A problem arises when the thinker distances himself from the Now by comparing and desiring

In the Now there are no problems, only facts, existential conditions.

A problem arises when the thinker distances himself from the Now by comparing, wishing etc.

The thinker slides off from the Now´s facts.

And the Now´s facts, seen from the thinker´s perspective, the past and the future, thereby become a problem.

Something of the most difficult is to communicate with another person

We must linguistically communicate to each other, that is obvious, but it is for instance Martin Buber´s intention to show, that we can communicate on a much deeper plane; that is: not only linguistically, but in solidarity, where two parts meet on the same plane with the same intensity, with the same passion; only then there is real solidarity, and that is much more important than sheer communication.

You must go from just having some images of life to having a philosophical way of life

The question about whether Man can be changed from the ground, is a question which affects the whole of your being; it includes observation, truth, beauty, love.

And these are in philosophy as an art of life something else than words, they are something you directly experience and are in.

The life Artist must find a way in which you can live so that they become reality.

You must go from just having some images of life, personal or collective, to having a philosophical way of life.

It is herein the philosophical revolution is lying.

In that sense the Life Artist is a philosophical rebel.

The Life Artist is a philosophical rebel

The Life Artist can´t accept handed down truths.

You must begin to be critical, inquiring and discovering.

But you can nothing examine if you inwards are afraid.

To be critical is equivalent with revolt in philosophical sense, and that will say to create a new world.

The Life Artist is a philosophical rebel.

What you are coming up against is the politicians, who don't want us to revolt, because they want to control us, they want to model and form us, so we can fit into their ideological patterns; and as long as that is happening, life will remain being a torment.

Can the old be awaiting, and in this way make it possible for the new to occur?

Can you, as a Life Artist, without interpreting the present reality on the bases of the past´s conditions, observe the reaction in a new way, with an open mind?

Can something else than the old react?

Can there be a space between the old and the new reality?

Can the old be awaiting, and in this way make it possible for the new to occur?

These are the questions of the Life Artist.

When things become a requirement for your psychological and existential wellbeing, they get an all-important meaning

When the things only are of physical necessity for you, you limit them reasonably; but when they become a requirement for your psychological and existential wellbeing, they get an all-important meaning.

Being aware of that is to understand the satisfaction of your senses and your desire for lust.

If you want to understand the true, you must break away from such bonds.

In order to be able to break away from this desire for lust, you must begin with observing the needs you are familiar with, and in this is lying the right basis for understanding.

When we strain ourselves to become something, then we ourselves have projected this something

The conscious effort, the will to understand and create, to accumulate, the will to become something, is a continuation of the past, perhaps modified, but still a continuation.

When we strain ourselves to become something, then we ourselves have projected this something.

When we conscious strain in order to understand and create, it is the noise of our own accumulations we hear, the noise of all the life we have sucked out of the present and into thinking and time.

And it is this noise that precisely hinders the understanding and the creation.

The goal of the Life Artist is to go into an investigation of the turbulence of the mind

We try incessantly to become this or that, to achieve a special condition, to get one kind of realization and avoid another, and in this way the mind is eternally occupied by something, namely the Ego.

Constantly the mind is in action: thoughts, feelings, sensations, arrangements.

Always the consciousness has something in mind.

Always the mind is in progress with changing, making plans, commenting, remembering, creating images, and throwing out projects.

Both the German Idealists, Nietzsche, the Existentialists and the Marxists, took this restless, or ”creative” turbulence of the mind, as a presumption they didn´t investigate further.

The goal of the Life Artist is - in opposition to them – to go into an investigation of this turbulence of the mind, and find out what happens if it stops.

That to be interested in something, is not the same as self-assertion

That to be interested in something, is not the same as self-assertion.

We can add to the word ”self-assertion” multifold meanings.

In art of life self-assertion is based on becoming something, and therefore anxiety.

But if a boy for instance is interested in becoming an engineer, because he is inclined towards raising beautiful buildings, to create wonderful bridges, to build excellent roads, then this is because he loves that act; and that is not self-assertion.

It is an expression of what he is, and therefore there is no anxiety.

In love there is no anxiety.

The thinking becomes, when it identifies itself with me and my, time-binding

What you as a Life Artist must study, understand and neutralize, is the Ego´s time-binding characteristic, which identify itself with the memories.

Strong demands, especially the lustful, is about achieving something for the Ego, and it is the memories, which gives ”me and my” an identified continuation.

The thinking, which always is in motion, always streaming, becomes, when it identifies itself with me and my, time-binding, and gives identified continuation to memory, to the Ego.

It is this memory - which always grows and increases - you must give up.

What you overlook in the process of analysing yourself, is the analyst

What is it you overlook in the process of analysing yourself?

What you overlook is the analyst.

The analyst is your perspective on the analysed, and the desire in this perspective is the desire after achieving something, being something, acquiring something, being something else than what you are.

Therefore you overlook, that the analysis becomes a means with the purpose of changing what you are to something else.

What you are, the fact, the existential condition, becomes in other words a problem.

You are not able to be one with yourself.

This is clearly enough what happens when you analyse yourself.

There is only real thinking, when there isn´t any reaction from the memory

We are ceasing being creative, when we imitate, when we as natural beings only reacts on the bases of memories.

Answers from the memory are usually called thinking.

But such thinking is only reactions from those preconceived conceptions, which are memory.

It is only a reaction in the brain and not real thinking.

There is only real thinking, when there isn´t any reaction from the memory.

In this awake and passionate emptiness there is creation.

And when you are in this condition all stimuli and demands of life vanish.

There is only mutual connection with the observed when there isn´t any inner observer

Truth is coming when there is a non-linguistic presence, an observance and a love, which are without conclusions, without explanations, without words.

