We have solved almost all technical problems, but at the same time human problems still flourish

We today have a peculiar situation.

We have solved almost all technical problems, a number of countries have democracy with large political freedom, but at the same time the human problems still flourish, and the attempt to solve them technically, seems to have brought about a condition of total confusion, of fragmentation, decay of values, consumerism.

A condition, which is spreading globally.

The Life Artist as a communicative being seeks to understand the wholeness, and not only a part of it

In philosophy as an art of life Man is seen as a complete process.

The Life Artist as a communicative being seeks to understand the wholeness, and not only a part of it, regardless how important this sometimes can be.

At the same time it is the Life Artist himself, who discovers his own behaviour.

The Life Artist is not an object of study for others, in the way as it always must be in behaviorism.

The Life Artist is a unity of experience and being.

All stimulations look like each other: they are expressions of the desire after escaping from what you are

Through outer stimulation Man is reduced to a sense impression.

There are several different forms of stimulation, and the importance they get corresponds closely to the person´s conditions, to his images of life.

But in one respect all stimulations look like each other: they are expressions of the desire after escaping from what you are, from the daily routine, from a human relationship which no longer is alive, and from knowledge, which always looses its freshness.

No more than we can place ourselves outside life, no more can the thinker place himself outside the thought

The thinking is seeing itself as something passing, in constant change, and therefore it produces the thinker as a constant entity, as separate from the thought, different from it.

Then the thinker works in on the thought, divides, accepts and denies, accentuates and excludes.

But all the time there is only the thinking.

No more than we can place ourselves outside life, no more can the thinker place himself outside the thought.

It is an illusion, a self-deceit.

Stagnation is a lack of ability to, or possibility for, being fully alive

Stagnation is in its actual form blocking, fixation, paralysing.

Stagnation is a lack of ability to, or possibility for, being fully alive. Life ends, is stopping up, of irrelevant reasons.

Stagnation leads to obduracy, drying, lifelessness. There comes something grey, sad, colourless, monotonous, over the individual person´s life.

The same is applying for the individual person´s world. Stagnation is connected with, that also the world, or parts of it, becomes grey, sad or monotonous.

Lifelessness in the individual person corresponds with a life-lessness in his world. Habits and tedious repetitions take over life. The life rhythm decays to stereotypy.

The individual person is fixated in specific patterns. 

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be

The person, who only has some images of life, but no philosophical life-practice, seeks to build bridge between the Ego and something else; the Ego, with all its ambitions, initiatives and contradictions, and the other, which either is the ideal, the formula, the concept, or the society.

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be.

And precisely herein there is contradiction and conflict, and therefore are all energy, vitality, and urge to live, wasted.

When you clearly are seeing everything violence means, then you are free from it

If you see a thing very clear, without distortions, is there then any use of choosing?

There are no alternatives; alternatives only exist when you shall choose between two physical roads – you can walk the one road or the other.

But alternatives exist as well in the mind, which is confused and irrational; therefore it is in discord with itself, and its actions are violent.

Shakespeare´s play Hamlet is an illustration of such a mind. It is the mind, which practises violence, which says that it wants to live peacefully, but when it, as nature, reacts to challenges, then it practises violence (physical or psychological).

But when you quite clearly are seeing everything violence means, from the most raw, to the most refined, forms of violence, then you are free from violence. And that is the culmination of reason.

We give answers but we rarely investigate the ideas behind

We are used to give answers, to analyze, to argue, to express our opinions, but we rarely investigate the images of life, from which we give these answers.

However it is precisely this the philosophical counselor introductory will do, by putting them into question, to show the relative in them, the historical limitation, the problem with time, its consequences for our existential unhappiness and happiness, the discrepancy between idea and conduct of life.

To realize the nature of the mind is the same as realizing all thing´s nature

The nature of the mind isn´t completely related to the mind.

It is not the mind, but precisely the nature of the mind.

It is in reality all thing´s nature, and that to realize the nature of the mind is the same as realizing all thing´s nature.

And to meditate is to bring the mind home to this nature, to become enlightened, and released from suffering.

You can´t see completely as long as you observe life on the bases of a certain viewpoint

To see what is possible in the highest form implies that you must find out, what it will say to see something as a whole.

