Last week i must have lost my paper notebook somewhere in Ghent or on the train from Ghent to Ostend. It is a black hardcover with http://ontoscopy written on the cover and the side, and i would really appreciate to get it back.
Finder gets a fee of course!

Vorige week ben ik ergens in Gent m’n notitieboek verloren, of op de trein van Gent naar Oostende. Het is een zwart schrift met harde cover, en er staat http://ontoscopy.net op de cover en op de zijkant in witte inkt.
Ik had uiteraard graag dit boek terug. Eerlijke vinder krijgt een beloning!

tel.: 04707 679 08

mail: qrt <hat> antihype.be

PRELIMINARY NOTE: it has been more than a month now since i had this major insight and it looks very promising, but still i could be on the wrong track, overlooking some important issues. If so, please tell me. Plus, if you know of any theory or perspective that is very similar to what is being unfolded here, please let me know! It is not my intention to reinvent the wheel!

Also, before going any further, i should make clear that at any stage it is of utmost importance to keep in mind your own ways of being, to stay mindful. This relatively new notion of “contexting” sprang from a couple of puzzling incidents in my personal life that were totally intertwined with some things that were bothering me in my research, things i could not put my finger on for a very long time. It had to with some advanced ideas on information and meaning, the essence of (zen) buddhist wisdom & Krishnamurti’s teachings and my criticisms with its integration into daily life, and also the too many meanings of the word “meditation”.
In short, this finding could have never come to me without carefully observing what was going on in my own life. Practice and theory collided, and i had to think/feel out my confusion to get this idea.
My writings are aimed at facilitating personal transformation and creativity, not at spreading some philosophy or secondhand psychology.

context: from L. contextus “a joining together,” originally pp. of contexere “to weave together,” from com- “together” (see com-) + texere “to weave” (see texture).
1) the conditions and circumstances that are relevant to an event, fact, etc.
2) the circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting.
3) the parts of a piece of writing, speech, etc., that precede and follow a word or passage and contribute to its full meaning

Contexting: everybody does it

When the word “context” is used, it is generally considered as something auxiliary – it speaks for itself, there is no need to go into it. Once you know or see the context of a certain situation, it is taken for granted. We all know it is there, when we are reading a book or a newspaper, when we are in a conversation, watching TV, … Usually we are focused on some aspects, neglecting the blurry whole. Context is always implied, but what matters most is the text, the explicit part.
Now, my bold statement is the following: not only is our mindbody our primary context as a part of the surrounding context, this context is active, participating in the global context. In other words, we are constantly “contexting”, weaving our reality, trying to do what is relevant, thereby changing (or resisting to change) ourselves and the world, consciously and/or unconsciously.
Our mindbodies, especially our brains, are sculpted by the way we think and perceive and interact with the world, and at the same time the world is getting sculpted by our contexting, especially in these modern industrialized times. Human impact has become enormous, and extremely strenuous on nature.
Or if you like, we are context, and as everything inside and outside keeps on changing, we are contexting contexts. This may sound weird to some of you, but please, take your time to let this sink in and to see this for yourselves, it is the key notion in this discourse.
Another way of putting it is to say that we all bear our scars, and that living is contexting is shaping yourself and your environment. All keeps changing interdependently, both actively and passively.

to context (v.): to simultaneously experience and respond with one’s mindbody (self-image, worldview, mood, posture, …) to  the actual, overall context;
to adjust one’s internal mindbody context in response to the global mindbody-world context from moment to moment

contexting (n.): present continuous of the verb “to context”; the process of change and mutual influencing between two or more interdependent contexts; the whole actual process behind interdependence

Some examples

Okay, enough dry definition talk. As we all know, numerous problems arise when trying to make sense of oneself and the world and to live adequately. To give you a better idea of what i am hinting at, consider the following two examples:

