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.

When the whole of consciousness is free from the self-producing becoming – the immensely can reveal itself

The mind can only be in peace when it doesn't experience anything; that is to say: when it doesn't determine and name, register and store anything in memory.

It is not only the upper layers of the mind, which all the time name and register, it is all the various layers of consciousness.

But when the superficial mind is silent, the deeper mind can send up signals.

And when the whole of the consciousness is silent and in peace, free from the eternal self-producing becoming - this shutting itself away from life - when there is spontaneous openness for, and self-forgetful being one with life itself, not until then will that, which cant be measured, reveal itself: the new and unknown.

In philosophical counseling you make a very profound and serious research

It is very important in philosophical counseling - unless you will be content with communicating linguistically - that you also make make use of another kind of communication.

This is first possible when the guest has realized the relative in his images of life, and is ready to go from having some images of life, to having a philosophical life-practice.

In the counseling you make a very profound and serious research, and therefore the guest and the counselor must be connected, both in and beyond the linguistic communication.

There must be solidarity, what implies that the topic of discussion is of great importance for both the guest and the counselor, that it concerns them both, and that they study it with love; that is to say: with a passion for understanding it.

What Man identifies himself with, is always the self-projected, whether it is the highest, the state, or the family

Your world-image is inseparable connected with your self-image. The self-image manifests itself as a certain perspective, so that everything you are seeing, is your own perspective.

The world-image is a projection of yourself, only you divide yourself from it, in the formation of the Ego.

What Man identifies himself with, is always the self-projected, whether it is the highest, the state, or the family.

The identification is, regardless on what plane it takes place, a process of the Ego. Identification with the greater is still a projection of the small, and reverse.

What you identify yourself with, when you identify yourself with the greater, is the idea.

The idea is the Ego identified with for instance God or the state.

But such an identified action only creates more discord, larger confusion, distress and misery.

You must become aware of how you react to the challenges of life

Relations can be seen as a philosophical sparring partner.

And this will be to use the communicative reason.

The relationship is namely a medium of self-exposure, because the relationship is to be. It is the actual life.

Without relationships we don´t live.

In order to be able to understand yourself you must therefore understand the relationship.

You must become aware of how you react to the challenges of life, and for instance write it down in the philosophical diary.

Human essence is an appearance-form of the Now. Why? Because the essence in the human life is meditation

Only meditative-existential you can be in the Now.

The passive listening presence is meditation.

Meditation is to see completely with the heart and the mind; that is to say: with the whole of your essence. The human essence is therefore meditation.

Meditation is the self-forgetful openness for, and absorption in life itself.

The meaning of life is therefore to express the human essence.

Human essence is therefore an appearance-form of the Now. Why? Because the essence in the human life is meditation.

Total existential presence in the Now is meditation.

The essence is therefore one and the same with the existence; and this realized oneness is precisely meditation, or the wholeness of the observer and the observed.

Usually there is displacement between sense stimulation, expression and action

You have for instance had a sexual feeling of lust; later you think about the lust in images - in the image language of the thought - and precisely because of this expression - the thought-activity in images – the lust increases.

At the same time you perhaps, surprised or offended, are observing your lust; the action then consists in, that on the one side you are seeking to endulge yourself in the lust, on the other hand you relate doubtful, astonished, offended to your own feeling.

When the lust is opposed there arises pain, anxiety, jealousy, annoyance, anger, brutality.

All this doesn´t mean, that you must not have lust, the problem is the displacements between sense stimulation, expression and action.

Can Man be so present in passive listening, that he can think when it is necessary, and when not, be silent?

The thought must be active when you are doing something. The thought is a necessity so that we can do no matter what technological work.

In order to, that our actions can be clear, we must think clearly, objectively, without letting us be carried away by moods; without prejudices and preconceived opinions.

It was this, the enlightenment philosophers understood by the reason.

But we also know, that the thought produces human problems, fear and anxiety, and that this anxiety will hinder us in acting effectively.

The question is then, whether you as a Life Artist can act without anxiety when thought-activity is required, and when it is not, be silent?

Can you act with afterthought when it is necessary, and when it is not, let the thought rest?

In fact it is rather simple.

Can Man in that degree be so present in passive listening, that he in the awake condition will think and act when it is necessary, and remain awake whilst he acts, so that he neither falls asleep, or works pure mechanical?

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

The mind, which is silent, and not made silent, always experiences this 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 saleable, it has a quality of purity and alonebeing.

This being alone is not the unhappy loneliness.

Time will not be able to solve human problems, because such precisely originate from time

The future is always a becoming. The present is therefore never seized, though the understanding exclusively is lying herein.

You can´t be present in the Now through the thinking´s past and future.

This you only can meditative-existential; that is: when you are yourself, and the surroundings, present in passive listening.

As long as there is a becoming something, there is conflict and anxiety, and becoming is always the past, which uses the present to become something, to control and form: an expression of the will to power.

In this process of becoming Man becomes caught in the net of time.

And time will not be able to solve human problems, because such precisely originate from time.

We want to deduce a result of a problem. In this way we begin to tackle with the problem

We dont know how we unprejudiced can observe a problem.

We want to deduce a result of the problem, we want an answer, we have set us a goal when we seek to solve it; and we try to interpret the problem from our joy or pain; or we already have an answer to how the problem can be treated.

In this way we begin to tackle with the problem, which always is new, and treat it from an old pattern, our images of life.

And in that way we are the problem absent, we are outside it as theorists, and then you have the opposition between the observer and the observed.

And this is to have your identity in an absence.