The will is the eternal recurrence of the same and has nothing to do with creation

Clarity and reality doesn´t originate from isolation.

The act of the will can temporarely lighten the present foreground, which is a necessity in order for it to be active, but it can never clear the historical background; because the will is itself a result of this background.

The background grows and feeds the will, and the will can sharpen the background, increase its development-possibilitites, but it can never purify the background.

It is therefore always old, and never new.

The will is the eternal recurrence of the same. Therefore it has nothing to do with creation.

The sickness philosophers are healing are human problems - problems common to all mankind

In a certain sense the philosopher is a healer.

Many philosophers make as a doctor a diagnosis and suggest a treatment. So did Buddha, and so did Kierkegaard.

But what they were treating were the human problems, therefore problems common to all mankind.

The sickness unto death, which for instance Kierkegaard´s script The Sickness Unto Death has as subject, is the despair.

The despair is here presented as a sickness in the self, and the condition for healing is to become yourself.

In the same way in Buddhist philosophy, where the sickness is the suffering common to all mankind, and the treatment is meditation, and the recovery is enlightenment.

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

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 Enligthenment 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?

Regardless how refined or how simple the thinking is, then it can´t break down itself, or reach beyond itself

It is the thinking, which produces the net in which Man becomes caught, the reality of the self-image and the world-image.

This dividing and self-producing way of thinking binds, it leads to the outstretched and fragmented space of time, where opinions, theories, viewpoints and conceptions are of absolute importance.

Regardless how refined or how simple the thinking is, then it can´t break down itself, or reach beyond itself.

You can´t find truth through any organization, priest, clairvoyant, philosophical knowledge or psychological method

Realization can, with help from the Source, only come from within, never from outside.

You therefore can´t find truth through any organization, any faith, any doctrine, any priest, clairvoyant, medium, or any ritual, nor through philosophical knowledge or psychological methods.

You can only find it through the philosophical questions´ self-inquiring practice, through the realization of the nature of the Ego, and therefore of the nature of thinking and time.

This understanding gives on the other hand a gradually growing feeling of, that you are spiritual safe on your journey towards this source.

When the mind seeks to control the body, and suppress the senses, the body is made 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.

You must, as a Life Artist, sweep all ideals, all opposites, aside

If you actually - not as an abstraction - can push all ideals aside and only concern yourself with the facts – which is violence – there happens no waste of energy.

As long as Man lives in the corridor of opposites, he will inevitably waste his energy, and in that way he can´t change.

You must therefore, as a Life Artist, sweep all ideals, all opposites, aside.

When openness only is formulated in words it is not the real

From the openness for own and therewith also all others´ being, arises a happiness, a delight, a creative emptiness, that can´t be formulated with words.

When it is formulated in words it is not the real.

It´s really important that you, with yourself, find out, in which direction your calling goes

It is necessary that you as a Life Artist ask yourself the question about what you are interested in.

Not what you ought to be interested in, but what really absorbs you.

More and more people become interested in finding out.

And it`s really important that you, with yourself, find out, in which direction your interest goes.

You must demand the utmost of the mind and the heart, or else they remain within the borders of the impossible

Unless you demand that which perhaps seems impossible, you fall in the trap, you become historical limited by what you think is impossible.

It is immensely easy to fall in this trap.

You must demand the utmost of the mind and the heart, or else they remain within the borders of the impossible, in the convenient and comfortable.

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

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.

Identification with something is justification, what at the same time means condemnation of something else

Models of society – ideologies -  are very seductive because they have with that feeling of permanence to do, which you get when you identify yourself with something.

Identification with something is justification, acceptance, what at the same time means condemnation, and resistance against something else

What creates a conflict in Man is the desire after becoming something

The thoughts and the feelings are limited by their own cause: the desire after becoming something, which is time-binding.

What creates a conflict in Man is the desire after becoming something: to have luck and progress here in the world and inwards: to achieve a result.

But as long as our thinking is concerned with time, with what we will achieve with our position, there will inevitably be this conflict.

The mind is after all a product of time. The thought builds on yesterday, on the past, and as long as the thought works within the area of time and is concerned with the future, with becoming something else, with winning and with achieving, there will be opposites, and then we can´t see the real, the Now, the existential conditions.

Only by realizing, by understanding, by - without wanting to choose - being aware about what you are, you have a possibility for releasing yourself for the dissolvent factor, which a conflict is.

In order to be able to understand truth you must be present in passive listening

Art of life is an attempt directly to discover and experience truth.

