Keys

Society through technology and more subtle means has been endeavoring to mirror and copy the internal being of man, to construct an artifice in which men might then place themselves, an image to relieve the burden of living. Knowledge consists firstly in knowing that you don’t know, secondly in knowing what you don’t know. Without this awareness of the essential limits and shadows within us wisdom cannot manifest. Depth is required to transcend the artificiality and superficiality of the ubiquitously meager and mediocre. Depth is achieved through effecting contrast and relief in the mind, not only by placing objects into relation but by viewing these relations through the lens of other objects, and other relations. Constructing a hierarchy of relations built on a mutually constituting and reinforcing structure starts to habituate one to thinking on more than one level at a time, seeing not just truth but how truth is formed, what truth is, and ultimately how to position, move and utilize truth. This then leads to a profound comprehensiveness of consciousness as one transcends his former limitations, pushing out into uncharted territory, uncharted but nevertheless already known to us. We are only ourselves, we can never be anything but what we already are. Life is a process of discovering through experience (observation) whatever already is. This unveiling leads to the repeated patterns of observations that typically become closed and contained within themselves, petrifying one’s mind and heart; but through employing a system of knowledge which focuses on the understanding that wisdom is firstly an absence, that absence (void) is presence, this impotent circularity can be overcome. Most mystic philosophies have or attempt to move toward such a system. This is a pre- and post-conceptual understanding that we already intuitively possess.

I would say like this:

Our mind (which has the potential to be logical/reasonable but mixed with emotion and confused at first) has the desire to seek certainty and run away from uncertainty.

With the recognition of uncertainty, it tries to find a certainty upon the foot hold or foundation of other certainties (usually in the form of bullshit presumptions coming from biological, psychological, social origin).

By adding certainties (presumptions = bogus notions) upon certainties, we construct a fort AND jail of rigid but bogus notions, and become rigid stiff person.

However, IF the desire to attain the certainty is very acute and strong, person would not be satisfied with most of certainties and find them unreliable and would notice the bogus nature of most rigid notions and our mental foundation.

This may lead us into the state of uncertainty, in which the person may struggle with the loss of certainty, meaning, goal, gratification, and so on BECAUSE s/he is still looking for the absolute certainty but finding more and more that there is none.

In this state, seen as “nihilistic stage” or “existential angst” or “dark night” or whatever, may last long time, depending on the mental clarity and the degree of the desire of the person.

Most of us cannot endure this state and settle with one of fake certainties, and become advocate of ideology, religion, spirituality, moral, ethic, movement, and so on.
They have found the meaning of their life, in a way, adopting whatever foot hold, the (fake) solid ground they can believe that they are standing.

However, I do think almost all of us know, somewhere within ourselves, that there is no absolute certainty and thus we don’t have the absolute ground, foot hold, to stand upon.
And this inner knowledge creates constant subconscious fear that pushes those who adopted artificial certainty for the mean of the survival of their fake identity.

The center of the uncertainty is the void, emptiness and it has the effect of destroying and clearing ANY fake certainty (and there is no real certainty at all in the absolute sense). So, it is usually feared by most of us.

The emptiness is NEGATIVE, from the view point of conserving (fake) certainties, which most of us try to do with or without knowingly.
But it (emptiness) does not have any nature of any sort, including the positive/negative distinction.

If one happens to drop into the total uncertainty, somehow, it’s a continuous free fall, at first.
Then it’s understood that free falling is floating and not having any foot hold, which is the resistance and friction (and suffering). Certainty is the awareness and existence and also suffering, in a way.

Because of its association/relation with the suffering, this kind of perspective is often (and too often) talked in the “positive” and mystyco-religious perspective of people who suffer (and seek to avoid suffering).
But they usually don’t understand that they cannot just let go of “negativity” and keep “positives”.
Also, they don’t understand that dropping off would not happen as long as one seeks any positive, which is another name of certainty.

The desire for the certainty is only satisfied with the absolute certainty. Without it, we would always seek the certainty = positive,and it means we are living in the subconscious foot hold of negativity.
And the desire for the certainty is so deep rooted (starting from the very beginning of the awareness), mere superficial understanding of uncertainty would not be enough to bring the peace of mind.

This means that certainties of ALL sort at all level need to go and it means total destruction and annihilation from the point of view of survival freaks.
So, this is insane and very bad for the mind of most people or even for the universe.
But from the point of view of stillness, if we dare to say, tail chasing and ever swinging/spiraling universe and awareness is insane and crazy, although there is no absolute objection because stillness doesn’t really care anything by nature. It doesn’t have any potential/possibility for anything, other than sucking and annihilating everything without any hesitation.