You can´t see completely as long as you observe life on the bases of a certain viewpoint, or on the bases of a special experience, which you place very high, or on the bases of some acquired knowledge, which is your historical background, the Ego.

In the process of becoming, you are a living dead

The process of what you are becoming what you want to be, is a never-ending process, and therefore the conflict is never-ending.

And all this time you don´t live, see or feel.

You are a living dead.

And this is connected with a constant feeling of guilt, which you can´t place anywhere.

The thought is never completely free because it has its roots in the past

The thought is never completely free because it has its roots in the past, which again is based on both personal and collective images.

The thought is therefore never new.

Freedom of choice is therefore impossible, because it is the thinking, which is active when you are choosing.

The freedom, which exists when you make true discoveries, is not freedom to do what you want, or freedom to unfold, to become something, choosing, or freedom to think what you want, or act after your wishes.

It is a sorrow to realize what you are, but not to realize it is the greatest sorrow

It is, as a Life Artist, a big sorrow to realize what you are.

But not to realize it is the greatest sorrow.

And then death becomes terrible, as Tolstoy has depicted it in Ivan Iljitsch´ Death.

Ivan Ilyich is lying in the deathbed and can´t let go of life because of mortal dread.

He screams three days and nights through.

Not until he realizes, that the life he'd lived, hadn´t been an actual life, yes, that he in fact never has lived at all, not until then he can let go of life, and reconcile himself with death.

In desire there is both defence and surrender, and therefore conflict

Now and then you change - according to the strength of your desire - the image, the god, the object, of your sense impressions.

You are for instance fed up with one kind of lust, and therefore you seek a new influence, a new idea, a new symbol.

You reject the old sense impression and adopt a new, with new words, new meanings, new experiences.

You defend yourself against the old, and surrender to the new, which you consider as being superior, nobler and more satisfying.

In that way there is in the desire both defence and surrender, which is implying temptation; and naturally, when you evade from a certain symbol of desire, there is always an anxiety present, the anxiety of becoming disappointed when surrendering to the new symbol. 

Therefore desire contains conflict.

The thinking is always in a duality-conflict between self-image and world-image

The thinking is always in a duality-conflict between self-image and world-image, between my and mine, as opposition to what not is my and mine; what causes division.

These oppositional conflicts will always exist if you as a Life Artist not are the separation of the thinker and the thought present in passive listening.

Art of life is implying a complete understanding. It is a kind of communicative reason.

In philosophical counseling truth isn´t something, which can be communicated to another

A central theme in philosophical counseling is that truth not is something, which can be communicated linguistically to another.

A human must be able to receive it, and nobody can help him by giving answers.

He must come to the truth, openly, free and unexpected.

In order to find an answer to one or the other question, the guest must therefore be guided to understand the question itself, rather than just giving an answer to the question.

If the question for instance is about anxiety, the guest must be guided to understand anxiety; that is to say: the guest must understand the one who is anxious, the human who has created the anxiety, and that is himself.

The desire after experience produces the Ego

The desire after experience produces the Ego, the observer, the one who experiences, the one who accumulates and remembers.

The will to power leads to, that the observer distances himself from the observed, and that the thinker places himself outside the thought.

And this is unreality, falsehood.

You are absent from the surroundings, and absent from your thoughts, in the sense that you are on a distance from them, they have so to speak moved outside you, where you relate theorizing, timorous, or agonized to them.

Meditation is a perception where you are melting into a unified wholeness

To meditate is about seeing the whole thing, everything as a whole; that is to say: where you in self-forgetful openness are allowing the thing to fill you out.

Meditation is a presence of something, which is not hidden.

It is a presence of something evidently, something the individual has a clear understanding of.

It is a presence of something straightforward, a presence in naturalness.

It is a perception where you so to speak become drawn into the thing, and are melting into a unified wholeness, which contains middle, fullness and light.

Usually this happens in a short glimpse, inconspicuous; what you often describe as intuitive cognition.

Suddenly you understand something. There is no causal explanation for it.

