Self-forgetful thinking is thinking which is one with the Now, with the facts, with reality

Usually the thinking is a self-producing process; that is: the process where the thinking creates the reality of the self-image and the world-image, and therewith, the separation of the observer and the observed.

When the Ego is standing in the centre, then the whole of our life, the whole of our perspective on life - rests on the choices we make, and the desire in this process, the movement of time where we are seeking to achieve something, become something, acquire something.

Self-forgetful thinking is thinking, which releases itself from time, because through time the timeless can´t be grasped.

The timeless is the Now, and self-forgetful thinking is thinking which is one with the Now, with the facts, with reality.

That way self-forgetful thinking is not based on the personal or collective images of time, which work in sequences in past or future, but on the universal images, which work in synchronism with the Now.

The painful conflict between good and evil has arisen from our striving after becoming something

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 mind can, by force of clarity, see the common deep thoughts of mankind as visions

Meditation creates clearness.

The clearness from the dissolved and evaporated thoughts and contents will widen the mind out towards the borders, behind which the collective common human structures are found: the images in time.

These common deep thoughts of mankind, can the mind, by force of its increased clarity – the astral state - see as visions: primordial images, religious images and structures, symbols, wisdom-figures, figures from fairy tales, higher worlds, other dimensions.

In short: the astral worlds.

You must each time see as if it was the first time!

The word philosophy means love of wisdom, or love of learning.

To learn in philosophical sense is a continual movement, a continual renewal. It is not ”to have learned”, and see on the basis of that.

Usually we see on the basis of a memory about what we have learned, and have experienced; memory is the starting point. This is therefore not to see, not to learn in philosophical sense.

That something is learned in philosophical sense presupposes a mind, which each time learns anew.

There must be a creative emptiness.

The mind must therefore always be new and ready to learn, just like a child.

For that reason, it doesn´t interest the Philosophical Globetrotter to worship memory, but rather to observe, see and experience what really happens.

As a Philosophical Globetrotter you must try to be extremely aware, awake, so that the seen and learned don´t become a memory from which you see, and which in itself is a distortion.

You must each time see as if it was the first time!

In the supporting exercises concentration-exercises are combined with relaxation-exercises

The will to power has its origin in the thinking; the will to power has created our mind on the background of one or the other image of life, so that you have the observer, who is standing outside the observed.

You can´t just choose to stop concentrating, because the choice is itself a result of concentration.

In the supporting exercises concentration-exercises are therefore combined with relaxation-exercises.

In that way, the union of concentration and relaxation develops into meditation by itself.

Unreality is defined from something, or in opposition to something, namely reality

The absence weaves images, because emptiness and loss slide in between.

Unreality is emptiness, absence, that to be outside.

The concept absence indicates, that the unreality not is any emptiness, but an emptiness in relation to something defined.

It is the absence of something.

Unreality is defined from something, or in opposition to something, namely reality.

And the unreal life is lying under for a constant tendency to fill it up.

The emptiness has to be camouflaged, covered, forced out.

You must keep the world together. And this you do by creating language or images.

The brain can´t formulate or understand that which is the total, the whole, the complete

The brain is the centre for all the senses; the more the senses are awake and sensitive, the sharper is the brain.

The brain is a storehouse of experience, knowledge and tradition.

Therefore, it is historical limited, conditional.

Its activities are planned, thought out, but it functions in historical limitation, in time and space.

Therefore, it can´t formulate or understand that which is the total, the whole, the complete.

We are the past, and there is no freedom in the past

We have our identity in an absence.

This is consequently the way of our lives; a constant struggle, the past which, modified by the present, moves into the future – and that will say that it still is the past, the self-image and the world-image, which is moving, though modified.

As long as this movement takes place, Man can never be free, he must always live in conflict, in sorrow and confusion, in wretchedness and misery.

The question becomes whether the past´s reaction can be delayed, so that there not immediately is formed an image?