So, it’s pretty simple, but it defies our mind and emotion. Thus it’s rare to see someone who is comfortable with the emptiness, and who is already gone, dropping, free falling, to certain degree.
As the understanding and the orientation of emptiness/absolute does not belong to the majority of universe/existence, people interested in this type of things remain minority and outsider. But it’s not really uncommon, either, because it comes from the basic nature of awareness.

And finally and fundamentally, there is nothing to be said.

This looks like alot of unfounded conjecture mixed w/ a heavy dose of absolutes. I’m just gonna call bullshit on those grounds. Did you just make this up? It’s quite poetic, I guess.

Yes, very well said. Psychological need for certainties (what you call desire for certainty) is hard-wired because we are biological organisms that have evolved only in so far as we have been able to sufficiently identify critical elements in our environment with a degree of accuracy. Thus our brain-body is geared to identification, classification, differentiation, compartmentalization, and efficiency of processing which leads these psychological functions to act in such a way that once they believe they are “finished”, an end is reached, they have a tendency to stop analyzing that particular end. Basic animal-mammal consciousness does not launch metaphysical inquiry into the nature of beings, because once beings are identified and labeled with various qualities, they can be forgotten, mental power then turning to more useful (for survival) endeavors.

This efficiency is highly important and necessary to survival on every level except for the human level. On our level, however, the level of the self-awareness (the consciousness (observation) that has attained consciousness (observation) of itself), this efficiency of processing is deadly, it leads to intellectual apathy, attribution error, bias, wishful thinking, deliberate blindless to self and reality, etc etc. In otherwords, once someone has formed their ‘mental egg’, their overall conceptual-evaluative worldview/paradigm to a certain degree the tendency is strong to never question it, to slip this paradigm into the dominant seat of judgement and use it as the lens through which everything else is seen, understood, believed.

Why is this dangerous? War, religion, intolerance, hate, bigotry, slavery, hubris, politics, greed, apathy, lying, fear, anxiety, rationalizing, denial, neurosis, psychosis, emotional vampirism, cynicism, narcissism, resignation, despair, suffering, suicide…

Yes, however we must be careful that certainties are not discarded without understanding, which is to say, we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are certainties, not of an absolute nature, but conditions and contingencies of our own human (self)experience, “keys” internal to elements of this experience that can unlock doors for us. The most important thing is to cultivate a radical openness, openness to self and others. This can manifest as acceptance in the face of Fate, the universe, whatever. We are not in control. We are a product of our internal and external environments, highly conditioned and pre-programed, and our freedom exists only on the deepest level of self-awareness that precedes thought, sentiment, all stimulus-response. When we act from this level we can begin to insert degrees of automony into our lives, begin to take ownership and control (which means: take responsibility for) our thoughts and feelings, desires, hopes and expectations. Throwing out ALL certainties can be a means to this end of cultivating emtiness (what I would call radical openness, openness in the face of Being), but the meta-awareness must also exist alongside this endeavor, that we are not throwing away ourselves along with our certainties. This is why I like to think of it as throwing away absolutes, throwing away the need for absolutism.

When we purge ourselves of dogmas and of dogmatism, which also means elevating (all) beliefs to a higher state (of utility), we become freed from absolutes and in this freedom we encounter directly our own psychological NEED for absolute certainty, for the life-raft, the trench and fortifications against existence.

Each person’s path will be unique, but I feel this aspect must be fairly universal. Compassion and love are such noble things, and have always been understood as such by the wise and more genuine among us, and by the “men of genius” throughout history, because these are part of and lead to the cultivating of universalization of the subject, of its objects and its objectification-processes, and to a real and practical internal evolution… to cultivating emptiness and openness (hope, love, trust, compassion, tolerance). Said another way, to sum all this aphoristically, absence is presence. This wisdom has been known for thousands of years, for example by the Taoists and Buddhists, but it is something we all must penetrate into on our own, in a personal way, as this truth must first be created by us for it to actualize in/from our being (even though it is already there, strictly speaking, as potentiality, or as the actual grounding upon which higher conscious structures rest). It is interesting how philosophy/rational inquiry CAN get to this place of spiritual wisdom, but that it has been so rare that philosophy ever gets that far.

Perhaps yes, in some ways. But the creation of enlightened and free beings it also something that, while strictly speaking unnatural (from the perspective of everthing that has come before it) may be required or necessary for “the universe”, in some way. It is certainly necessary from the perspective of the long-term survival of the human species, and I would imagine for the long-term survival of any animal species which has attained sufficient self-consciousness.

