It must be a first principle to see the need for honesty in self-enquiry. If one allows any concession to self-lying there can be no understanding of oneself. The necessity for scrupulous honesty with regard to oneself must be understood deeply.

And if one leads a dishonest life externally, can there be any possibility at all that one will be honest in one's inner life?

When one really sees this, honesty ceases to be a moral imperitive and becomes a logical necessity. One is confronted with something deeply serious.

What are you waiting for?

Last night I went out to vote in the local government elections being held here in England. I got to the polling station but could not enter.

Even though I appear to myself to be clear about politics being such a dirty instrument, somehow I had driven myself three miles to vote with the idea that it would be in some way a positive action.

It was the odd idea that the government were about to get a good drubbing and that I would do my part in this. What an absurd notion to allow to exist in my head without coherent questioning!

I was really in a state of dream. Luckily I woke up. Is it not part of honesty to check one's actions before taking them? Is there any possibility of integrity at all if one habitually acts in thoughtless ways? And to wake up must mean to act integrally, not driven by vague ideas or desires. It is something that demands a great deal.

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Fri, 06 May 2011.

Paul Davidson wrote:
It is something that demands a great deal.

I was detrmined to vote for a particular party, but voting it is as good as voting an evil and i wanted to contain that evil by a lesser evil.There were provisions for not voting and can be recorded and the all the worst happend to those people who opted it. only Aurobindos mysticism will work.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

Dearest Ganesan, I have the greatest respect for Sri Aurobindo and for his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa, known as The Mother, who always knew that "Salvation is physical." But Aurobindo's way is not mine. I cannot have his revelations and his knowledge is inaccessable to me, except by way of belief, which is corruption.

You say, "Aurobindo's mysticism will work." Yet this is a belief and an expectation. I have never said that Krishnamurti's way will work, which would be a lie to say it because I cannot know it. All I can know and therefore all I can state as fact is the actuality I find within myself. Anything else I say or have said, is speculation and must be taken as that or it becomes a poison.

I was going to add that to look for Truth within is not a limitation because the whole world is within you. Then I checked myself because I saw it was a speculation. I actually have not seen it myself. I only see fragments, never the whole. I have to give the correct value to those fragments and not build upon them or accept another's word for their meaning. It is a hard discipline, Ganesan, much harder than maintaining a belief. Do you see what I mean my friend?

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Sat, 07 May 2011.

Hi Paul

Honestly I am dishonest.Not joking.

I don't know

Paul,
As for voting in government elections, "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." Alice Walker

Activism may be essential at critical at times in one's life, just as is self-honesty is daily life:

[PA Governor's Spokesman Gets Pwned After Marcellus Shale Protesters Are Censored | Crooks and Liars
[http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/pa-gover...]

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." J. Krishnamurti

This post was last updated by Ruth Bass Sat, 07 May 2011.

Ruth Marie Bass wrote:
"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." Alice Walker.
Activism may be essential at critical at times in one's life, just as is self-honesty is daily life:

Thank you for your comment Ruth. I am wondering the implication of the word 'activism.'

If I were to say, "Action may be essential at times in one's life," would this be the same thing? In what way is 'activism' different from 'action?' What does the word 'activism' mean to you?

And in the Alice Walker quote, what does she mean by 'power?' What is my 'power?'

What are you waiting for?

dhirendra singh wrote:
Honestly I am dishonest.Not joking.

I would be surprised to meet anyone who is truly honest, Dhirendra. Certainly I am not. I am noting how deeply the practice of deception and self-deception is ingrained in me. I am supposing that I am no different in this regard from anyone else, except perhaps in degree. Politics and business are the art-houses of deception, of course. I am glad I am not in that!

We get through life by cutting corners, telling lies, exerting influence and being hypocrites, and we have thus created enormous shadows that follow us around and haunt our every move. Self enquiry is to turn around and face that shadow, which is in and of itself the movement of honesty. But, alas, we are afraid of our own shadows!

What are you waiting for?

The known can move from the known into the unknown, but it can never move into the unknowable. To inquire into one's behavior and motives is to search the (perhaps already known but hidden) and the unknown for causes. This activity may be commendable and useful, but until one realizes that there is no end to cause and effect, there is no possibility of the unknowable.

max

Paul, Activism is staying informed and organized on issues dear-to-heart and taking action necessary to inform others in the position to bring about necessary change. Action is a response to one's sensitivities.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." J. Krishnamurti

Ruth Marie Bass wrote:
Paul, Activism is staying informed and organized on issues dear-to-heart and taking action necessary to inform others in the position to bring about necessary change

Organised, I guess, with others around the ideas that appeal to oneself while others stay organized around opposite ideas that appeal to them. Then we have the battle between left and right, capitalists and workers, nationalists and internationalists, the good versus the bad. Activism always implies opposition and resistance, does it not? It is the struggle for power. Has that helped humankind up until now? One set of cunfused people organizing themselves against another set of confused people, both vying to control the field of action. That is politics and activism is politics.

