Why Do We Limit Our Minds?-2
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
(San Jose, California)-We ended yesterday with the understanding of learning, we looked at it deeply and widely. Can we go into it a little deeper today? Is this something you are willing to do with your friend as we continue to stroll in this beautiful park talking about the things that matter? Your friend would like to ask what is it that we have to learn about? What is there to learn other than a skill to have a vocation, job, to do a certain thing that is not of the natural human activity<(seeing, walking, standing, touching, feeling, you follow).
May the writer remind you that we are deliberating together, nourishing together each of us inwardly intellectually, non verbally and psychologically as we talk about the things that matter like two friends strolling in a marvelous park on a bright sunny with a cool breeze day.
Apart from the technical learning what is there to learn? We are talking about order; this order can only be understood and lived, not merely intellectually understood but lived in daily life. This order comes only when the static movement of the SELF/ME/EGO/PERSONA with its memory and motives are no longer operating inwardly psychologically. Because the self is a bundle of memories, and if you watch your self you will see that you are nothing but a bundle of memories that is functioning all the time even when sleeping. And to those memories a great deal more can be added but it is still memory.
There fore it is limited and static. “Anything that is static must create conflict with things that are moving inwardly psychologically!” The writer is asking the friend to find out if you can live without a motive and learn all the time until you get to a point where there is nothing to learn anymore inwardly psychologically? So that there is complete order, order for most of us means conformity, adjustment and repetition always from a center (SELF/ME/EGO/PERSONA) adjusting. Order is a living thing, not a blue print or formula/pattern of some kind!
Furthermore “this order brings an extraordinary sense of stability and gives great strength! Like the earth from which everything grows, this sense of great stability and strength from which every other thing can flow inwardly psychologically!”
So my friend says it all sounds marvelous verbally but I don’t quite capture what you are talking about, I understand it vaguely and perhaps I will capture it one day. Then the writer says you will never capture it one day either you capture it now, if you don’t understand it now you will not understand it tomorrow. Because the now contains all time, the past the present and the future. What you are now is what you will be tomorrow. Unless one radically changes right now, the future is what you are right now, maybe slightly modified but the same.
“You see the future is the present and the present is the past.” You the viewers follow all of this, right? So the present/now contains all time. Then my friend says he will think about it and eventually get it. Then he is merely postponing not giving all of his attention to the whole contents of the now/present. “This means that the now/present with it attention is inward psychological order!”
May we go to next thing, my friend ask why is it that all of my life I have seek pleasure, it seem to be the most important thing in ones life? Why is it that humankind goes after it so ceaselessly? Is there anything wrong with that? Pleasure through sex, possessions, power, fame, notoriety, writing a book-it might be a failure, no one may not by it, pleasure seems to be a common fate for humankind. Why has pleasure become so important? The writer says to his friend enquire; don’t say yes I must have pleasure. We have always lived by pleasure fulfillment, gratification, achievement, thee are different forms of pleasure but why do we cling to it; we are perpetually after it, why?
We take drugs, alcohol with all of its misery, but it is pleasurable, “the immediacy of pleasure not the postponement of pleasure.” This means where there is pleasure at the second there is no interference or interpretation of thought. Follow slowly will you please friend? “At the second there is pleasure a few seconds later thought creates an image of that pleasure and sensation then pursuit of that pleasure is born.” Are you following my friend? So thought creates the image of that moment that pleasure with its sensations (seeing the extraordinary beauty of a sunset with all the golden light of the evening with its green rays that rarely happens) the immediate perception of that then thought says how marvelous that was. So thought creates the image and the next day thought wants it again.
You see what the writer is saying, that the thinking process becomes extraordinarily important. Fear is one of the factors of our life like pleasure perhaps fears is a greater factor than pleasure, fear of not having pleasure. So my friend says can we go into this question of fear? And then he says in exploring it can it ever “end”? Or must fear everlastingly be the burden of humankind? Now together my friend we are going to find out, not the writer is going to instruct and you follow, which comes rather childish and immature, rather together you and the writer go into this question of fear?
Humankind has lived with fear upon thousand of thousands of years; fear of nature a thunderstorm, fear of darkness and the very existence of life. Also the fear of ones neighbor, wife or husband, not achieving, failure, especially in this country where success is worshiped. Don’t you all want success, of course we all do? Most of us unfortunately or fortunately are not great successes, except perhaps a few politicians, the gurus that accumulate money with their nonsense and the evangelist and so on so on. Have you ever realized the Catholics are the great real estate owner of the world, they own a great deal of the earth all over the world.
Now achievements success, longing to be loved and finding that you are not loved, fear, bitterness, anxiety and hate. So we together we ought to go into the question of fear, not merely the explanation or description, which is very deceptive. Because people are generally caught in descriptions and explanations so they never get to the root of the thing. My friends say let get to the root of this thing, enough of the explanations. I can go to the psychologist and all the rest of them but those explanations have not completely eradicated from me the sense of fear.