We may disagree somewhat here, I do not think that the attainment of this state of stillness supposes “not caring” or “not having potential/possibility for anything”, but certainly we could be getting stuck behind the words here. Stillness rather seems to elevate one above common possibilities and necessities, and this does not necessarily mean that possibility and necessity (and with them obligation and desire) come to an end or vanish, but rather that they are ennobled and edified to new heights of contemplation and perceptibility and concern. To be alive is to be motivated by something(s), even unconsciously speaking, even being motivated by the idea of losing all motivation, etc… consciousness is a system for observation, for observing, and the subject-object will always exist as long as this system is in operation. So the goal ought to be to cultivate a new, more comprehensive and aware/moral subject(s) and object(s), rather than to attempt to rid ourselves of these, which would be impossible (is attainable (in theory) in death only).

Yes, very rare.

Yes, also very true. Well said.

=D>

Hard-wiring (of seeking certainty):

I think it’s from the awareness itself. I mean, the awareness is the positive detection of something and (subconscious) certainty is implied.
Then, our cells act upon detection (and thus certainty) of something, and nerve cells try to connect (making positive certainty circuit), too.
So, it’s observed at many levels (and possibly at all levels).

Efficiency:

This is a bit touchy. Although I do think we can observe the lots of tendencies for efficiency, like the way we tend to think using heuristic - short cut, rule of thumb - instead of accurate exhaustive means, I also see lots of idle functions and redundancy.

For our tendency to classify/categorize and then consider/pretend as if we understood things, and for our tendency to jump and conclude too quickly, I guess we can see it in the perspective of efficiency seeking.

But the urge for the efficiency of these types is probably coming from the aversion toward any time spent in uncertainty, in my opinion.
It’s the efficiency for the sake of minimizing the duration of uncertainty.

Danger (of different consequences):

It’s a “danger” if we don’t like one or more of these possible consequences.
How we feel depends on the center of gravity/density of the awareness, or the strongest point of attachment.
Usually, we are strongly attached to many animal-human type subconscious urges that we tend to fear many things and thus feel some of potential consequences as “danger”.
But from the point of view of emptiness/stillness, there is no such thing as “danger”.

Discarding certainty:

I don’t think we can discard certainty at will, very easily.
Usually, a certainty may go away when we understand the bogus nature of it.
And this type of understanding may come from the questioning triggered by the sense of conflict/contradiction between the certainty and another one.

It’s like waking up from dream.
In a way, any certainty will create a bubble, a dream, and we will remain trapped in it as long as it seems normal and comfortable.
However, when something in the dream seems strange, it triggers questioning and the questioning may bring up the awareness of the current state that the focus of certainty shift from that of dream to the questioning and self-awareness.
This has the effect of loosening the grip of dream reality and awakening to the outside of the dream (which is the domain of particular certainty).

So, this may happen only if one has strong certainty, to begin with, and if s/he becomes aware of another certainty.

Radical openness:

Emptiness/stillness is radically open, by nature.
There is no resistance/friction.
Everything comes and disappear, sometime leaving the trace or the small cry as it goes.
It opens up (and sucks) everything, without any exception.

But it doesn’t do it for us (humans). We tend to think about things (and even emptiness) in terms of usefulness for our desire. Fortunately or unfortunately, the emptiness has no regard at all for any of our desires. It just eats everything, without any discrimination.

Human perspectives (and emptiness perspective):

As long as we are living as human animal, it’s normal to have (at least some) human perspectives (with its desires and preferences).
So, we may care a bit (or more) about survival of human species and so on.

But once the door of the emptiness is open, and especially if the center of gravity of awareness shift from human realm into more or less pure awareness or even half into emptiness, human perspectives become a little far away.
Survival of anything, human, universe, pure awareness, isn’t important at all, as these are not even started (or already ended, or eternally continuing) for the emptiness.

And strangely, this absolute carefree attitude guaranties the desires of each level to be satisfied in optimal manner, somehow.

It’s a bit like the grains of sand in hourglasses.
If there is a sticky grain, it may jam the stream and stop the flow.
When there is no stickiness, it goes without hiccups.

But it’s the end result and we can’t hope and make it happen as long as our focus is still strongly attached on something of human realm.
It’s usually better to seek what we want, one by one, keeping a bit or more of the perspective of the emptiness if possible.