1)  Two friends, Bob and Kramer, are sitting at a bar talking. As they are catching up on each others stories of the past months, also guided by their gestures, facial expressions, vocal tone, they are both updating their friendship context. Perhaps the most important thing is that they are meeting in person, fully sensing each others presence and meaning.
Anyway, at a certain moment, as Kramer is speaking, caught up in one of his exciting stories, a beautiful woman walks in behind him. It does not take long before Bob gets distracted, and he finds it difficult to keep his eyes off her. She is one hot babe!
After a while, Kramer starts noticing that Bob is no longer paying much attention to him. He starts questioning himself: am i boring him? Is my story uninteresting? Am i so self-absorbed? Am i missing something here?
A couple of minutes later, he asks Bob what the matter is.
Bob, for some reason not wanting to give the full context, says he is losing focus because he’s getting tired. Kramer senses there is more to it, and he is getting confused. He no longer feels like sharing his stories, the whole situation starts getting on his nerves and he thinks about going home.
Then suddenly, as the woman passes by their table, Kramer, flabbergasted by her beauty, clumsily sweeps his cup of coffee onto the floor. Seeing her walk off towards the restroom and then Bob’s gazing at her legs, Kramer is now able to weave it altogether. It all makes sense again, everything is put back into a more accurate context.

– This sequence of events may seem all too simple, but i want to highlight the importance of mental and physical presence, and the context of the present moment. Contexting can only happen in the here and now. It is impossible for me to textually describe all the things that transpired in this scene in detail, or i would need thousands of lines, and still, many aspects would be missing. Text can never explicate the whole context. Neither can a comic strip or a film. Both Bob and Kramer were continuously contexting, just as you are right now,  i.e. processing and filtering out heaps of information and responding to their best effort.
I also want to point out that, from this point of view, meaning only exists in the present moment. Any story is an attempt to revive a certain context, through which one could imagine what something might have meant. Meaning is a very personal affair, and it always involves your actual mindbody state.

2) Meet Samantha, 35, lab assistant. Ever since she was a little girl, she dreamed of having children. After having found the right partner, she gets married, and they begin the baby-making. After two fruitless years of trying, however, they find out that she is physically unable to conceive. The news is devastating. Her husband gets over it fairly quickly, but Samantha sinks away in a major depression. Family, friends and colleagues try to comfort her, but to no avail. Since she has been weaving most of her life story around this dream of being a mother, her life no longer has any meaning or purpose, she can’t just turn a switch to start her life (and context) anew. It might be a luxury problem as people tell her, but to her, it is very real and prominent.  She consults multiple psychotherapists, who, besides giving her antidepressants, try to convince her to start doing new things, to go outside again, meet people, … Samantha tries all sorts of things, which sometimes lift her spirits a bit, but deep down the desire for having a baby remains. Eventually, not able to bear the strain of Samantha’s grief and the absence of sex, her husband leaves her, which only worsens her situation of course.
Years go by and it wears off a little, but she remains embittered. Since she has an atheist upbringing, she has no affinity with the catholic church, where she could have put her mishap into a context of divine will, and could have seen her suffering as a way to get closer to “God”.
Then, almost by accident, someone convinces her to start meditating. Even though she is very skeptical, this does have some effects.
During a couple of retreats, she temporarily experiences the freedom of emptiness, with a certain release, but every time she gets back home again, she falls back into the old grooves. Every time she sees a little child or a young family, the confrontation remains painful. It is as if she keeps switching between two separate contexts that can’t be put together, she is not contexting coherently.
Consequentially, she considers permanently joining a commune, leaving her miserable life behind, with the idea of contexting a new life from scratch, but she does not find the courage to go through with it. The context of her job and her little social life still means too much for her to abandon it all.
Next to that, becoming/not being a mother became a fixed part of her identity, and she is not capable of letting that go either.
So eventually, she never really gets over the whole thing. She is both mentally and physically caught in stress and blockage, missing out on opportunities, unable to let her creative potential unfold.

– I do not want to underestimate or do away with the merits of any therapy, religion or meditation practice here, i just want to point out that many people get stuck in between contexts, torn by internal conflicts. It could have evolved in many other ways, but stories like these do happen.

In this second example, i have put some indications of how one’s ways of contexting can go awry, especially in a world full of fragmented and incomplete contexts. Life already presents us with many challenges, and then there is all these social pressures, the many expectancies and  all sorts of shared illusions to deal with.

So, what’s the point?

As the above examples should have somewhat made clear, there is an ongoing, mutual influencing between the personal and the impersonal, the “self” and the environment.  The process of contexting comprises of both observing & memorizing (~ ontoscopy & ontology), the objective & the subjective, the conscious & the unconscious, emptiness & form,  form & content, of experiencing, …, in one movement.
This gives the possibility to have another perspective on numerous issues in a simple, straightforward way, without getting lost in all the above dualities.
The following paragraphs are a short overview of what topics will be discussed in the next 7 articles.