In order to be able to understand truth you must be exceedingly present in passive listening, and logical, healthy, reasonable; observing and feeling any of the movements of the thought, without evaluating them, and without attempting to achieve anything with it.

Then this sense perception in itself is a complete act, and you can thereby be released from the thought, and achieve being-cognition.

The present is never seized, though the understanding exclusively is lying herein

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 are used to be told what we shall think, but we don´t know what thinking is

In philosophy as an art of life it is not so important what you ought to think about each problem, or how your attitude ought to be facing the problem, but what means something is how you think about it.

We are used to be told what we shall think, in which way we shall solve a problem, but we don´t know what thinking is.

In art of life it is therefore very important to find out, what rational thinking is, because the various problems, which appear, the problems we constantly meet, require rational thinking.

In art of life such a rational thinking is a self-forgetful way of thinking.

If you can penetrate your idea-complex, the timeless experience can take place

First when you can penetrate the massive idea-complex, which is standing in the way for you – and that will say the Ego, which in order to experience itself as partly or completely continual, has split ifself in the observer and the observed – first when you reach beyond this, when the thought is completely in peace, the timeless experience can take place.

And then you will know what truth is: the ultimate expression of reason.

The brain has evolved from the primitive state, and carries in itself the instinct of the animal

It is obvious that we still have a behaviour, which arises from the instinct of the animal.

This appears especially in situations of crises, such as for instance war, where all civilization and moral suddenly momentarily disappear.

The brain has evolved from the primitive state, and carries in itself the instinct of the animal. Consequently there is something innate.

In addition to this you can say, that regardless how sophisticated, intelligent, technical, the brain is, it can only function within the frames of time and space.

The brain has also got accustomed to the evolution´s idea about becoming something (the will to power).

But you could ask the question: What happens if it suddenly realizes the nature of the will to power?

Choosing is a part of the movement from the past, to divide, to say yes and no, to accept and deny

To be the movement of time present in passive listening - the thinking, which projects itself in philosophical sense - is not an option.

Choosing is a part of the movement from the past, to divide, to say yes and no, to accept and deny, accentuate and exclude, to remember and throw out projects, to produce self-images and world-images - the whole of the historical being of Man, the thinking´s philosophical activity.

To Man himself there isn´t a special Western or Eastern way of thinking, but the individual creates these divisions

The division of human beings, in for instance Westerners and Orientals, is only geographical determined and entirely random.

It has no essential importance. Whether we live east or west for a certain border, whether we are brown, dark, white or yellow, then we all still are human beings who are suffering and hoping, fearing and believing: there is unhappiness and happiness here as well as there.

There is not a special Western or Eastern way of thinking when it comes to Man, but the individual person creates these divisions on the basis of his background, which is limited by the images of time.

An openness-variant of meditation implies, that you omit judging yourself or others as good or bad

A so-called openness-variant of meditation implies, that you omit judging yourself or others as good or bad.

You don’t judge.

You wait forming yourself a certain opinion and instead you direct the awareness towards the consequences of what is happening.

You have for example made a mistake, but instead of branding yourself because of what you have made, you examine the consequences of the mistake, and what can be done to reduce the adverse effects.

Don´t think about, what you ”ought” or ”not ought” to do, what is ”right” or ”wrong”, ”just” or ”unjust”.

You rather ought, as well as you can, to concentrate about doing what the situation actual requires, use the existent possibilities and act in a way, which feels natural.

Suicide is an irrational action

Suicide is an irrational action; it is an action which clearly shows that you have reached a point where you are so isolated, where your identity is so fragmented and without wholeness, that you no longer feel that you belong here, where you are shut away from, or shut inside, without belongings, place and living space, and where there seems to be no way out.

But does there actually occur anything in life, in any human relationship, which you can´t find a way out of?

Meditation as an Art of Life is a downward movement, a foundation of ground connection

In Meditation as an Art of Life you first release yourself from the personal images in time, secondly from the collective images in time.

Herewith you give energy and life back to reality and presence.

You can also say that it is a downward movement, a foundation of ground connection, a being with weightiness and grounding.

When you have lost the Now´s unmoveable being, you are absent in time and opposites

The images of time (both universal, collective and personal) are form-formations of energy, a kind of matter, and they occur both in your body and around you in the movement of nature.

Matter is energy and energy is the movement in nature, an outgoing movement and a back-movement.

This double movement implies some universal laws of energy, which primary purpose fundamentally are to create balance in the Wholeness.

When you have lost the Now´s unmoveable being, and are absent in time and opposites, your energy will build ifself up in wavecrests, which therefore must break in troughs of the waves.