The inner spectator, theorist or doubter, are constructed by words, which again are manifestations of a self-image.

The Ego consists of explanations, conclusions, condemnations, justifications etc.

There is only mutual connection with the observed when there isn´t any inner observer and calculator, when you in self-forgetful way are open for, and engaged in, the observed.

Only then there is understanding, freedom from the problem.

Art of Life is to understand your natural needs, without clinging to the things

Most peoples´ minds are busy with things, and it requires understanding to grasp our right relationship with them.

It is not about asceticism, or love of lust, not about giving renunciation, or gather into barns, but about being yourself present in passive listening, and herein understand your natural needs, without this clinging to the things.

It was this realization Buddha came to after he as itinerant ascetic in 5-6 years had practised all possible penances, where he, among other things, tried to live of one corn of rice a day.

He realized that this self-torture didn't lead to enlightenment; that does instead the middle way, where you give the body what it needs, but without being in the control of the senses.

When you understand this, it is no sorrow to give up things, or an eternal fight to keep them.

Art of life is about bringing the self-producing thought-activity to an end

If your life shall be real, the self-producing thinking must stop.

And the whole of the art of life is about bringing this thought-activity to an end.

This is very important to understand, because the thought is a product of time, of the experiences of yesterday.

The thought is caught in the net of time, and that which is of time, can never grasp the timeless, the life which happens fully and which is in the middle of itself.

Unless we meet relationships completely there arises 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 arises conflicts in the meeting with the challenge.

Our life-expressions become self-circling.

Freedom from your perspective, the old, is truly an ethical life

Freedom from your perspective, the old, is truly an ethical life.

It means that you have discrimination, and don´t pull your perspective down over others.

But it doesn't mean, that the old is deleted, but that there is introduced a completely new dimension, where you are the old present in passive listening, where the old so to speak is made transparent in being and openness.

If you understand what the known is, you will experience an unusual peace, which is not caused

If you understand what the known is - that is to say: your perspective on yourself and the world, your self-image and world-image, and all the symbols, ideas, opinions and conceptions which are manifestations of these images – if you understand this, you will experience this unusual peace, which is not caused, which is not forced, the creative emptiness in which only reality is able to enter.

That which is finished is subject for renewal, while that which continues is of time

Our common everyday thinking is a self-producing way of thinking, it is the whole of the mind´s stream of words, images, feelings, sensations, intuitions, inner monologues, comments, logical reasoning, memories, plans, etc. etc.,  - which all are about becoming something and achieving something, and which therefore is controlled by the will to power.

This way of thinking is not renewing itself, but is repeating the same themes again and again, because it is not completed, not finished.

It is the eternal recurrence of the same, where you preserve the thoughts in a linguistic form.

The thinking sucks life out of the present and transforms thoughts into reality, and reality into emptiness

The question for the Life Artist is whether the mind can disengage itself from its own structure.

Can the mind empty itself for its own structure?

That is the problem.

The mind, as we know it, has belief and knowledge as historical background, is feeded by desires, wants, the desire after safety.

In this way the thinking sucks life out of the present and transforms knowledge and belief into reality, and reality into emptiness.

And in this way the Ego is made independent in relation to the individual´s reality.

As long as the mind is distorted it can´t listen and observe

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 neurotical 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.

The mind is characterized by a thorough restless, or creative, turbulence

Constantly the mind is in motion: thoughts, feelings, sensations, arrangements.

Always the consciousness has something in mind, always the mind is in progress with changing, choosing, planning, throwing out projects, commenting, remembering and creating images.

Always it is worrying, and is creating problems, because it compares facts with earlier, and is hoping and desiring something else.

Always the mind is in a condition of becoming, caused by the thinking´s fundamental construction of the reality of the self-image and the world-image.

The mind is therefore characterized by a thorough restless, or creative, turbulence.

What happens if this turbulence stops?

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

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 wish to become something is the beginning of all complications

Driven by a still increasing desire after becoming something, inwards or outwards, we accumulate or renounce, cultivate or deny.

As we see time steal everything, we cluster to the timeless.

This struggle after becoming something, positive or negative, through attachment or separation, can never be solved by any outside gesticulation, discipline or method.

But the understanding of this struggle will, natural and spontaneous, evoke freedom from the inner and outer accumulation, and from the conflicts it is implying.

Meditation is not concentration, prayer or worship, and it´s not a method

Instead of thinking you must put meditation.

Meditation is not concentration. Meditation is not prayer. Meditation is not worship. Meditation is not a method.

Meditation is a condition in which you discover yourself as you are, without deception and illusion.

Self-knowledge is not a goal in itself.

Self-knowledge is this, to discover the desire of becoming something.

When you as a Life Artist have examined the many different sides of yourself in activity, you have discovered, that there only is one process, and that is, that you only are interested in becoming something, in continuity.

And this is the will to power.

We live in symbols, and dreams are a part of this symbolic process

The mind denies seeing the things directly, to be them present without the word and the symbol.

You for instance say, that the sky is blue. The one who hears it, interprets it from the conception he has about blue and reproduces it to you in his own code.

In that way we live in symbols, and dreams are a part of this symbolic process.

We are not able to perceive directly and immediate without the symbols, the words, the prejudices and the conclusions.

Philosophy as an Art of Life is not the chase after a thought or an idea

Philosophy as an Art of Life is all thinking´s essence, which is to go beyond all thought and feeling.

It is, as Plotin said, the thinking´s journey back to its own Source.

Not until then philosophy is a movement into the unknown.

To meditate is a voyage of discovery into the known, into your own perspective and history, into the whole of your world of ideas, knowledge, faith and experience, and through discrimination, to be released from it, and thereby to enter into the unknown, into the Source of wisdom.

On this journey you are in company with Odysseus, Dante and Faust.

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?