How much effort went into getting Obama elected, and look what is happening. I recall under Bush when so many American liberals told me they were 'ashamed to be American. You see, they wanted so much to be proud to be American. And America became a big battleground on this isssue of pride and shame. Obama is elected in this fight and what happens? Everything remains the same. No question is answered and no problem solved.

And when one goes through such struggles year after year, decade after decade, there comes a point, surely, where the whole game is questioned. But it cannot be questioned from inside the game. There has to be a complete break with politics before the field of power can be faced squarely. When one is on that field one only hears the battle cry, which is a form of self-intoxication.

I think a great deal of activism is based upon identification with the nation. We have to change 'our' government. We cannot let the wrong thing happen on 'our' watch. We want to live in a nation that we are proud of, united in brotherhood under the same flag. Etc.

What are you waiting for?

Ruth Marie Bass wrote:
Action is a response to one's sensitivities.

What are our sensitivities, Ruth? There are the things we like and the things we do not like. We are sensitive to our senses of liking and disliking and we act from that, from the senses. Is this action, or is it the learnt responses of the senses reacting to current stimulants?

Can we fully understand the present if we approach it from the accumulated likes and dislikes of previous experience? And if we do not understand the actual challenge we face in the moment then we do not act freely from that understanding, we react from the past.

When we react to the present from the past we are practicing a deception because we are trying to fit the unknown into the known, trying to make the new correspond to the old.

Every sort of self-deception arises from this for there can nevr be such a correspondance between the live present and the dead past and we continually cover up the confusions we create by trying to force reality into a pre-constructed mold.

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Sun, 08 May 2011.

max greene wrote:
This activity may be commendable and useful, but until one realizes that there is no end to cause and effect, there is no possibility of the unknowable.

In that case we can safely leave the unkowable aside because it is unknowable. The question remains however, how can truth be perceived by a mind that is hinged on lies?

For me, to talk about the unknowable, in any knowledgeable way, would be a lie and to talk of it without knowledge would be an escape from reality, which is another form of self-deception. So I must approach only what can be known and through observation and understanding, bring some order to that.

"There is no end to cause and effect," therefore there is no end to enquiry. Is one yearning for an end to it all? Has one something better to do?

What are you waiting for?

"In that case we can safely leave the unkowable aside because it is unknowable. The question remains however, how can truth be perceived by a mind that is hinged on lies?"

The present is the unknowable - - and the present is living, since it is impossible to "live" in the past or the future. Is it possible to "know" (remember) the present? It is not, since there is nothing yet to remember. The present is lived, not remembered.

Truth cannot be perceived by a mind hinged on memory - - the known - - simply because memory and the known are not what "is." They are images of what "was."

We think and act only in terms of memory, but what "is" is the present, and the present obviously has to occur before the memory of it. Sorry about that.

max

max greene wrote:
The present is the unknowable

Then I shall not talk of it.

max greene wrote:
and the present is living

But I cannot know that if it is unknowable.

max greene wrote:
the present obviously has to occur before the memory of it

In which case the present is time and I can know it. What does it mean to say that the present first 'occurs' and that memory then occurs after it?

Surely memory must also be in the unknowable present or esle it would not exist. Everything is in the present, Max. Nothing IS in the past. The past is what was, not what is.

It just seems to me, and this is only my own impression, that you are setting yourself impossible task in saying something is unknowable and then telling me of it. I prefer to stick to the known and the knowable, which are facts, than to the unknoweable which can only be postulated upon with the hopeful aid of logic.

I am trying to be straightforward rather than critical. I hope that is seen.

What are you waiting for?

Paul,

" . . . the present is living."

You demur, saying "But I cannot know that if it is unknowable."

We can certainly know ABOUT the unknowable. We are alive, are we not? Do you have the memory of currently being alive, or are you simply alive? Memory can come only after the present moment. In other words, life itself is unknowable - - i.e., before "known" and memory. To remember life and living is to have created an image of it - - not the real thing at all. Life and living are in the present only, therefore it is reasonable to say that the present is unknowable.

You wrote, " . . . the present is time and I can know it."

The present most certainly is not time. Time is the ticking of the clock measuring the sequence of events. The present is outside of time. Test this for yourself: try to imagine the present measured by seconds - - time. Time is a human invention whereas the present is simply here, a fact of nature.