Philosophy doesn't analyse the anxiety in the individual person's life, but seeks to clarify the nature of anxiety

In order to discover the cause of anxiety philosophy doesn't analyse the anxiety in the individual person's life in the way that psychology does, but is seeking to clarify the concept of anxiety, the nature of anxiety, as it is everywhere.

In addition to this philosophy investigates the anxiety as a whole – not the numerous psychological forms of anxiety, but the anxiety.

In philosophy there is only one anxiety.

Though there in the individual person's life are different causes of anxiety, developed by multifarious challenges and reactions, then anxiety still is only one in philosophical sense.

When we are dependent of things in order to satisfy our lust, they are filling too much in our lives

We have tied our thoughts and feelings to the things, so that we can´t feel happy without them: they feed our vanity, they give us social prestige, they give us means for display of force.

We use things for other purposes, than they in themselves are implying.

That we need food, clothes, shelter, is natural and not wrong, but when we are dependent of them in order to be able to satisfy our love of lust, when the things not only become a psychological necessity, but directly an existential necessity, then they are taking an all too colossal place in our lives.

That way arise the fights and the conflicts for achieving and keeping the things, which we are dependent of.

And this fight is unnatural.

To live in a world controlled by self-assertion, without being self-assertive, is to love something for its own sake

Self-assertion is a vice.

Self-assertion is a kind of self-interest, where everything turns around the Ego, and therefore makes the mind mediocre.

To live in a world, which is controlled by self-assertion, without being self-assertive, means, truly, to love something for its own sake, without seeking a reward, a result; but this is very difficult, because the whole world, all your friends, your relatives, struggle to achieve something, to accomplish something, to become something.

There must be harmony between the living function in the thought and freedom from the thought

In the higher degree that the thought is logical, sensible, healthy, objective, unsentimental, impersonally, the more effective and capable it is.

Here the Enlightenment Philosophers were right in their view of the reason.

In the sense the thought is necessary, in that sense you must use the thought in order to be able to function in life.

And still the mind must have the ability to be completely free from all kinds of distortions, so that it can find out what is true.

There must be harmony between the living function in the thought and freedom from the thought.

As long as the mind in any way is distorted it can´t possibly listen, observe, see neutral

The Life Artist must seek to understand the nature of experience, the beauty in observing, in seeing neutral as in a mirror, and in feeling deeply and incisively without seeking to achieve anything.

As long as the mind of Man in any way is distorted – by neurotic impulses and feelings, by fear, despair, by self-assertion, snobbery and striving after power – it can´t possibly listen, observe, see neutral.

But this art of seeing, of listening, of observing, is nothing you just can choose to do, and nor is it a question of thinking, which develops towards something else.

There will be anxiety as long as there is a desire of becoming something

In order to understand what you are, the duality-conflict must cease, because the negative response – to become something - is to deny the understanding of what you are.

If you as a Life Artist want to understand for instance haughtiness, you must not try to become the opposite, you must not become yourself absent in the effort of becoming something else, because this creates anxiety.

When the anxiety is removed you can be yourself present.

But it will be anxiety, and therefore absence, as long as there is a desire of becoming something.

It is very difficult for Man to observe something directly instead of through images

The past is based on the images of time, which are of a linguistic kind.

They manifest themselves as symbols.

Language itself is a symbol, and we are used to symbols: we see the tree through the image, which is a symbol for the tree, we see our neighbour through the image we have created of him.

It is apparently about the most difficult for Man, to observe something directly instead of through images, opinions, conclusions, which altogether are symbols.

In the same way symbols play a great role in dreams, and therefore dreams are so deceptive and dangerous.

The meaning of a dream is not always clear, though we realize that it consists of symbols, which we try to decipher.

When we see something, we speak so spontaneous about it, that we don´t realize, that the words also are symbols.

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be

The person, who only has some images of life, but no philosophical life-practice, seeks to build bridge between the Ego and something else; the Ego, with all its ambitions, initiatives and contradictions, and the other, which either is the ideal, the formula, the concept, or the society.

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be.

And precisely herein there is contradiction and conflict, and therefore all energy, vitality, and urge to live, are wasted.

The now´s facts are only a problem when seen from the thinking´s past and future

When you are sitting silent and are becoming absent in mind, you discover how the thinking sucks life and energy out of the present.