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Furthermore unless we go into it very deeply, mere explanations have very little value. Go into the feel of it, the quality and structure of it! Where there is fear there is everlastingly seeking security. Fear has created all the gods and savior of the world; “the human being that has no fear at-all, both biologically and psychologically for them there is no god because of the essence of a religious mind!” We can talk about that a little later, so together lets explore the root of fear? Will you the viewers find out or will the writer find out and tell you about it? The writer is asking his friend is your brain active and passionate enough with energy to find out? Or are you merely and verbally wanting something as a means of finding out? But if you have gathered the intensity to find out we will go together into it?
What is fear, to be afraid? First of all time is a factor of fear. Time as yesterday, yesterday’s memories stored in the brain and tomorrow is uncertain and tomorrow may extend to a thousand tomorrows. But tomorrow is uncertain there fore there is fear, I might loose, I might not gain, I might find myself lonely, desperate and anxious. Time as a factor of fear is obvious. So what is time, why is it that time has become so important in our lives? Time to get engaged to another, time to learn how to drive a car, time to learn to cook, time to become an expert in something or another, the computer is going to take your time too, it can do things much faster that the brain.
The write don’t know if this is the time to talk about the computer, maybe we will because it is rather interesting. The experts say that the computer can do everything that man can do, except perhaps “be affectionate to another”, it can compose, write, solve problems, design, so the computer can be programmed as we are programmed to be Christians, Hindu, Japanese, Americans, Russians and all the rest.
Our brains functions on programs, which is memory and the computer can do all of this with extraordinary rapidity, in that one little chip there are millions of memories. So what will happen the brain of humankind? Do you understand the question? Our brains have been active in adding and subtracting like a cashier in a grocery store. The computer you just push a button and no thinking at all for the brain, so what is going to happen to the brain? The brain is becoming more and more mechanical and less and less active, limited. Either it degenerate rapidly as it is taking place now of which most of us are totally unaware, or be everlastingly caught by entertained activities, which the entertainment industry is immensely strong. The entertainment industry is not only the cinema, magazines, videos, with all the rest but also the religious entertainment.
Please don’t get upset about it, it is also part of entertainment, look at it seriously and you will see it. Because religion has nothing to do with our daily living. So the computer may bring about a withering state of the brain and so that the entertainment industry take it over, which is already happening. Please be aware of this? Or we have the whole vast area of the psyche and live differently? These two possibilities are open to us, and inevitably humankind being what we are we will choose entertainment.
Okay we must come back and find out what is the root of fear, we said time. Time is the most extraordinary complex thing, we live by time. We have to go to lunch at a curtained time and time is contained in the past, present and future, the whole movement of this time is now. Because tomorrow is what you are now, if you are angry, hate, violent now tomorrow you will be the same exactly perhaps slightly modified or expanded. So the future is now, please see the truth of this fact, my friend. Which means if you don’t fundamentally radically inwardly psychologically bring about a revolution in you now you will be the exact same person tomorrow?
You see time is the enemy of humankind, please see this. Time is a factor of fear. I have a job and I could lose it, my wife or husband could leave me tomorrow, so time is the basic root of fear and time is also thought. Both are movements inwardly/internally psychologically and outwardly/externally socially. This also means that time and thought are the root of fear. This is a fact and then my friend says how does one stop time/thinking it is necessary one has to go to the office? But you are saying to me that time inwardly/internally psychologically when you use time to become, to be, drive, achieve, pursue and all the rest, that time is the enemy. Because tomorrow is what you are now, furthermore unless you bring about this profound transformation in the very nature and structure of the contents of consciousness now, tomorrow is the enemy.
Okay fear, of which you all are well aware, every human being on this earth knows fear. The calamity, sadness and the brutality of fear, this is happening the brutality ideologies, the Russian ideology and the democratic ideology. Please look into this carefully, so time and thought are the root of fear. My friend asks how am I to stop this time and thought? The writer says then that is the wrong question, when you put the wrong questions there is no answer to the wrong question. Put the right question which is do you see the fact the actuality of time and thought not as and idea but a fact that what you are you will be. And if you see the fact not through an idea our brains first capture the idea and then apply the idea to the fact.
The word idea in Greek means to observe, not through observation come to a conclusion, just to observe. When one can deeply observe with passion and intensity which is to give your attention to time and thought then there is no fear at-all. My friend says at the moment when you are expressing this I understand it your clarity and intensity helps me. The writer says don’t depend on it, now “find out if you have this energy and vitality, intensity to go to the very end of the journey into fear, which means you must sustain all the time the same intensity and not slack off at any moment. The same intensity in that movement until you come to the end of it”
Unfortunately most of us waist our energy through chattering, endlessly chatting, gossiping, criticizing. We also waste our energy in conflict whether it is with ourselves or another, perpetual quarrels with each other, wasting our energy trying to become something, there is no becoming of something at-all, there is only “what is” and the complete changing of that “what is”. Then there is untold energy not to do more mischief, but to live life daily with great love and compassion with its intelligence.
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