Passive listening presence is the only way to deal with dreams

Passive listening presence is the only way to deal with dreams.

You must be yourself present all day through, be aware of the relationship with the surrounding world, your reactions and thoughts, and see the dreams connectedly with this.

If you isolate the dreams from this coherence, and place yourself outside them and interpret them from your historical limited background and your images of life, without having yourself included in your understanding, yes, then you will never get insight in what dreams are.

You must listen, not only to the outer things, but also to the inner movement of life

In order to be able to see clear, you must be present in passive listening, you must listen, not only to the outer things, but also to the inner movement of life, the inner movement, which is desires, motives, worries, fear-conceptions, sorrows.

To listen passively without choosing is to be aware of the colour in which someone is clothed, without saying: ”I like it” or ”I don´t like it”, but only observing it neutral as in a mirror.

And it is, when you are sitting in the bus, to feel your movement of thought, deeply and incisively, without seeking to achieve anything with it, without justifying and condemning, without choosing.

In this way, you shift from the dual mind to the nondual mind

To change the mind of Man requires a philosophical revolution

When all this is seen – the wars, the unreasonable dividings, which the religions have created, the division which exists between the individual person and the society, the family, which is opposed to the rest of the world, each individual person, who clings to some personal or collective images, and divide himself in ”me” and ”you”, ”us” and ”them” – when all this is seen, both in objectively and in philosophical sense, then only one question is remaining, one essential problem, and that is whether the mind of Man, which in high degree is limited by its historical background, its personal or collective images, can change.

Not in a future incarnation, not through political development, not when life ends, but radically change now, so that Man enters into a creative emptiness, where the mind become new, fresh, young, innocent, released from its images, so that it knows what love is, and what it is to live in peace.

It requires a philosophical revolution.

To be unregarded, ignored, and devalued, can be an impetus to take another route: the quiet way

To understand and be free from self-assertion, and to do something, which you really love to do – regardless what it is, how small or how little remarkable it is – awakens a spirit of greatness, which never is seeking others´ approval or reward, and which do a thing for its own sake, and therefore possesses strength and ability not to lie under for mediocre influences.

Here is that being invisible to the culture directly a blessing – that being unregarded, ignored, and devalued, can be an impetus to take another route: the quiet way, the gentle, steady, behind-the-scenes path. This is the invisible way of empowerment, the slow path of alchemy. Soul work takes time. This means you intentionally have to make time, especially in our increasingly hyperactive, extroverted secular culture.

If you are becoming yourself present, then the thinking can be made transparent

If the clarity of the mind increases, and you are becoming yourself present, then the thinking can be made transparent, whereby it begins to unfold its components: sound-color and symbol-structure.

In this structured clarity the mind meets the world in a new way, both the inner and the outer, even though inner, on this step, apparently still is clearly divided from outer.

The wholeness has, from its deep, dreamless sleep, begun to dream.

You must disentangle from your problems, and after having done this you achieve larger clarity

Let us presume that you have a problem.

There is something, which is called ”to sleep on it”. What happens is, that your conscious mind, which doesn't understand the problem, in order altogether to be able to fall asleep, must disentangle from the problem, and after having released itself therefrom, it achieves larger clarity.

Now the subconscious, or deeper layer, begins to project itself to the conscious mind, and when you awake the problem is quite simple solved.

So, the conscious mind, the upper layers of the consciousness, must be clarified, in order to, that the mind can be silent, so that it can receive hints or suggestions from the hidden.

The problem is that we aren´t calm.

The authentic person is a person who has his identity in a presence, and who has a philosophical life-practice

Philosophical counseling will be oriented towards an understanding of the images of life, which are lying under the person´s conception and way of living.

So, it is some images of life, a self-image and a world-image, which is based on time and its images as such - that is: both personal, collective and universal images - which are lying under, or which are a thought-created presumption for the person´s feelings and motivations, and which manifest themselves in a certain image of life and way of living.