And it will turn inside-out.
I mean, the absolute certainty is only available in emptiness in the negative form.
And existence has no means to resist the emptiness. Only the awareness withstands a bit.
So, there is no more need for any fortification, when the focus shifts and flips.
No more need for any fake absolutes, then.

I’ve discussed this with others, in the past.
There are lots of variations.
But I think it’s better to concentrate on one’s own focus.

This (what you wrote) is from the human perspectives.
Emptiness doesn’t care about wisdom and love and all other things.
The lack (absence) is the key.
And that includes any bias, hope, positiveness of any kind.

I was reading things written about Bernadette Roberts, yesterday.
And I felt that most people involved in “spiritual” or “mystic” things are so oriented (and craving) for hope and positive thing that they would certainty miss the absolutely neutral nature of emptiness, which appears as absolutely negative when placed in the existence side (or in the perspective of existence).
But this positive bias is the nature of awareness that it’s not easy to recognize.

In short, seeking anything human, such as human survival, human happiness, and we would end up in one of human perspectives. Nothing wrong with it.

If one seeks the absolute, absolutely, one may end up with the absolute.
It’s certainty very interesting, fun and funny, and lots of problems on the way.
And it makes you not very human, as you would not identify yourself as being human.
The basic “self” is unfolded and folded onto “awareness” and then collapse into emptiness, leaving not much self (and the identification that comes with it), anymore.

So, if you want to stay human, somehow, DON’T care about the absolute.
Grab anyone of fake absolutes and live with it, at all cost.

There is a theory that “free being” can be useful as something like detergent (or paint thinner, manicure remover) in the industries of upper realm because of the anti-stickiness nature.
I don’t think it’s produced in quantity, though.

According to Bernadette Roberts, human race would be extinct if everyone become really free.
And again, emptiness doesn’t care about it.

You are hoping a lot, which isn’t wrong but you may get a little surprise, later.
“Image” (or notion) of stillness can be associated with many things (in the human perspectives) and can be inspiring and ennobling.
But if you drop, you know that it’s absolute and no exception. It’s thoughtless and emotionless. It’s spiritless, godless.
And it does not make remaining human realm to be better in the way many people imagine (and hope).
It will simply consume remaining desires/preferences in very efficient and satisfactory manner.
It will consume remaining pain/suffering, too, by the way.

As such, some person who had lots of delusion about spirituality may act in “spiritual” manner after dropping because of “inertia”, so to say.
And you are usually already pretty “clean” in terms of human desires when dropping happens that it’s probably rare to see someone acting very violently or sadistically afterward.
But it’s possible to have a guy/girl efficiently consuming and satisfying remaining desires of horrific sort, too, I guess. I don’t know of anyone like that, though.

Each goes with own set of desires and preferences.
But dropping into the stillness is definitely suicidal.
It does satisfy desires, efficiently, and shorten your life span (unless you eat desires and sufferings of others as supplement, which some may do by nature).

The past is always active. If the past ends, you end. That is the reason why you will never allow that, no matter how hard you try. The past is everywhere in you. Every cell in your body is permeated by it. Every nerve is involved in it. The past has this body so much under control that it will not let it go. The past will not come to an end through any effort you make or whatever will power you effect. The more effort you put into it, the more willpower you use, the stronger it becomes. You came across many insights in this process, but every insight reinforces the past. It does not in any way help to understand anything and to thus free yourself from whatever. Every insight that you obtain with your investigations only strengthens and solidifies that.

Thus… what should you try to do in such a situation? NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL! Nothing, no power in the world can help you, period. Thus, as long as you remain dependent on any authority outside of you, you remain hopeless. Once you understand this clearly, there is no more helplessness, your helplessness no longer exists. Then you actually don’t know what to do. This is the situation where you have to arrive, no longer knowing what to do. And, if you expect that something will happen from what you then call your ‘clarity of thinking’, or your ‘meditation’ or something similar, then you are lost forever. Because that is not the true clarity.

It makes no sense to act as if escape from the past is possible or some sort of ideal - we are our past. Consciousness pierces this fabric of experiential conditioning events by which our being is constituted. Consciousness is this “past”, as actualized present moment, observing itself. The more comprehensive and aware this conscious observation is, the more we become what we already are. A fully actualized and aware/honest consciousness is an ideal, to be aspired to even if actually reaching such a point is impossible. Moving closer brings self-knowledge, peace, increased degrees of freedom and responsibility, joy, capacity to act in beneficial ways toward ourselves and all beings… and who knows, perhaps it can bring a lot more than that, too, spiritually speaking. No one is talking about abandoning or escaping our past. That happens only in death of consciousness (assuming consciousness does not/cannot continue some form of existence after bodily death).