Past and future become reality, while reality becomes emptiness.

You discover how the thinking analyzes, separates and divides in order to evaluate, understand.

You discover how the thinking removes the mind from the Now, and creates the inner calculator, the experiencer or the thinker, who compares with earlier, or who hopes and desires something else; the thinker, who slides off from the Now´s facts.

And you discover how the Now´s facts, seen from the thinking´s past and future, can become a problem.

You have pure and simple discovered the cause of your problems.

The hunger after doing something positive, opposite the negative, makes us strive after being something else

The hunger after doing something positive, opposite the negative, makes us strive after being something else; in this struggle we feel, that we are alive, that there is a purpose with our life, that we gradually can remove the causes of the conflict and the sorrow.

We feel, that if we no longer were active, we would be nothing, be lost, our lives would be completely without meaning.

Therefore we continue, and that will say: we continue the divisions, the conflicts, the confusions and the opposites.

But in this process we at the same time feel, that there is something more which we all the time loose, that there exists something, which is quite different, something, which is above and beyond all this distress and misery.

This feeling is the existential guilt, the guilt over the unlived life.

In this way a permanent struggle is going on inside us.

Unless we meet relationships completely, there arise conflicts in the meeting with the challenge

The human being who observes and meets life, as if it for instance only is limited by the economical, or intellectual relationship, is not a Man of wholeness, and his conflicts are countless, because life is the connection with everything; with things, humans and ideas, and unless we meet these relationships completely, correctly, there arise conflicts in the meeting with the challenge.

Our life-expressions become self-circling.

In order to, that the thought can renew itself, it must be finished

The creative thinking, or renewing thinking, is the self-forgetful way of thinking.

But in order to, that the thought can renew itself, it must be finished. That which is finished ceases, and therefore there is a renewal.

To finish thoughts, so that they can end and renew themselves, is equivalent with the process, where the thinker understands himself, because the thinker and the thought are not two separated processes.

And in order to understand yourself, you must partly become yourself present in passive listening, partly slow the speed of your thoughts down.

The act of seeing and feeling without controlling is the act of love

This act, to see and feel without dividing, choosing, ruling and controlling, is the act of love.

The ethical life is this act, and all life is this act.

The real life is the being where you are one with yourself, with life and love.

You are in the middle of the stream of life.

In one direction the thought is necessary, in another direction it is dangerous

In one direction the thought is necessary, in another direction it is dangerous.

In the necessary direction it has to function as instrumental reason on material and technical problems; that is to say: objective and effective.

The dangerous direction is when it instrumentally is seeking to work on human problems and values; that is to say: when it becomes characterized by desires, the desire after material necessaries, or after the highest spiritual goal; that is: the will to power which is seeking to control, to become, to remodel, to acquire in philosophical sense; that is to say: in order to find meaning.

When we understand that the word not is the real, then the mind has released you from the word

When we understand that the word not is the real, that the description not is the described, the explanation not the explained, then the mind has released you from the word.

If you have created an image of yourself, then the image is pieced together by words, by thought-activity – the thought is the word.

You think about yourself as large, small, skillful, or as a genious, or whatever – you have an image of yourself. This image can be described, it is the result of a description.

And this image has the thought created.

But the description, the image, is not the reality.

We create conflict through our aspiration

The painful conflict between good and evil, hope and fear, love and hate, the observer and the observed, has arisen from our striving after achieving something, acquiring something, becoming something.

And this striving gives itself expression in sensuality, in worldliness, or in aspiration after personal fame and immortality.

So we create the conflict through our aspiration.

The subconscious is as insignificant as the conscious

Why do we attribute the subconscious so great importance and meaning?

In the end it is as insignificant as the conscious.

If the conscious mind - on the background of a passion, which doesn't seek to achieve anything - observes neutral as in a mirror, without saying yes and no, then the conscious mind becomes much more important than the subconscious.

In this state all what the subconscious contains, are being brought into daylight; the displacements between the many layers disappear.

The fact is that every society always is runned by some kind of ideology

An ideology is a malfunction in the human mind, which functions with Machiavelli´s implied, terrible, assumption, that the end justifies the means, and where the means to get there is to make people into slaves for this goal.