To have his identity in an absence means that the person is identified with his perspective on himself and the world, and this is an expression of an un-authentic person; that is: the person who has some images of life, but no philosophical life-practice.

The authentic person is the person who has his identity in a presence, and who has a philosophical life-practice.

In passion there is not the slightest lack of fulfilment, and therefore neither disappointment nor pain

In lust (which can´t be compared with philosophical refined pleasure) there always is an ingenious form of striving – there is seeked, hunted, requested, fighted – so that you can preserve it, achieve it.

In passion there is not the slightest lack of fulfilment, and therefore there can neither be disappointment or pain.

Passion is freedom from the Ego, the centre for all lack of fulfilment.

Passion requires nothing, because it is.

Passive listening presence is not itself a thought-process. The presence is always something new and spontaneous

To be the thought present in passive listening, is to see it completely with the heart and the mind, to observe it neutral as in a mirror, without saying yes and no, and feel it deeply and incisively, without seeking to achieve anything with it.

And this presence is not itself such a thought-process. The presence is always something new, young and spontaneous.

The thought is the eternal recurrence of the same, and therefore never new.

The passive listening presence and the active evaluating thinking are two completely different things, and they can never meet.

But the habitual in our surroundings dulls us, so we shrug our shoulders and say: ”What is the use of it? That is the way of life”.

Thereby we spoil our sensitivity, so that we never act, when we are facing hideousness, exploitation, cruelty and suffering. Also our admiration and deep joy over all beauty are destroyed.

In this way, our life of feelings slowly and imperceptibly withers away.

The subconscious is just as insignificant and absurd as the conscious

You don´t need to go through any process of dream interpretation in order to reach to the subconscious.

If you the day through are yourself and the surrounding world present, yes, then you will not at all dream. Then there will be a presence of something, which not is hidden, because the mind is empty and creative.

Meditation is to empty out the mind; not just the conscious mind, but also the hidden layers of the mind, the disproportion, which is called the subconscious. And then there flows energy and life back to presence and reality.

The subconscious is in other words just as insignificant and absurd as the conscious.

And during the sleep there is a multiplicity of superficial dreams, which hardly are worth granting a thought – dreams entirely without meaning.

But then there is the dream which has a meaning, and this meaning can be understood at the very moment it is dreamt, without that there are any displacements or distortions between the interpreter and the interpreted.

But as mentioned, this is only possible when you in the day-time are all movements of your thoughts, motives, feelings and ambitions present.

Since silence isn´t saleable it has a quality of purity and alonebeing

The mind, which is silent, and not made silent, always experiences silence.

Then the thought, the word, is within the silence and not outside it.

The mind is in this silence completely in peace, and it is a silence, which isn´t shaped.

Since silence isn´t saleable, doesn´t have any value on the market, and isn´t usable, it has a quality of purity and alonebeing.

This being alone is not the unhappy loneliness.

By seeing the things as they are, the answer perhaps will come to you

When a guest goes to see a philosopher, then the guest is presenting a topic, a life-question of one or the other kind; it might be a human problem or an interest.

The philosophical counselor will then seize the topic by pointing out, that there only is one answer to the question: the guest must himself look at the topic, observe and feel the question in an entirely new way, not absent by seeking an answer through evaluations – that is the old way – but present in passive listening, just like when you listen to the birds, to classical music, or to a child.

Only in this way you may create the wonder, the mix of critical investigation and unprejudiced freedom, which in philosophy is a necessity, if you shall learn how you, yourself, can think, and discover something new.

And by seeing the things as they are, then the answer perhaps will come to you.

If you are completely existential present in the Now, you will receive information through universal images

We must discriminate between the personal/collective images in time, and the universal images.

The personal and collective images work in sequences in past and future. The universal images work in synchronism with the Now.

If you are completely existential present in the Now, you will receive information through the universal images – you will be made transparent in wisdom. The Ego has stepped aside.