At this time, the diametrically opposite of the contexting perspective is utilized: it is always about “me and my choices of thinking and living”, not about “the choosing(?)” itself and if this “choosing(?)” makes any sense if you look at it as a whole. Everything is centered around the “me” or around some concept, an idea, an ideology.
By taking contexting as primordial however, you are forced to think in relationships, impacts, wholes, systems, ecology.
It is the same thing in core biology. You can’t just say: here is the heart, it pumps blood, and when it stops you die, and, here are the lungs, they get oxygen out of the air and remove carbon dioxide from your bloodstream. To really get to understand the body processes, you also need to look at all the interactions, all the arrows, not just the separate parts.
Similarly, contexting provides a way of looking at the arrows in a mindbody-world process, especially to describe how we create reality and co-shape the physical world.

Once you start to examine with this view, you’ll encounter a whole lot of problems. To begin with, contexting is a largely unconscious and mechanical process in most human beings. We never learn to be aware of how our mind (the mental aspects of our mindbodies) functions and how it can mislead us. Most people are controlled by random thoughts and desires, which are usually not even theirs, entranced by their education, by the media, by the culture, and “freedom” is a prison cell painted sky blue. No awareness means no control, no intelligent guidance, and illusions skyrocketing. Banking crisis, climate crisis, anyone?

The world’s major religions provide narrow prefab contexts and contexting methods.
Most of them emphasize literal (or liberal, as it suits their leaders) interpretations of ancient scriptures, which people can only integrate into their daily lives by seriously limiting their actions and views. Just look at women’s rights, homosexuality, … On top of that, most religions are mutually exclusive, these contexts cannot be integrated.
Still, it must be said that all of them, especially the eastern traditions, can give us plenty of insights into the problems of unawareness and illusion. These must not be put aside!
Zen buddhism and buddhism are especially good at letting go of all concepts and to get to a base mode of contexting.

Science has a different problem: it lacks an overall context. Knowledge is shattered among many domains, separate disciplines, each with their proper terminology and perspectives, making it nearly impossible nowadays to bring it all together.  Some physicists still believe they will come up with some unified string theory, but i have strong doubts about that.
One of the few scientists who really had a serious approach to this gigantic problem was David Bohm, with his implicate and explicate orders, but even he was not sure if it can ever be done properly.

Coherently and mindfully contexting is the message. As long as we uphold fragmented views, with continual and conflicting desires, (un)consciously dividing what is inherently related, we are not weaving a healthy context for ourselves and the rest of the world, so our lives and our actions will carry little meaning.

As a way out, i propose some ways to make contexting into a proper personal art, where all sensible contexts and aspects of life can be integrated, in a fluent and coherent fashion. In chapter 7 i will be making references to some of the “solutions” already out there, especially when it comes to mindfulness and meditation techniques and related wisdom.
The only way to act intelligently is to be your own psychological authority, to become sufficiently aware of your mindbody processes and their limitations and potentials, to function as an integrated whole and to be properly guided by your actual context, with an integrated, healthy worldview.
This is made difficult by all sorts of man-made systems, but it is possible, this inner & outer movement towards wholeness can be facilitated and enhanced.

Coming up

The next episodes will dig further and deeper into:

2. The Problems
3. Subpersonalities
4. The Religious Approaches
5. The Scientific View
6. The Incoherence
7. The Suggestions
8. The Meaning

Modern society and its participants have grown into predominantly rigid structures, into advanced reasoning within very limited frameworks. Every aspect (or so it seems) of the world is handed over to specialists, and these people are supposed to get us out of the mess we’re in, whether it be politicians, economists, teachers, caretakers, nuclear physicists, sociologists, psychologists, brain surgeons, … Nearly everyone is processing heaps of information within his or her field, and is automatically unable to integrate their findings within the greater whole that is the world. Even worse, each  specialist most likely creates new problems in other areas because his or her views and solutions are not in tune  with the rest of the ongoing worldly processes. Looking at the whole is no one’s job and is considered irrelevant, primarily because present-day science sees it that way, since it is also organized in that fragmentary fashion (this might be slowly changing due to certain findings in biology and quantum physics, but these are not seriously considered, since established science is full of dogmas and is for most part an ideological war ).
You could say that religion has or used to have a mission in looking at wholeness, but the institutions have prevented this, focusing on particular beliefs and far too literal interpretations. Structures are much more important than the people at the base, in nearly every organization.