It will swing out in extremes, which will be balanced through contra-balances.

It will invest the life-challenges in past reaction-patterns, and leave behind situations unfinished.

It will build ifself up in inappropriate pulse beats, move outwards, circulate and return to its starting point.

In the consciousness´ identification with thinking and time, the Ego is created

In the consciousness´ identification with thinking and time, the Ego is created.

And the Ego uses the negationpower of time to make resistance.

The resistance consists in problematizing life itself by comparing with earlier and hoping, desiring or fearing something else.

And in this evaluation-process the Ego splits up the universal images.

It identifies ifself with one pole in a pair of opposites, for which reason the polar partner is expelled.

In this dividing process the collective and personal images arise, and herewith all the disagreements.

Our language is reflections of the universal images in the great vision of the creation

Our language, all our fictional productions, is reflections of the universal images in the great vision of the creation.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, then a library therefore is a magical room with a lot of bewitched spirits.

They wake up when we call them.

When we open a book an esthetic occurrence is happening.

Because we are parts of the movement of time - which with it´s images both flows through us, and around us in nature - then the same book changes, as we changes.

The text itself is after all also the River of Time, or Heraklit´s River.

Language is in that way an esthetical creation.

When you have negative feelings for other people, then try to think about people, who really have shown you love

When you have negative feelings for other people (or life itself), then try to think about people, who really have shown you love, your mother and father, your grandmother or grandfather.

Then let the heartfeeling arise in your heart, so that you are being filled with gratitude.

Open your heart and let the love flow out and expand towards people whom you have negative feelings for, or towards life itself.

The simple life is a life, which our consumer-society will sneer of

Every exertion of the will (ambition, project, concentration) is in the meditative art of life inappropriate.

It´s therefore the wisdomtraditions always have recommended the simple life.

It is in connection with this, that you probably will meet the first big obstacle in your meditative quest.

The simple life is namely a life, which our consumer-society will sneer of.

In a consumer-society the ideal life is a constant growing consume-capacity, and therefore a life where you all the time have to be future-oriented and in progress with new projects.

So if you seriously want to go in depth with the meditative art of life, but don´t feel you have the time for it, that your life don´t allow you to relax your will and your projects, yes, then it is necessary that you take your life up to consideration.

Either you begin to simplify your life – which can imply big changes – or else you continue as always.

What we mean about consciousness, is, on a superficial level of the mind, the thinking´s process

All motives, intensions, desires, pleasures, misgivings, inspirations, longings, expectations, sorrows, joys, are within the area of consciousness, but all this is a movement in the thinking.

What we mean about consciousness, is in this way, on a superficial level of the mind, clearly enough the thinking´s process.

Problems continue exactly as long as we from an idea from the past, are hoping to solve it in the future

Problems only exist in time; that will say: when we meet a challenge in an incomplete way.

This incomplete meeting with the challenge creates the problem.

When we meet a challenge partly, fragmented, or try to escape it – that will say: when we meet it without being present – then we create a problem.

And the problem continues exactly as long as we are the problem absent in past or future, as long as we, on the background of an idea from the past, are hoping to solve it in the future.

Whatever the philosophical counselor says, is not a doctrine, a creed, a therapy, or an attempt of persuasion

Whatever the philosophical counselor says, is not a doctrine, a creed, a therapy, or an attempt of persuasion.

Either the guest and the philosopher meet in an understanding of this, or they don´t meet at all.

And if the guest doesn´t wish to put questions to his images of life, to his preconceived conclusions, yes, then the person neither is suitable for philosophical counseling.

Don´t just give answers to your images of life – investigate 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.

Without the emptiness in the nature of the mind, there can´t be content

The mind, in which is the brain, the thoughts, the feelings, and any subtle emotion or fantasy, is, according to the Buddhists, an extraordinary thing.

All its content doesn´t create the mind, and yet without them the mind is not.

The mind is more than what it contains.

Without the mind the contents would not be; without the emptiness in the nature of the mind, there can´t be content, just like that it is the emptiness in a pot, which makes possible, that it can contain water.

The contents exist because of the emptiness.

The intellect - the thoughts, the feelings, all consciousness - have their existence in the total emptiness of the mind.

A tree is not the word, nor a leaf, branches or roots; the wholeness of them is the tree and yet the tree is none of these things.

Love is not geographical determined, it is not hold in honour on one continent, while it is denied on the other

Love is not geographical determined, it is not hold in honour on one continent, while it is denied on the other.

When individual persons in this way divide mankind, it is often because of economical reasons or ideological beliefs, and it happens with the purpose of exploitation.

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.