You will have contact with the world of forms, as Plato formulated it.

When the mind seeks to control the body, and suppress the senses, it makes the body insensitive

The mind not should seek to control the body.

The mind can perhaps control the body, and suppress the senses, but thereby the mind makes the body insensitive; and an insensitive body becomes a hindrance for the own full unfolding of the mind.

To restrain the body certainly doesn´t serve the investigation of the deeper layers of consciousness. This is only possible when there doesn't exist a conflict between the mind, the feelings and the body.

It is only possible when they are complete, and in mutual harmony, and are this in an effortless way, without becoming drifted to it by some specific images of life, a particular conception, belief or ideal.

The nature of the mind is not the mind, but precisely the nature of the mind

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.

In order to be able to see something as a whole there must be no inner calculator

To see the wholeness is extremely difficult, while it is fairly easy to see a fragment. 

In order to be able to see something as a whole - and that will say: to see it rational, healthy and completely - there must be no inner spectator, doubter or calculator.

There must neither be any disproportion between the feeling and its object, or between the action and its occasion.

Your life must be real, so that you fully and completely exist and the important is present.

Fully and completely to exist will say that you are what you are in action with.

Where the unreal life is characterized by, that the dreamer, the spectator, the doubter within you, slides in between, creates reflections, displacement and darkness, there the real life is characterised by fulfilment, middle and light.

Meditation is to let the space between thoughts expand in passive listening presence

The instance, which is using the past to preserve the thoughts in a linguistic form, is the inner thinker, who reacts to challenges by dividing, evaluating, comparing.

To finish thoughts, so that they can end and renew themselves, is therefore equivalent with ceasing to preserve them in a linguistic form, which again is equivalent with meditation: that, to let the thoughts rest in longer periods of time, to let the space between them expand in passive listening presence.

It is as simple as that. 

The thoughts and feelings are symptoms of something much deeper

The philosophical in the philosophical diary consists in being the writing-process itself, and the reading-process itself, present in passive listening.

When you in that way try to understand and feel it, you will then discover, that these thoughts and feelings are symptoms of something much deeper.

They are symptoms of time and its images themselves, and time is not only your personal history, it is also the collective and universal history.

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

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 them 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 life.

That way arises the fights and the conflicts for achieving and keeping the things, which we are dependent of. And this fight is unnatural.

Is there at all anything, which is unavoidably – except death, perhaps?

The vast majority think, that it is unavoidably that you become historical limited.

Against this you can put the question about, whether there at all is anything, which is unavoidably – except death, perhaps; whether the inevitable process not is a thought-process.

In philosophical counseling there is neither answered yes or no.

On the contrary, the guest is being encouraged to be this inevitable process present in passive listening. And this presence is not mechanical.

But if the mind on the contrary is the thought-process absent, either conscious distancing ifself from it, or unconscious being absent in it, yes, then it becomes mechanical.

The human being, who truly is satisfied, is a human being, who understands what he is

Striving means a struggle of changing what you are to something else, to something you ought to be, or ought to become.

It will in other words say, that we all the time struggle to avoid facing what we are, or we seek to escape from what we are, or to transform or limit it.

But the human being, who truly is satisfied, is a human being, who understands what he is, and is putting the right importance in it.

This is the true satisfaction: the one who doesn´t worry about the number of possessions, but about understanding what he is, when he is himself present in passive listening, not when he seeks to remodel, control, or change it through the will to power.

Death is the landscape which meditation enters into

When we speak about life we usually mean life as a continuation-process, where there happens an identification.

When we say life, we often mean I and my house, I and my wife, I and my bank account, I and the experiences I have collected.

To live is therefore a process whereby something is continued in memory, conscious as unconscious, with the multifold struggles of the process, all the quarrels, episodes, experiences. It is all this we call life.

Opposite is standing death, which means, that all this is being brought to an end.