Living in a country where it takes more than a year to reorder political structures and make a new government, while there are so many critical problems facing humanity, this crisis is very apparent. Political, linguistic, cultural, and most of all, psychological barriers make it impossible to act creatively, rationally and intelligently. Worst of all, the nearsightedness is so widespread and ingrained in everyday thought, that we no longer question the idiotic puppetry. And if you ask me, the alarming rate of depressions and suicides is also linked to this cynical, uncreative state of affairs. The conceptual divisions are real-life prisons, and they put a serious toll on each of us.
In reality, everything is connected and interdependent, but most specialists (and hence most of us) still think that problems can be solved separately and independently.

We humans do not see the enormous effects of artificial structures on our lives, but they are very much active and put a lot of strain on our health, our joy and our freedom.
While all children are born with the innate quality of wonder and creative inquiry, most of us lose it somewhere along the road. Usually this comes from the surrounding environment which focuses on order, conformity, earning money, … Of course we need some basic rules to get along, but what i am talking about is usually much more subtle, and it can have all sorts of ramifications. For example, most toddlers lose their natural ability to do full belly breathing and only breathe partially with their chest, which is a far less optimal way, making people more prone to stress, bad circulation, blockages in the abdomen, etc. Most adults don’t know how to breathe freely, fully and efficiently, and similar symptoms can be found manifold in our ways of thinking and living.
The creative potential of mind&body is there, but the more it gets buried under robotic, neurotic and senseless patterns, under tons of junk, the less chances of it springing into action.

Personally, i could be called a renaissance man. While i had a decent scientific education, i also explored various art forms as an adolescent, both as a fan and as a creator.  The expression gave me some comfort and satisfaction, but it did not solve my deep-rooted confusion and discontent.  Eventually, digging deeper into my mind structures and processes,  creatively tackling all sorts of blockages, fluid creativity became my essential, overall way of living. No longer could i put my energy in expressing my persistent emotional hangups and illusions, i had no other option but to creatively observe and act, from moment to moment, and to let go of all personal ambitions. I fully realized that any success would only give me temporary solace. My whole context changed, so the meaning of all things changed. This was a gradual process with some major shifts, and while it must be said that i seriously investigated J. Krishnamurti’s words in the process, creativity is what drove me further, searching for creative ways of developing mindfulness, insight and informal meditation.
The “artistic struggle” attitude that i was once caught in is the same thing as the political game: it implicitly upholds certain artificial structures to which human creativity or decision-making is subordinated  to. In other words, by adopting the existing structures, to achieve and sustain your status as a renown artist or as a popular politician comes first. What is actually created or decided is of lesser importance and does not come from a free mind, but there is the strong illusion that it does. People who truly see this step out of the game, become renegades and hardly get any attention. Every social system reinforces itself. The nonsense, the drama, the intrigues and the quarrels, that’s what is usually shown in the media, so we constantly get the impression that that is all there is, and that that is the way to go.
Anyway, i am still at an artist at heart i guess, next to being a spiritual being and a scientist. The big difference is that the art of living is now my main project, so to speak.

Most people are creative in some aspect of their life, which is part of their joie de vivre: they keep their conversations lively, they surprise their partner, kids or friends, from time to time, they detect and correlate situations and opportunities, they creatively deal with difficult circumstances, whether these are emotional, physical, financial, professional, or of some other sort.
At the same time, on the darker side of the spectrum, people can be very cunning and inventive at manipulating or hurting others, evading taxes, … Of course, that is partial, fragmented creativity, but still it takes the energy and action to look at things from another perspective, and to create new ways, new plans in reaction to a problem. This is also the reason why people feel so alive when they start scheming, creativity is an important trait.

I am not saying that it is wrong for artists to pursue their goals, as it is for many a way of coping with personal issues or to create new perspectives on things, out of necessity. I just want to make clear that the creative energy that is put into paintings, music, literature, poetry, cinema, philosophy, the whole entertainment business,…, is limited and can lead to more misery. It definitely has its place, and it can be very inspiring and show some of the highest things our mindbodies are capable of, and it is just fun to do or watch.
Also, scientists, politicians and all the other professionals  have an important, creative role to fulfill. The key is to keep integrating each domain into the bigger whole, as a movement, instead of working on rivaling, wasteful, short term projects.