Today people undoubtedly are being made into empty consumer machines.

There is no doubt either, that we are being supplied with some kind of virtual reality through psychological theories, that seems to justify Machiavelli´s famous and notorious assumption - for instance through elimination of critical thinking.

If you are your reactions present in passive listening, there is no doubter within you

If you as a Life Artist are your reactions present in passive listening, and not at all interpret them, but only give them your full awareness and feeling, you will discover, that there no spectator, doubter or calculator are within you, and therefore no displacement or distortions between the observer and the observed, the thinker and the thought.

You are one with the observed and the thought.

You react to a challenge, not with the old brain, but in a completely new way characterized by middle and fulfillment.

The mind is completely silent when truth is seen

When you realize the truth, then it is only the silent mind, which is seeing, yes, then the mind strangely enough becomes silent.

It is as seeing a danger and avoiding it.

Because when it is seen, that the mind must be completely silent, then the mind actually becomes silent.

And if it then can listen without interpretations, without that your prejudices intervene in order to distort – listens as you perhaps listen to a bird, which sings, without commenting and giving a name.

Emptiness and loss have to do with, that you compare challenges with earlier, and desire or fear something else

In order to be able to get an image to disappear, you must first find out how it arises; and you see, that if you don't react sufficient to any challenge, it will leave an image.

This is because that emptiness and loss slide in between the challenge and the reaction.

The emptiness and the loss have to do with, that you are absent in past and future, and compare the challenge with earlier, and hope, desire or fear something else.

Therewith you have made the challenge into a problem. And it is the problem, which creates the image.

Propagandists are using an instrumental usage of language on human relations

Neither the religious, nor the temporal propaganda, speak about truth.

Propagandists are using, as Habermas expresses it, an instrumental usage of language on human relations, where it actual only should have been used on technical problems.

They relate to humans in a strategic and controlling way, rather than the understanding way, which characterizes a communicative usage of language.

Only in silence you can begin to discover deeper layers of yourself

Awareness consists in, that you observe neutral as in a mirror, without saying yes and no.

Passion consists in feeling deeply and incisively, without seeking to achieve anything with it.

In the passive listening presence you are letting the thinking be in calmness in longer periods, you are letting the space between the thoughts expand more and more.

Only in this silence you can begin to discover deeper layers of yourself, layers which have to do with the images of time - your perspective on yourself and the world – and which, through this voyage of discovery, open themselves from the personal, to the more collective and universal, and finally, to reality and truth.

An insider in society is an outsider in relation to life itself, while an outsider is an insider

Krishnamurti said, that it would be wise to retire in the age of 40 or 45, or even younger.

Not in order to enjoy the fruits of what the world can offer, or what you have gathered of wordly things, but retire in order to find yourself, to think and feel deeply, to meditate and discover reality; because then you would actually be able to help the world in quite another way, because you not are identified with it.

An insider in society is namely an outsider in relation to life itself, while an outsider in relation to society, is an insider in life itself.

Words have neurological as well as psychological meaning in accordance with your culture

The mind is pieced together by words and associations of thoughts, images and symbols, that are manifestations of the common human structure of belief and knowledge, which the images in time constitute.

The evaluations originate from this historical background.

Words such as God, love, Socialism, Communism, duty, necessity, etc. have an extremely important role in our life.

Words have neurological as well as psychological meaning in accordance with the culture in which you have been raised.

To a Christian some words and symbols have immensely meaning, and to a Moslem some other words have an equivalent vital meaning.

And the evaluations take place within this area.

Don´t just give answers to your images of life - go into an investigation of them

To leave out your images of life doesn´ t mean, that you throw them totally away, but that you see the relative in them.

This also means, that you not just shall give answers to them, but that you go into an investigation of these images themselves.

Language must be made transparent in presence and reality

That the mind must disentangle from language is not equivalent with that language must stop.

Language is necessary.

But in order to, that our usage of language can be precise, logical and clear, there must be a non-linguistical sensation, which carries it.

It must be made transparent in presence and reality.

When language is made transparent it works from the universal images, and therefore synthesizing and healing.