And also, "What does it mean to say that the present first 'occurs' and that memory then occurs after it?"

Memory is image. Image, of necessity, comes after the original. So although we can't "know" the present moment - - the living moment - - we do remember it as image. We think we know what the present is, but we don't. We know what the present was.

max

Dearest Max, I deeply appreciate the interest and dedication you show in your communication but, it is to my shame, that I cannot follow you in what for me is a level of abstraction too far. Probably it is not abstract but it comes to me like that. It may well be my own deficiency or lack of insight or integration, a mental block or maybe the difficulty in this medium of the email forum. In any case my poor brain struggles with the ideas and I have to let it go. It is the same thing, unfortunately, with Ganesan's poetry. I cannot find a way to approach it. Probably I am a dunderhead! But better to admit to being dunderheads then to be at loggerheads.

We come together as we can and then let it rest.

Lots of love to you Max.

Paul

What are you waiting for?

What I'm saying doesn't seem all that difficult. I've tried to make it as clear as possible.

Thanks for your time here. I'm sure we'll meet again in other topics.

max

dhirendra singh wrote:
Not joking.

Then you are not honest about that statement..
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

This post was last updated by ganesan balachandran Mon, 09 May 2011.

Paul Davidson wrote:
It is the same thing, unfortunately, with Ganesan's poetry. I cannot find a way to approach it.

90% i try to match and reverberate with you and the ten percent i get clarified with your inputs.you are highly insightful.But Max is hundred percent clear.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

This post was last updated by ganesan balachandran Mon, 09 May 2011.

max greene wrote:
We think we know what the present is, but we don't. We know what the present was.

It is correct as you say.But if there is no memory will not the man revert back to a state of an animal?( animals are considered to have no memory or very little of it)

Ravi Seth wrote:
animals are considered to have no memory or very little of it

And they are incapable of lying.

But actually animals have plenty of memory, depending on the species. The chimanzee has a much better and faster visual spacial memory than a human being and knows every tree in its territory, and exactly when the fruit will be at its ripest.

Did I say they were incapable of lying? Not quite. They can fool each other very well and connive to get what they want. They have a very active RAM memory and deeper memory too.

The elephant remembers a great deal about its environment and the creatures it relates to.

What animals do not have is an extensive conceptualised verbal capacity. So they do not paw over past events by use of words and related images. It seems to be the symbiotic relationship between word and image that catches the human mind and turns it in circles. Not understanding this process it gets hold of him and creates havoc. Then he invents a controller to control the uncontrollable. In effect the havoc acts in ignorance of itself and at its deepest functioning and tries to control the peripheral effects of its own movement, which doubles the problem by creative an impenetrable wall of self-deception.

The K quote today is that "The whole system of society is based upon possessiveness." I would change 'possessiveness' for 'self-deception.'

Honesty means ending one's ignorance of oneself. It implies the penetration of that wall of deception, which is composed of false memories, the uniquely human capacity that puts memory at the service of self-deception.

What are you waiting for?

ganesan balachandran wrote:
But Max is hundred percent clear

Ganesan, you can only say that it is 100% clear for you. But that also can simply mean that you share the same outlook, opinion or confusion. I cannot judge. I am just pointing the possibilities.

I cannot say that anyone or anything is 100% clear for me. One of the magical things about K, for example, is that I understand newly each time. Which means that it is not K I am getting clear about but myself.

My task is not to understand Max or anyone else, but to understand myself. In my case, abstraction and poetry is the most difficult to approach as I don't seem to be able to use it as a mirror to my own process. It is, as I said, my own deficiency.

What are you waiting for?

Paul Davidson wrote:
One of the magical things about K, for example, is that I understand newly each time. Which means that it is not K I am getting clear about but myself.

When that ends then you are clear about yourself.What you said was true for me also. but i understood it is the magic of the changing present and environment which gives the illusion.In fact they become much simpler.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

Ravi,

"But if there is no memory will not the man revert back to a state of an animal?"

We're talking about psychological memory, not the physical, bodily memory in the organism and its cells that is required for continuity in the evolutionary scheme.

As Paul has pointed out, memory seems to be as much a part of the rest of the animal kingdom as it is with humans. Is the chimpanzee's memory of all the trees in his territory physical memory, or is it psychological memory? Or is it both - - a combination of survival need and something psychological?

But the point is, I would say, of what value is psychological memory, to either the human or to the animal? Psychological memory has at its center a self. It is the "I," whether an animal or a human "I." This self, the "I," is the controller, and soon enough the physical will be sacrificed for this psychological self.