Creative change is the only constant in the universe. Darwinists and creationists aside, history continues to show us that everything keeps on changing, that nature will confront us with problems and challenges that we have never encountered before, that black swans (unexpected events with large impact, e.g.  the 9/11 attacks, tsunamis, nuclear disasters, …) will continue popping up. And this we simply cannot control with any structure. In most cases, our existing organizations and other structures cannot cope with large changes, because they are too big and too rigid to adapt to new and challenging situations. If our species really wants to survive, we shall have to implement processes and structures that closely resemble those found in nature, by closely examining the ecosystem as a whole. It is easy to be innovative in a narrow context and to neglect all the negative side-effects that it entails. This is why creativity has to be one of our main focuses on any level, without any disconnect with our bodies, our environment, the physical world. A perpetual cycle of creative renewal, of living and dying, on all levels.
This also means that learning never stops, and that learning is more than accumulating knowledge from the past. It is also about observing changes and intelligently adapting to them.

We are living in a world where short-sightedness is rewarded, not only in the financial industry but everywhere – don’t look to deep or far ahead, don’t worry about the future of your children – as if the mess will one day miraculously dissolve itself after we have made some superficial changes.
The deeper dimension of relating and connecting the dots, which can be considered spiritual or “religious”, is hardly ever addressed, especially in modern times where everything needs to be evaluated by numbers, concrete results, productivity, efficiency. It systematically gets ignored, because no explicit value is given to the more subtle aspects of the living conditions on this earth. Economic growth has become the world’s number one religion, and poor and rich are trapped in that largely uncreative, robotic rat race towards material wealth. Surely we are going to need more than so-called green cars and solar panels to start co-creating with nature instead of creatively destroying it, no?
After all, nature is the master-creator and the main factor of our economy, she is the most advanced, most energy efficient, produces zero waste, but who is willing to admit this and bring it into account?
Creativity cannot be measured, it cannot be put in statistics, and it is never rewarded if it severely challenges existing structures. When a company or university claims to be creative, they are always tuned in to the present system, with a little freedom to modify things here and there. Nowhere are children or students encouraged to deeply question everything, since that is far too dangerous for every person or organization that has become established.
Mediocrity reigns supreme, but PR managers and marketeers successfully implant the illusion of the opposite.

The ultimate and most precious form of creativity lies in being open, flexible and intelligent as a human being, to have a deep understanding of life and death and everything in between. This creative transformation is the only solid basis to approach our surroundings.
Profound insight into one’s nature, into human nature, is ultimately a creative act, because the seeing immediately changes the internal structures, you cannot separate the two.

All is one. You cannot make the world healthy if you are not moving towards being healthy yourself as a flexible, creative mindbody, just like you can’t be healthy in a unhealthy world. You cannot intelligently lead a government or do politics if you are unable to grasp the essence of your own psycho-physical organism and if you are living as a limited machine, resorting to fragmentary scientific studies and views. You cannot find complete, stable  joy and peace of mind if your happiness depends on good luck and arbitrary conditions. Most people are not even aware of this possibility, and their conditioning gets strengthened by all the petty psycho-sociological research that focuses on mechanical, copycat behavior. People feel comforted to read that most other people are just as rigid and messed up as they are. It should be obvious though: the more you cling to structure(s) and narrow down your views, the duller and more lifeless you become. Robot see, robot do.
Freedom is to be found in creative response to your present restrictions, not in prefabricated choices.

First i was going to end this post with the opening statement on my personal website, but i hate to repeat myself. Also, this meditation turned out very different from what i had in mind, turning to nature and the human imbalance towards partial and non-creativity. However, that is what true creativity is all about: to let go of all expectations, fears and restraints, with your whole being, and to ride that invisible wave the best you can, wherever it takes you.

1. Basic coherence

The most important reason of my silence has to do with quality control and self-criticism. I am setting high standards for myself before finalizing anything on paper or digitally.
I think it is necessary to start with a coherent entry-level theory, which will of course still grow and unfold over time. My texts thus far have been fairly consistent, but there are a lot of implicit notions that i would like to address more explicitly in the future.
A quick example. Some time ago i came to realize, through reading Yasuo Yuasa and practicing kiko (Japanese qi gong), that i had verbally neglected the importance of the unconscious and mindbody integration.

