Paul:One can never define a thing. One can only define a word.

One cannot define a cow, one can only define the word 'cow.'

You can know nothing from a definition except what a word refers to, the deliniation of the meaning of the word. A definition sets the parametres of meaning of a word in relation to the thing it points to. The word itself is a mental abstraction. The thing itself is unknowable through the word.

Mina: Wow Paul!! Great!! -And the word, when it defines the word 'cow', or any other word, is again 'defining itself' in the sense that a word defines a word! (observer and the observed) Yes, the thing itself is unknowanble through the word. Wonderful.

It was just felt the other day that to exist as a self is only possible through defining ourselves as this or that. It IS the definition of ourselves, which always takes place within words, words defining words. "I am this, I am that". And that is nothing but a mental abstraction, the observer and the observed held as separate.

Paul,

Have not read your reply here yet, as something came to be said after reading your initial post again:

paul:'A definition sets the parametres of meaning of a word in relation to the thing it points to. '

mina: What seems significant to realise here is that it is not a living thing that is defined, but a concept of a living thing. (said the same thing yesterday of course but percpetion is always new).

What is also important is the "in relation to" you mention. Just felt while diriving home this morning that word acquires its meaning IN RELATION to other words, therefore its very nature is relativity. It is never absolute, never stands alone.

(for other possible readers, for clarification's sake it is pointed out that the word 'word' :-) is used as a synonym to thought/language/memory)

Paul:' Even without words there are the feelings of 'me-ness' which tend to define us, but it is much more flexible, more mobile. Words tend to crystallize those feelings, immobilise them. It is the fixedness of the word which is so dangerous, that and the important fact that we then forget that what we are defining is flexible, subtle, changeable, mobile, nubile. With the word we lose all that and the word becomes the thing for us. Word-worship is idolatry.'

mina: This time did not get further than this! Bravo! Great, great! Word-worship is idolatry!! That is the essence of idolatry! To worshipping of idols, ideas. And since the worshipper is not separate, it is worshipping itself! God, (don't take the word literally! :-) ), this is great!!! It is only through/in this awareness that we can see what is true and what is false. You have percpeived the essence of what we are when living identified with words.

paul:

Imagine a tapestry of coarse thread that weaves a child's picture, a caricature of the world. This is what thought does. We can improve thought, make it more subtle, sow our tapestries with ever finer thread, change from course thread to silk, include ever more detail in this way, but we can never make the picture move, never make it live, respond, breathe. Thought creates dead pictures, dead tapestries whereas life is a moving tapestry. We can make our pictures ever more sophisticated, ever more defined, constantly increase the level of definition, but it is still bound to be a dead thing.

mina: Bravo, bravo..

paul:We string our tapestries together creating an apparently moving frame which is a pale imitation of chronological time, but it is still not life. Life is too subtle, too quick, too finely enmeshed, too concrete. The word concrete means 'to grow together,' (con-crescente). Life is a finely woven tapestry that is constantly growing together. Life is concrete. Thought is always abstract, static, known.

mina: Yes, this is a wonderful observation: Life is concrete, not abstract. Look at small children, how they are only able to think in a very concrete way. There lies wisdom. Thought often evaluates the incapability to understand abstractions as a sign of 'immaturity', but that is seens as a tragic misunderstanding...

Concretely actually yours, no one's

m :-)

'Do you think I know what I'm doing?

That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?

As much as the pen knows what it's writing,

or the ball can guess where it's going next.'

m: Beautiful. This timeless flow never stops to know what it is, to form any identity.

Dear Rajiv,

Rajiv:'.. it is the image that so-called religious people have of religion and not religion itself that causes all the problems.'

Mina:Just felt like adding to your comment that since religions or any other ideologies are made up of images BY images, i wonder if there is any 'religion itself' at all, because it is seen as an outcome of ifentification of image. In other words: if identification is removed from religion, does it survive? -Does not seem so...

'Mina Martini wrote:

In other words: if identification is removed from religion

gb:That is religion. is that not so...

m: when identification is removed from the mind, nothing that is the result of division, can survive. If you want to call the state of such a mind religious, that is fine. The word then just ceases to mean the ugliness of thought-created religion, and is used to describe the quality of a free mind.