So it seems that with the elimination of the actually disruptive and dangerous psychological memory we are left with an underlying physical memory, in common with all other animals. In addition, it appears that evolution has brought us to a greater and more complex brain and nervous system than any other animal, and with this has come a better vehicle for living and intelligence.

max

Thanks Ravi and Max. I am getting more of a sense of the relationship between these two questions, memory and honesty.

If we approach all matters from the perspective of honesty, more and more seems to fall into place. If it is seen as fact that any form of self-deception is poison then memory is no longer a problem.

Then, there is no issue as to what to do with memory, whether one is for it or against it. We are not driven into the impossible task of ascertaining which bits to keep and which to jettison. We do not have to check out what is 'psychological' and what 'physical.'

Because when things are seen for what they are, without deception, the good stands by itself and the bad falls away. Is this not so? Things will stand or fall according to their intrinsic worth, the moment we stop trying to prop the whole thing up.

Probably most of stored memory is part of the armory of self-deception. Probably most of it will go. Most of our memory has no intrinsic worth but is part of the corrupt ediface of selfhood.

I have found that much of my memory has already deserted me. Much of my childhood and family memories have gone. Where things have resolved themselves through future understanding, the past is not held on to. When I see and understand that one child bullying another is himself a victim of the whole movement, all those memories of personal experience of mistreatments lost their hold and the memories lose their bite. They fall away. Actually I am shocked at how 'bad' my memory is . . . until I realise that this is not 'bad,' it is quite 'good!'

There is still a whole bag of memories that I can delve into if I wish but they have no emotional purchase and to not hold my interest or sustain my gaze. They have little entertainment value. When the past truly becomes the past, that is when I feel freer.

I am not saying that honesty is the only thing or the main thing, but it must be the first thing, not to try to live up to a moral standard, "I must be honest" but to fully realise the insidious action of self-lying. Then memory holds no fear.

What are you waiting for?

As usual, good exposition, Paul. Reading what you wrote reminds me of the wise words, "If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember anything."

A couple of things.

You say, "When the past truly becomes the past, that is when I feel freer." Recognizing that the past is no longer, that it cannot be changed and that it can only be recalled as an image is crucial, but one has to ask, is the "I" that feels free of the past also part of that past?

How would you describe true, 100% honesty?

max

Paul Davidson wrote:
But actually animals have plenty of memory, depending on the species.

I or you haven't scientifically studied this memory phenomena.Pl refer to 'crucible of consciousness' by Zoltan Torey where he has explained scientifically about animals having no memory at all.Max, this is for you too.

max greene wrote:
but one has to ask, is the "I" that feels free of the past also part of that past?

Yes Max, this is interesting. :)

max greene wrote:
is the "I" that feels free of the past also part of that past?

It certainly is, if it is as you say, the 'I' that feels it. The 'I' is of the past. But one can get wrapped up in the words, whether one means I or 'I,' or indeed "I." Or one can use a convoluted phrase such as, "When the feeling of freedom arises in the common presense of that which exists here and now . . ." And I begin to feel the absurdity of the one who calles himself, "The artist previously known as Prince."

K was once asked if he gave talks to serve his ego by putting himself in the public eye (or the public 'I'). Was he seeking affirmation through fame? So he gave several talks after that from behind a screen to try to cancel the possible effects of ego. He then saw the absurdity of it and gave it up.

Can we say that when memory falls away due to understanding there arises a freedom not hitherto palpable?

Whether that feeling is also palpable to the 'I' in any form, is another issue, though valid. Maybe the 'I' would not feel freedom as pleasure but as fear.

What are you waiting for?

max greene wrote:
How would you describe true, 100% honesty?

I would not attempt to describe perfection in any form, Max. That would be a descent into abstraction. But do we know what honesty is? Just plain and simple honesty? I am using the word as a descriptor, not as a thing in itself. I am trying to come near to that movement where one feels a vital interest in eliminating self-deception, knowing that it MUST be preferable to see the totality of oneself because not to do so opens one to intolerable and constant danger and a life of fear.

It is a process of noticing the blinkers and letting them drop. It is arduous. It takes time. (I will be crucified on this site for using that word).

We live in fear of our own shadows, Max. The deep understanding of that is enough to trigger a process of serious self-observation which progressively learns all the tricks of the mind in holding back from itself the information upon which it actually acts.

My house is filthy and I begin to sort it out. I am not looking for the perfect house. I am trying to bring order, starting from what I actually can do and not from an ideal of perfection, starting from what is near and not from what is far and unreachable. One can sit on the kitchen floor alday imagining the perfect self-cleaning house, or one can start with the dishes.

What are you waiting for?