It would be utterly foolish and arrogant of me to assume that i understand all that can be observed and understood.  I do have the impression that, thanks to my open, creative, scientific, artistic and spiritual way of thinking and living, i can see many aspects of life and the world with a fairly disillusioned view. I have come to a reasonably deep understanding of myself and the nature of thought. With that in mind, i assume that i am able to lay down the basis for an organically growing, wholesome world view.

Also, i continue doing my very best to be as comprehensible as possible to a wide audience, without resorting to oversimplifications or  omitting essential parts. I have no affiliations but the authors that sound most reasonable to me, i have no agendas to protect, no people to please, no people to fear, and that is a serious advantage for both me and my seven and a half readers.

2. Religious/spiritual roots

Anyone with an open and critical mind will find that a lot of religions/spiritual frameworks are in fact talking about the same thing(s) and no-thing, albeit with varying constructs and metaphors. While i am absolutely not intending to quote the bible or any other holy book, as some popular authors love to do, i do like to refer to the essence of some wisdom traditions, especially taoism, zen-buddhism and buddhism, the most adult systems out there.
I am quite certain that a lot of wisdom is enclosed in any religion, even islam and catholicism. The only problem being that to get to the essence, one is forced to identify with all sorts of things, to submit to authority, and that one has to go through a lot of confusion and false leads.

My experience is that it is possible to bypass a lot of that, with a minimum of external authority, and i propose that it should be possible to describe this sort of path in more efficient and non-divisive ways. Most people get caught in the words, imagery,  rituals and imposed rules of tradition, and never go beyond these largely dead and superficial aspects.
And i continue to emphasize that practice, insight practice applied to day-to-day living most definitely, is of utmost importance.
Knowledge is a means, not an end, and the proof of the pudding is in what you are doing with your life and that of others.

3. Scientific basis and correspondence

Any theory is just a way of looking at things, of focusing on certain aspects of a bigger whole. This means that the theory you adapt to has a major influence on your way of thinking and living. Some people have told me: “Why bother with all that theoretical drivel? We just need to remember that everything is in fact one whole”. That is true of course, to a certain extent, but as long as mainstream views are so fragmented, such a remark remains largely wishful thinking.

In order to talk about the nature of consciousness and the nature of nature, i deem it necessary to have a basic knowledge of the state-of-the-art of modern science, even if i am not explicitly referring to this or that author. There must be some ground of truth that has to hold from any specialized point of view. In other words: i am not basing my views from scratch, they are the result of serious proof-based relating and meditating, not of new age referencing and fantasizing, to form a sensible ontology.
Lately i have been examining the ideas of quantum physics, not to recuperate them and abuse them as in many wacky new age theories, but simply to incorporate these in this shared view of wholeness.

In short, i have been thoroughly looking at the mind/body / mind/matter problem, the concepts of space and time, life and death, and most important of all, the concepts of information and meaning.

In quantum physics, information, or “subtle energy” as it is usually called, may be playing an active role throughout the universe, encoded throughout the whole, instead of being just a man-made tool with which we describe nature. The eastern concepts of ki/qi/chi and prana, among other, also point to this notion of “active information”.
Then there is also the related taboo of psi phenomena – telepathy, precognition, OBE’s, … – which deserve some attention. These could very well be important clues to look beyond the current reductionist models of consciousness (and the traditional views in physics & biology).

Furthermore, our application of objective/subjective man-made information as accumulated human knowledge is the key when it comes to working out wholesome approaches to most of civilization’s problems. After all, this website is also another pile of info. Unfortunately, the huge amounts of disinformation that we get to process via all media channels could forever disable our potential to get out of the mess we have created as a species.
Suppose you’d have a number of people who have a fairly unbiased and undistorted view of reality, why would anybody pay attention to them at all? That alone is a tremendous challenge which seems almost impossible to overcome. Our main problem is no longer finding the right information, it is overshadowed by the bullshit overload.

4. Unambiguous terminology

What also concerns me is to adapt and set up an unambiguous and clear language with sufficient nuances and refinement. One of the big problems in spiritual frameworks and consciousness research is the inconsistent use of a lot of concepts. “Mind”, “thought”, “meditation”, …, can mean many different things to different people.
There is no ideal solution, especially when integrating different fields, but at least i am very attentive about this and i am trying to make some useful suggestions.