Therefore, we create an opposition, life and death. Life is the known, the perspective we have created on the background of the images of time. Death is the unknown, the landscape that can't be mapped.

This landscape is what meditation enters into.

The being of Man includes both the state of the mind and the conduct of life

In the unreal existence, the actions of Man come to rest on ignorance; that is to say: prejudices, inclinations and demands.

And it results in absence, and therefore suffering.

In this way, the human existence becomes a friction, a conflict, and herein there is no reason.

The being of Man includes both the state of the mind and the conduct of life, logos and bios.

But the Ego is formed by an interaction between the activities of the mind (demands, prejudices, inclinations) – and the hindrances, which the challenges of life create, and therewith you have the unreality.

The mirror of the relationship can either distort or expose the truth about yourself

The mirror of the relationship can either distort or expose the truth about yourself.

Most of us see in the relationship, in the mirror, that, we preferably want to see, but we don´t see that which is real.

We will preferable idealize or escape, and rather live in the future than seeing the relationship in which we are in the moment.

As an Idler you must ask the question "Is there a meaning to Life?" with the whole of your being

As an Idler you must ask the question Is there a meaning to Life? with the whole of your being in order to be able to find out, not intellectual, but by observing the question calmly and passively, with strong eyes, without judging or evaluating.

And then you can ask the next question: whether Man ever can change radically, essentially, existential, so that he can observe the world anew, with other eyes, with another heart, a completely other mind, no longer filled with hatred, resistance, racism, but a mind, which is extraordinary clear and which possesses a mighty energy, that gives life back to the present, opens the heart and fills the existence with vitality, urge to live and joy of life.

The nihilistic moment is a possibility for spiritual practice

In philosophical counseling the “nihilistic moment” is a very important moment.

Therefore, I often ask my guests to read Albert Camus´ two small novels The Stranger, and The Fall, as ways of getting the counseling practice started.

The nihilistic moment is a so-called Bardo state, a possibility for spiritual practice, a possibility for opening yourself in towards the Source.

It namely also implies the question of, whether there can be a complete philosophical freedom, wherein the human mind is facing something, which not is of time, not is pieced together by thoughts, and which still not is an escape from the facts of the daily existence: the timeless, the absolute, truth or reality.

Philosophy always talks about the wholeness, not a part of it

If the individual person only acts in a special corner of the extensive area of life, then he acts without any connection with the wholeness.

You must therefore remember, that philosophy always talks about the wholeness, not a part of it.

The smaller is in the larger, but the larger is not in the smaller.

The individual person is the tiny image-limited, stagnated and despairing being, who is satisfied with his tiny gods and his tiny traditions, whereas the welfare and weal of all, the sum of the world´s necessity, misery and confusion, are engaging Man.

The thinking, which is a result of the past, can´t understand the present

The absence, and the following conflicts, worries and problems, arises because we use the present as a passage to the future, instrumentally. 

Read for instance about the problem of time in Marcel Proust´s In Search of Lost Time, or in Thomas Mann´s Magic Mountain.

The Ego is a result of the past; without past there is no self-producing thought-activity. 

Without the historical background, without this limitation, there is no such thinking. 

But the thinking, which is a result of the past, can, as Kierkegaard said, not understand the present, since it only uses the present as a passage to the future.

The flower itself is the movement of the experience when there no inner observer is

The tree, the flowers and the stars can't be experienced by an inner observer; they are the actual movement of the experience when there no inner observer is, when you in self-forgetful way are open for, and engaged by the observed, when the experience is characterised by fulfilment and middle.

Then there doesn´t exist any discrepancy, any displacement and reflections between the observer and the observed; there is no time, no emptiness and loss, in which the thought can give rise to itself.

The thought is there never, but there is being.

This condition of being can't be made into an object of thinking; it is nothing you can achieve. The inner thinker and calculator must stop evaluating.