Every insight strengthens and solidifies past? Yes! Precisely, we are constituted as past-events, memory actualizing in a present moment; when our insights are “strengthening and solidifying our past”, this means that they are strengthening and solidifying us.

I think the awareness, seen as the multiple feed backs, identifies itself with the past (or very short term memory, I’d say).
So, the past (or memories) plays important role in awareness, and then so called “biographical self” that maintains superficial identity of us as human.

However, memories aren’t very reliable, and we make mistakes because of faulty memory (or the lack of memory), too.
So, the past cannot be absolute foot hold, either.
And it’s more of “the past is constantly escaping from us”, even if one tries to cling on it.

If we want to conserve the some sense of certainty and reality (in whatever), it’s better not to verify the basis of them. Once verified and if we are reasonable enough, I think we will know that there isn’t absolutely sold basis in any certainty/reality.
Relying on dogmas or ideals can make us less reasonable and thus let us keep the impression of certainty/reality/normality.
But it’s not an option for some of us who don’t want to delude and to jail our self.
So, the yo-yo state of looking for any positive certainty and loosing the hope would continue until most of the desire for the certainty is worn out or broken, or till one finally becomes like most others to accept one of the common (or rare) core beliefs as the foundation of fake certainties.

We have no contractual agreement with any form of system or method that attempts to control, persuade, shape or manipulate the mind except one: society. We are bound to it to a large degree. If we question its structure and organization, we dissent.
So we have to accept that as a fake ‘reality’ and at the same time know (with certainty) that there is no way to find certainty in any proposed meaning or purpose of life. Yet, all knowledge/thought structures that reside inside of us are products of that which is perceived outside of us, that is, what is given to us. Hence, society has created you for the sole purpose of maintaining the status quo.

I think awareness and its nature/tendency is pretty common.
To me, awareness (of different degree and spectrum) in each person (or entity) is more “real” than vague notion like “society”.
So, I don’t really share your way of seeing things.

As I don’t see things like you do, I don’t feel obliged.
From the awareness perspective, thinking and talking about “meaning” and “purpose” without practical (and hypothetical) context is illogical and useless. So, I don’t usually do that.
“Status quo” is probably a common form of wishful thinking coming from the tendency of awareness to presume persistence (and moreover permanence).
And in stillness, there is no room for wishful (or pessimistic) thinking. It’s nice and (deadly) calm.

You cannot be aware; you and awareness cannot co-exist. If you could be in a state of awareness the continuity would be snapped, the illusion of the experiencing structure, the ‘you’, would collapse, and everything would fall into a natural rhythm.

What is necessary for man is to free himself from the entire past of mankind, not only his individual past. That is to say, you have to free yourself from what every man before you has thought, felt and experienced – then only is it possible for you to be yourself. Every individual is unique. Culture or civilization or whatever you might call it has always tried to fit us into a framework. Man is not man at all; I call him a ‘unique animal’ – and man will remain a unique animal as long as he’s burdened by the culture.

The search ends with the realization that there is no such thing as enlightenment. By searching, you want to be free from the self, but whatever you are doing to free yourself from the self is the self. How can one be made to understand this? There is no ‘how’. If you were told that, it will only add more momentum to that search, strengthen that momentum. That is the question of all questions: “How, how, how?”

This is the ultimate: You have to totally surrender yourself. There is no path of wisdom; there is no path at all. It is total surrender – throwing in the towel – and what comes out of that is wisdom. It is not surrender in the ordinary sense of the word; it means there isn’t anything you can do. That is total surrender – total helplessness. It can’t be brought about through any effort or volition of yours. If you want to surrender to something, it’s only to get something. That’s why I use the words ‘a state of total surrender’. It’s a state of surrender where all effort has come to an end, where all movement in the direction of getting something has come to an end. All wanting, be it this wanting or that wanting, is totally absent.

Enlightenment (if there is any such thing as enlightenment) is not an experience at all. So, this dawns on you – this realization (if you want to put it that way) that there is nothing to realize. Self- knowledge or self-realization is to realize for yourself and by yourself that there is no self to realize – that is going to be a shattering blow.

To realize that there is no enlightenment at all is enlightenment.