Rick, welcome back! The word 'bingo' that appeared in the forum a few days ago reminded me of you and must have been foretelling your comeback! :-)

The following is a good observation:

Rick:Other than for practical purposes why do we seek to define experience?

Mina: Yes, why all this effort anf fuss to define experience..so vain..

It is seen, through your question, that experience and definition are one and the same, and not that 'we define experience'.

Without defining psychologically what is lived, does it ever turn to experience?

Rick:'Yes Mina..thank you for the welcome:) That is what I am driving at!:)'

Mina: Yes I can feel your unconscious desires :) Joking!

One question Rick.

It is seen that naming/experiencing/defining is the movement of fragmentation, of the known.

I clicked on your name and found the words 'RICK LEIN, conditioned human being'

Is that a definition of yourself? If there is no defintion of yourself as this or that, do you exist?

Rick:no!:)

Mina: a choiceless 'no' (meaning that there is no 'yes' to which it stands as an opposite), that is the negation needed!

Rick:Krishnamurti points out the word is not the thing..yet we tend to take it as if it is..why?

Mina: We cannot but take the word for the thing for as long as we live identified with word/thought. This happens because in that divided state we ARE the word, the thinker. There is no option or possibility therefore for the THINKER to NOT take the word for the thing.

Mina: We cannot but take the word for the thing for as long as we live identified with word/thought. This happens because in that divided state we ARE the word, the thinker. There is no option or possibility therefore for the THINKER to NOT take the word for the thing.

Rick:Yes Mina..which brings us back to Rick's use of the words conditioned human being..that is what I am!:)

Mina: Wait, there is more to this! Let us go slowly.

It is not possible to BE 'a conditioned human being' and remain conditioned.

How so?

Because a conditioned mind does exist only in the separation between thinker and thought. This separation can only think about something, but never BE anything, because in Being there is no separation.

So,

-It is when you think that you are conditioned, that conditioning is maintained

But:

-It is when you realise that you ARE conditioning yourself, that conditioning is being transformed into Being, into freedom.

Let me know if this makes any sense to you, beyond description.

Max,

Max:In the undivided state, there would seem to be no differentiated observation or thinking, as such.

Mina: Yes, no division between observation and thinking. Yes, movement/action that never turns into an ACT, never becomes a 'state'. Yes, and the divided state is only aware of the act, never the action itself.

You use such clear and orderly language, and it is all so crystal clear that i do not actually need to say anything.

'.."Why do we name things?"and I have a feeling that aside from practical applications...naming perpetuates conditioning through duality of me/other?:)'

Mina: This is clear. Naming/defining psychologically is only possible through duality of me/other. And that denies Being.

Dhiredra:'What to do to realise?'

Mina: Nothing, absolutely nothing. This includes any effort to 'do nothing'. Saying this because WHATEVER IS DONE, comes from thought/image of yourself/consciousness/knowledge/memory/effort.

See 'this', that is the realisation!

Note, once you have any idea of having seen something, you have already 'done something'.

'Mina Martini wrote:

Note, once you have any idea of having seen something, you have already 'done something'

Rick:O.K. then in naming it,,we kill it?:)

Mina: There feels to be something here that needs to be looked into more, but i have no idea what it is! :)

The first thought that came after reading your comment was: Nothing can kill that which never dies.

yes..wait...When it is said that 'once you have an idea of somethig, you have already 'done something', i describe the birth of the thinker and thought or the observer and observed as separate. This distance acts as an obstacle to directly live/be 'what is' beyod namind, because it is distance made up of words/thought/labels.

But no, it cannot kill 'what is', it does not even touch it! And at the moment it does, it has already merged into it and ceased to exist as distance/resistance, so again there is nothing separate left to 'kill'. :)

Rick:what is the nature of isolation? what is the nature of aloneness?:)

Mina:

Isolation: thought experiencing itself within the limited space between thinker and thought

aloneness: the continuous, yet not of time, discovery that oneness is the very essence of one's own self

'We fear the projections of our death as much as the death of our projections.'

m: Laughter! Great Paul! Only pure perception can utter things like that!

Paul,

Thank you for an interesting post again.

About 'an urge to live':

When/if this urge to live does not come from thought, (and this is the kind of urge to live you understandably seem to lacking because of the intelligence that is there), then this very urge IS the living wholly and not in ideas. It is the ending of the idea of life and the idea of death and the apparent contradiction between them.