Only when this happens, there is being. And in this movement of silence, the timeless exists.

The split in ourselves either leads to self-construction, or to self-destruction: insanity

The contradictions in ourselves grow illusions and pain, and in order to get away from them we take our refuge to a line of self-deceits, which only increase the conflicts and misery.

And when the inner contradiction, because of crises, or violent challenges, becomes unbearable, we conscious or unconscious seek to escape through insanity, or through death; or we dedicate our life to an idea, to a group, to a country, to some activity, which completely can swallow up ourselves; or we subject ourselves to the organized religion with its dogmas and rituals.

In that way, this split in ourselves either leads to self-construction, or to self-destruction: insanity.

If we don´t know, how we can think self-forgetful, we don´t know how to think at all

There is a true solution to each problem, but it requires self-forgetful thinking, and not only a wish to solve the problem.

The point for the Life Artist is not what you shall think, but how you can think self-forgetful.

There can only be natural and spontaneous act, when there is self-forgetful thinking.

If we don´t know, how we can think self-forgetful, we don´t know how to think at all.

What you concentrate on, is accentuated by the expense of something else

Concentration is the nature of the will to power, and it is the thinking, which concentrates itself.

Something is accentuated by the mind, is being brought in focus, something else is excluded, steps in the background.

Concentration is a choice.

What you concentrate on, is accentuated by the expense of something else.

It is a kind of isolation and exclusiveness, reserve.

In order to be able to discover something, you must observe yourself

In order to be able to discover something, you must observe yourself, but not on the bases of a certain image of life, or a certain thought-system, nor from some certain religious viewpoint.

You must completely reject all this, so that the mind is free and is able to be aware of itself in relation with the society, in relation with ourselves, with our families, with our neighbour.

When you are the situations present it is possible to reach beyond them.

Can the past´s reaction be delayed, so that there not immediately is formed an image?

The past always reacts immediately; and to postpone the past´s reaction – when you are facing a challenge - so that there is a space between the challenge and the reaction - is to make an end of the image.

In the same way, there are no images in the space between the thoughts.

If this doesn´t happen, we will always live in the past.

We are the past, and there is no freedom in the past. We have our identity in an absence. This is consequently the way of our lives, a constant struggle, the past which, modified by the present, moves into the future – and that will say that it still is the past, the self-image and the world-image, which is moving, though modified.

As long as this movement takes place, Man can never be free, he must always live in conflict, in sorrow and confusion, in wretchedness and misery.

The question becomes whether the past´s reaction can be delayed, so that there not immediately is formed an image?

Some kind of will to power is always the cause of conflict

You must try to become clarified about your thought-process.

Therewith is meant that you in your daily life must seek to be your will to power - and its miserable consequences and results - present.

When you realize the difference between the natural need and the will to power, then the right basis for your thinking is formed.

Some kind of will to power is always the cause of conflict, to unscrupulously national hate and masked brutality.

Unless you understand and get grip of your will to power, you will never be able to understand the reality, which is transcending all struggles and sorrows.

You must begin with yourself as a communicative being; that is to say: with your relationship with things and to your fellow men.

Self-assertion is a kind of self-interest which makes the mind mediocre

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.

The thought can´t enter the unknown, and therefore it can never discover or experience reality

Kant was right, that the thought is forming, modifying, coloring in compliance with the pattern of experience.

The function of the thought is to communicate itself, not to be in the experiencing condition.

When the experience has gone, then the thought takes over, names it, and places it within the known´s categories and forms of experience. Therefore Kant discriminated between reality in itself – ”Das Ding an Sich” (the things in themselves) – and the reality as it appears for us – the world of experience or phenomena ”erscheinungen” (the things as sensed appearance); that is: our perspective.

So, the thought can´t enter the unknown, and therefore it can never discover or experience reality. The thought is a result of the known, of our perspective, which is time as such, and therefore it can´t embrace the unknown, the timeless, that, which can't be known.