Thought doesn’t stop. Thoughts will always be there, because thought and life are not two different things. Don’t imagine that you will be free of thoughts; thoughts may be there or not, but you don’t identify yourself with the thoughts at all – there is nothing here to identify itself with a particular movement of thought. They may be there or they may not be there – they are going to be there because life and thought are not two different things – you cannot do a thing about it. When you see that this instrument is not the thing to use to understand anything, then it somehow slows down and falls into its natural rhythm, then it does not become a problem or a burden to you.

What prevents you from understanding what you want to understand is this very thing which you are using to understand things. This is not my teaching or anybody’s teaching, but this is the only thing: You are trying to understand something through an instrument which is not the instrument to understand.

You are not going to make it anyhow, because there is nothing to make, nothing to achieve. As long as you want to get or achieve something or want to be an enlightened man, you are not going to be an enlightened man. Enlightenment is to drop this whole business of wanting to be an enlightened man – that is enlightenment. I don’t like to use that word.

I think you are talking to “you”, using “you” to mask your “self”.
And I think you are a bit (or more) confused.

When something is gone into the emptiness, sometime it leaves a bit of sound (or other form of last cry).
And an interesting thought may leave interesting note, while confused thought leaves noise that is a bit painful to listen.
The emptiness doesn’t mind anything and sucks all junk thought and nonsense just like more organized thought, though.

And everything is gone, including your prized ideal and thought and noises.
Your past? It’s gone.
The past of mankind? It’s gone.
Burden? It’s gone.
Natural rhythm? It’s gone.
Understanding? It’s gone.
Enlightenment? It’s gone.
That word? Its’ gone.

Now, the memory of your words/thoughts is gone, and I’m glad.

There is no one here talking. There is just talk. The same is happening with you. We, in a state of emptiness – by ourselves alone – without using the contrived ‘self,’ would be in a state of not-knowing.

We are utilizing temporary cooperation (by bringing together and using certain areas in the apparatus of the brain when we translate sensory input via memory and past experiences) so we can ‘communicate.’ Once that is finished, we are back in a state of no deliberate concern, that is, when there is no ‘self’ to identify with.

The reason it is not we who are talking is simply because the knowledge we are using did not come from us …

(We were formed as an ‘entity’ by means of indoctrination into the conditions we were born. The conditions of the existing culture have nothing to do with our understanding of ourselves. Actually, there is no need to understand anything about ourselves, other than an arbitrary ‘understanding’ of the external agency that provides us with a sane functioning format for purposes of communication within its purposes only.)

… and if the knowledge does not belong to us, then where are we? Obviously, we are not there. If we are not there, then there is no one talking.

Oh yeah?
Then, I guess I don’t have to listen to what your sacred cow has dropped off.

Thank you.

No need for the thanks. You’re not listening to me anyway.

Do you listen to anybody? You do not; you listen only to yourself. When you leave the sense of hearing alone, all that is there is the vibration of the sound – the words repeat themselves inside of you, as in an echo chamber. This sense is functioning in just the same way with you, except that you think the words you are hearing come from outside of you.

Get this straight: You can never hear one word from anyone else, no matter what the relationship with that person; you hear only your own translations, always. They are all your words you are hearing. All that the other person’s words can possibly be to you is a noise, a vibration picked up by the ear-drum and transferred to the nerves which run to the brain. You are translating those vibrations all the time, trying to understand, because you want to get something out of what you are hearing.

I’m always amused when someone endeavors to go on about some “mystic pre-and-post-conceptual understanding” …with words. It always inevitably ends up in a series of odd and utterly disjointed sentences—which make no sense, taken together. Can anybody find a common theme among any two connecting sentences above, let alone an argument? If this has anything to do with ‘society’ or ‘technology’, well, society and technology aren’t mentioned after the first sentence. If it has anything to do with ‘knowledge’, then it fares worse—if indeed knowledge is in knowing-that and what you don’t know. Would probably have been better to pass over in silence.

When there is no concern about whether thought is there or not, deliberate thought is not there. Conscious thought slows down and falls to the background with the more natural quiet and smooth rhythmic thought functioning. At that moment, the senses go about their independent disconnected and disjointed careers with no coordinator; no coordinator there to bring two or more separate mental neural operations together in response to a demand.

It defies sensible description. Being a state that’s not strangled by thought, any attempt by thought and words to explain it is misleading and confusing.

So, I guess you are not listening to your loud self, and just interpreting as if “There is no one here talking. “, just like many others.

You are providing the medium through which the common knowledge – being utilized by two individuals (us) – is expressing itself. There is no illusion here that we are communicating anything. There is no need to interpret, understand or communicate anything that would suggest that without it life would be meaningless or problematic.

…What?