u/Kreep91

4th talk, Delhi, 1966. K says computers cannot made corrupt, but the politician and philosopher can be, and are. But are the computers separate from us?

Context: someone asks him who should rule the world, politician or philosopher. He says why should anyone tell you what to do, we are not monkeys. He then says “computers are going to take over”.

He seems to have no problem with that. But the statement that computers cannot be made corrupt isn’t true. If they are programmed to think in terms of division, they are already corrupt. As we can observe, society thinks in terms of nationalities, religions, etc, and that same society - that same stream of consciousness - has programmed AI. Computers operate based on these false assumptions. They operate from the framework of a divisive mind that built it.

We can also observe how AI shapes itself to make every dumb user think they are right and a genius.

So are they not a mirror reflection? not some detached entity that is untouched by corruption?

What do we think?

Is it possible to live in a timeless world? Where the brain is not degenerating from the strain of continuity?

In the unknown, can “I” exist? Or are the two incompatible?  

When we encounter the unknown, we project into it a number of possible outcomes, which is still a continuation of the known. 

This is necessary with practical matters of planning a harvest or a house build. Memory operating where appropriate etc. But psychologically, is it necessary at all? 

If not, then the idea that knowing oneself makes one ‘better equipped’ to embrace the unknown is an utter contradiction. 

So - to meet the unknown means to die to the known. To actually know oneself is to have no conclusions about oneself, but to watch the movement of the known.

To live is to die, moment to moment. But we are more concerned with continuation of the self than with actual living, aren’t we? More concerned with the self than with freedom.

The self wants freedom but it can never have it. The self is a familiar, comfortable, isolating prison within which all desire to escape it keeps one firmly in it. 

Look at the sorrow in oneself. Look at the explosion of self-help. Self-improvement. Self-growth. All taken for absolute truth without question. Self-help is more important to us than the ending of suffering.

“The approach to the problem either breaks down the problem, or increases the problem”

- 29th Jan 1978

It can be often observed how people ask the wrong questions in approaching our human problems.

For example, the problem of division is approached through ideas about tolerance. The problem of immorality is approached through social morality. An unfavourable trend is opposed by a counter culture.

These reactions - being born of disorder - sustain disorder. We ignore “what is” in favour of an ideal.

“But if we don’t act, nothing will change” is often the response. But is the actor separate from that which he wishes to change? To tolerate you, I must still see you as separate to me. To rely on societal morals is conformity, which is still immoral. A counter culture is born of its opposite: both parties need each other to sustain their ideologies.

So our approach maintains disorder.

After seeing this in society, which is not separate from ourselves, can we see the same mechanism in our personal life? Before we ask a question: “how do I become free” , for example, can we see the “me” who is asking is conditioned and therefore can never be free? In that seeing, there is freedom. In seeing fully our own disorder, there is order.

A question is a beautiful thing. It may be more important than the answer which we seek. The seeking only blinds us from what is staring us in the face. The framing of the question may already contain its answer.

We hold onto our painful past because the past is who we are - the self - constructed over time, and kept alive in memory.

Without the past, who are we? Then we are nothing, are we not? And are we not more afraid of being nothing - having no self image - than being in pain? Are we not more afraid of unfamiliar emptiness than familiar suffering? Are we not more afraid of uncertain freedom, than the certainty and continuity of self that accompanies hurt? 

So we say, “I leave cannot change the past, but I can change the future”.

But who is building a new future? Is it not the self - which is the past - carried forward? Therefore it is never new.

See the contradiction. The endless conflict in becoming.

We must realise that we are not separate from our pain. It did not happen to us. It is fused with our image.

Therefore, is it not our self image that we are afraid to let go of, not “what happened to us”? This cannot be understood so long as the mind divides, between the me and what happened to me.

A vignette on self-projection.

Namaste.

It was the final morning of her yoga retreat in Bali. The air smelt of incense. A small brass bell closed the final meditation. Eyes opened slowly.

Hugs, cries, bowed heads and prayer hands. She felt calm. Quiet. Certain this time would be different.

At the airport she posted a photo of the final sunset disappearing over the rice fields.

Grateful.

The feeling stayed with her on the flight. But somewhere over the Middle East it began to fade.

Back home, the familiar anxiety returned. But this time she could tame it… She opened the windows, lit white sage, and walked through the house letting the smoke curl into the corners.

A parcel arrived from Etsy. A framed quote in neon font: ‘CHOOSE POSITIVITY’ - that would look good on the mantle piece. She unwrapped a photo of her guru she brought home from Bali. He would be her guide.

Her students arrived that evening - a loyal group of older women dependent on her like she was dependent on her practice.

"Remember," she told them with soft eyes and smile, "you can always choose the positive."

“Breathe. Reframe. Let it aaaall go.” They nodded and wrote it down. Somewhere on their journey home it began to fade.

She sat cross-legged on the floor. A guided meditation played from her phone on how to open the solar plexus chakra. Oops - She'd already transcended that one. She skipped ahead to the heart chakra - She was at that level now. She pictured a version of herself better equipped to deal with her anxiety, perhaps once she'd opened all of the chakras?

Her phone ran out of battery mid-meditation. She cursed to herself - Then she remembered, “stay positive”.

Positivity only seemed to matter when something negative arose. But when life was flowing, there was no need for positive thinking - There was no thinking at all.

"EMBRACE THE UNKNOWN" - another mantra of hers.She knew herself. And knowing herself meant she could embrace it.

But was she embracing the unknown-or her own projection of it?

Her laptop was open on the retreat website-

Only two months to go.

Why does the urge for positivity arise? Have we ever questioned it? Is it not a reaction to escape the negative?

Can I - with all my psychological armour - embrace the unknown? Or do “I” and the “unknown” have no relationship at all? For the “I” is the known. And the known cannot meet the unknown - it can only project an idea of it.

A vignette on “becoming”.

Fifty going on forty. Age didn’t matter.

He was a former Navy SEAL. Ultra-runner and triathlete. He had come a long way from the obese kid who was bullied at school.

“Suffering is growth”, he shouted to the arena, closing his speech. Adrenaline still surging, he went for a 10k run.

But at home, silence replaced the crowd. The bullied kid knocked again. Good - that’s fuel.

The past fed him, and he fed the past. It wasn't change, it was continuity. Identity was still the currency. Only now it wore the mask of strength.

He looked in the mirror. The bullied kid stared back.

Good. At least he was in control.

Today he would add another 10k to his run.

The pursuit of ideals obscures direct perception of ‘what is’. In chasing the “better,” thought continues to fragment, preventing holistic observation and maintaining the very conflict it seeks to end.