselves, we have made our relationships with other people into something terribly important, something on which we depend enormously for our sense of security, well-being and esteem. It’s a kind of insane game in which we all seem to collude, literally hiding behind one another. Why? Well, we can say it’s because of our insufficiency, doubt, lack of confidence, fear, confusion, uncertainty - all these things and more - and so the cause is quite obvious; it’s very easy to find explanations for our strange behaviour.
But the strangest behaviour of all - I wonder if you see this - is ever to accept a single explanation about such behaviour. For the explanation of disorder is not order, the explanation for a lack of intelligence is not then intelligence. And, love - why don’t we love each other? What’s the problem with it? Why do we make such a big deal out of it and destroy the very thing we supposedly yearn for? And there’s nothing else worth having, because love opens the door to all the heavens.
Yet still we don’t love one another, and so we are forced to keep living through charity.
It is clear now that there are three central constructs of the human mind: attachment, pleasure and fear. These are all intimately interconnected and they underpin the self. We have touched briefly on fear, but we haven't even broached pleasure. One of the main reasons we don't meet each other psychologically is because we are always seeking pleasure, are we not? Watch the stream of thoughts in the mind - thay are bent on achieving, conquering and "winning", which are all pleasurable pursuits. And then, as well, everyone has their own particular avenue of pleasure, which they endlessly indulge in even though it gives them nothing but pain.
Have you seen how you only choose friends and acquaintances who gratify you in some way? If they challenge you, if they disturb your comfortable thought patterns, you quickly drop them. To see how you are gratified in all your relationships is to see yourself in action in relationship. Can we see the plain fact that the self is only pursuing gratification and nothing else (certainly not love, whatever that is)?
Paul: The self has nothing else it can pursue but gratification. Therefore its very movement is pointless, a total waste of energy. It might be a wonderfully invigorating movement at times, but because it is a cyclical movement like on a fairground ride, the very repetition of that excitement eventually becomes dullness and distaste. Now the self won’t ever see this fact that it is pursuing gratification, however plainly it might be put, however carefully it is laid out and explained. Instead, it will immediately get to work on changing the fact so that the fact can be incorporated as another form of gratification, albeit on a different level. This is what the philosophers do and the theologians and the psychologists - they discover something obvious about human nature and turn it into a theory so that they never have to face the fact of what they have discovered about themselves. The moment we start to say, ‘We pursue gratification because…’ it is still the self speaking and we are again caught in a web of self-deception, thinking that our next explanation will be the key to unlock the puzzle.
The self has nothing else it can pursue but gratification. And gratification is a movement of despair. That isn’t my statement or your statement - it is a statement of fact. Our intelligence has discovered it, not your intelligence or my intelligence. And the same intelligence says, ‘Leave what you have discovered alone - don’t mess with it; just look at it - the beauty of it, the symmetry of it.’ It is then quite obvious what love is. Love is that different movement which enters when the self is entirely absent, when it has stopped interfering, pushing, manipulating and controlling. Therefore love is not attachment, it is not pleasure, it is not touched by fear or desire, jealousy, envy, anger or greed; love is not seeking to enlarge or improve or to change itself into something else. Love is not mine or yours to give.
Given all this, it should be a clear case of logic to just give up the self and be at one with universal love, would it not?
Yet no-one wants to do it. As is said, we prefer resistance to freedom. For if you watch closely, you can see that thought shrinks away from that full realization that will end itself. The fact is, we are so attached to the self in our daily life. We prefer the 'security' and 'certainty' of the ego to the complete uncertainty of freedom. And is this not because we are so attached to time - that we are not living fully in the now?
It is clear: love is the timeless mind, love is now. We don't want the now, we are so dependent on the habit and idea of tomorrow; the conditioning is complete. This really is one of the most astonishing things to see, is it not? - the fact that there is actually no tomorrow.
It is only astonishing for the self that lives in time. Otherwise, it is a commonplace affair, a daily fact, and not worth making too much fuss about. One can all too easily get caught up in astonishing things and start to invent equally astonishing ideas, which then means one is again living in time, hoping for something marvellous to happen either to oneself or to others. So the fact that there is no tomorrow is not astonishing at all. Why should the truth ever astonish us? It’s the truth; it’s a fact – move on.
Time and the mind's attachment to things -which is really the subject under discussion - are central to the understanding of the mind. It was this man who titled the seminal David Bohm dialogues as "The Ending of Time", which shows the crucial importance of it in self-understanding. A fact that can be validated by looking into one's own mind. But of course, there are very few people who are actually interested in all this. So, there appears to be key issues not being explored here, which results in a circular dialogue, without any clear value to anyone.
You are right, it is indeed time to move on. This four-month plus dialogue is rested.
~~~~~~#~~~~~~
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"So, to think a thought through is to see how thought is deceiving itself, running away from what is. You can think a thought out fully, completely, only when you stop all avenues of escape and then look at it - which requires an extraordinary honesty; and as most of us are dishonest in our thinking, we never want to see any thought through."
{Poona India, 7th Public Talk, 10th October, 1948}
{Poona India, 7th Public Talk, 10th October, 1948}
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This website went online on November 22, 2007 and is being continually updated.
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