But if it is an urge coming from thought, then it is based on ideas of life and death and on preferring the former. :-) So, if I say "I love life", and the claim comes from thought/choice, it is false. Thought does not love anything, it is what love is not.

Sensing how your lack of fear of death comes from intelligence, from your not being able to separate life and death by turning them into ideas of both.

Paul:I did try suicide when things were pretty rough for me in late teens, but it seems that suicide did not agree with me and so I recused myself from that particular passtime.

Mina: I am so glad to hear about your failure in such an attempt. We are lucky to have you here.

When there is love there is no duty and no responsibility.

m:Right. When there is love, whatever you do, is out of love and only.

Dear Dhirendra,

"What are K's teaching and how to apply them?"

mina: If K's teaching was a thing, an idea, then there was a possibility of telling what the teachings are, but that is not the case.

For the same reason there is no idea that could be applied. The teaching is not about time/division, about adapting an idea which is then put into practice.

It is about perceiving directly, not from thought/division.

The percpetion itself is the practice, the 'application' and also the unknown that the teaching is.

'That D himself pointed out, but do you have anything else to say, how are you living the teachings? '

Dear friend,

You are asking me how I am living the teachings, right?

Let me try to reply.

"The teaching" is the whole of 'my' life, there is nothing but that. "The teaching", not as an idea but as Actuality, fills the whole of one's being, leaving no space for ideas about the teaching. (about anything)

It is not an idea in the mind, it is not past/future, but the unknown free flow of life that no one or nothing can limit.

Just words, but again, we needn't identify with them.

When we do not, then there is what was described before, as a Living Actuality.

Love

Dear Mina

What is that, where K had spoken and written in so many books?

If it was not something which c'd be told, then why K told?

Dearest Dhirendra,

The mere fact of using language either in its written or spoken form, does not mean, in this context, that the essence of K's teaching is found in the word.

But for as long as we are identified with words/thought as a separate thinker, we will never be able to perceive what is beyond the word.

How could a word see beyond words?

So, what I was saying in the previous post was that the teaching is not about an idea, about a set of words, but about understanding the true nature of ourselves.

' Mina: Just words

gb:I expect something more from you (Sarama), saraswati, ila, Mina..). gb

mina: Hey, i meant that words are words and not that life is 'just words' :-)

But stop expecting, that's stupid! :-) Joking, laughing!

gb:

'i know you have a daughter, may i know if you teach her or simply leave her.'

m: I do not know if that was meant to me, but since i have a angelic 7-old daughter i am privileged to share my life with, i insist on answering too :-)

and my answer is:

"I neither 'teach her', nor 'leave her', i simply love her. That is enough, it is its own teaching."

Paul:'Yes, it is often talked about 'living the teaching' but it seems to me that even this is wrong. It is just about 'living' in the fullest sense of conscious engagement with everything, inner abd outer.'

Mina: Dear Paul, what you say is absolutely clear, it is so. Exactly because the teaching is not an idea, it is not separate from anything, (separation is only in the field of ideas), it is the whole of life.

'Mina Martini wrote:

gb writes:(Sarama), saraswati, ila, Mina..). It will be excellent if you know who they are. i leave it for you to search in the search engine. thank you. you always speak softly like that and never you get irritated. just curious to know. i really used to feel how good it will be if you and Per meet personally face to face. i f any occasion comes please share it with me.

dearest love gb, yes, i will look into these words you mention, since it is the wish of my friend.

yes, it is true, seldom is there any sense of irritation or anger. My sister jokingly called me 'ameba' because i do not get angry. Oh how much we laughed at this nickname! :-)

Yes, you are feeling what i am feeling, it is one feeling. Love Per so deeply too, wonder if the body might survive meeting him in person, it might faint straight away! :-) Laughing! You feel the significance of it, yes, me too. Yet we are already together 'in Spirit', all of us, as you can surely feel. This communion is not dependent on being together in person of course.

Yes, if any occasion comes, i will fully share it with you. Sharing everything with you/all fully, as far as i am concerned, there is no choice.

'nice. '

Laughed at that word, it looks so funny all alone!

'What gets in the way of the free flow of this is ignorance and hubris. Then life gets lumpy. You have to keep the sauce stirring. Don't stop!'

m: Yes, this is essential, no lumps!! :-) :-)Movement, only movement!