5. Breaking the taboo

A great deal of effort is aimed at offering a reasonable alternative to the dogmatic mindsets of both die-hard atheists and extremist religious people driven by literal, unwholesome interpretations.
I myself have always been a very skeptical person, and on my path i have had to overcome a series of societal and personal dogmas. Most people, no matter what background, are afraid to go there, to question their whole system of thought. And what is more, this is certainly not encouraged in any society or education system. With the right attitude, the right pointers, a fair amount of perseverance, and a bit of luck, it is possible to get to a wholesome way of thinking and living, of embodying an integration of the best of east and west, without any belief at all.
This is extremely important to stress i think, because both modern science and contemporary religion are inadequate in handling the challenges that face humanity. It seems as if most scholars and even the majority of people think that science has tackled all the important issues, that technology will solve all of our problems, either with or without the help of religion. It is all about specialization and reorganization of existing structures, while the advancement of psychological understanding is reduced to research of (material) brain mechanisms.
The objectivesubjective life of deep understanding as a third option needs to be taken seriously, more than ever.

6. The common reasons

And finally, the fact that  i still have a halftime job and other interests and activities, and that i can be very lazy have also delayed my writing.
All in all i have made quite some progress this year. Once i have plunged through my pile of critical books and scientific papers, my output will go up again, and i will also be working towards a book that is slowly getting shape (it will still take 5 or 10 years i guess).

I should also mention that i have been doing some tweaking of this website in the background, adding references and general information, which is still in progress. Check the above menu to navigate through them.

To end this boring explanatory intermezzo, i would like to thank all the people who have given me input thus far, and i encourage everyone to do likewise. It means a lot to me (and in return a lot to you too perhaps).
Consciousness is a participatory process, the process of relating, we tend to forget that.
In fact, “con-scire” means “to know together”.

ONE!

What is insight?
There are the famous examples of Archimedes in his bath, Newton and the falling apple and Buddha under the Bodhi tree. Where did their changes in vision come from?
For starters, insight can not be really called a thing. It must be some sort of action, a process, that takes very little to no time to operate. Different interpretations may be given according to the context, such as a divine intervention for example, but that is not the road we want to go. I shall try to keep this meditation as objective as possible.
Is it the energy of truth bringing more coherence to the mind, reshaping reality? Is it the available, total inner and outer intelligence in-forming the mind? Is it simply information acting upon the brain?
In any case, it is my understanding that any insight, as small as it may be, can potentially affect the whole content of the mind. To go even further, it can affect the whole of collective consciousness. I could go into the theories of memes and “active information”, but that is not really relevant here.
Insight is most certainly not an addition of knowledge to memory. It may lead to that, and it may be triggered by pieces of information, but the flash itself appears to be a re-ordering of information, the creation of new connections between existing connections, disposing of all the irrelevance and delusion that was present before.

My first experience of profound insight goes back to when i was 7 or 8 years old. The ingenuity of a diagram depicting the natural cycle of water (sea – evaporation – clouds – rain – …)  struck me very deeply, it changed my whole world view. Even to this day i would say it is one of the most important things i have learned as a human being. It may only be a piece of scientific information, but its implications are huge, and the principle can be extended to all ways of nature, including human nature. The diagram shows that there are no closed, separate systems on earth. Each part affects the whole and vice versa, whether we realize and/or like that or not. But i am digressing.

In information science, insight could be seen as nature’s garbage collection of the mind processes, and as the recognition of patterns inside one’s own representation system, which leads to a reconfiguration of the existing brain patterns. From my point of view, only a human biocomputer is capable to get this job done, thanks to its complexity and its plasticity, its flexibility as a living organism.
There is still much mystery surrounding this aspect of life. To my knowing only some neurological research has been done on insight within subjects trying to solve some particular puzzles. I assume that it is extremely difficult to get useful information via brain scans about something that happens in a fraction of a second. That’s a scientist’s concern of course. Anyone with an open mind can explore the nature of insight within him- or herself and discover its significance.
The million dollar question is: what are the best conditions and practices to get insight to happen?

In many traditions, self-knowledge and insight get distorted and even blocked by introducing interpretations and unnecessary imagery, disfiguring the potential of seeing one’s true nature, even in buddhism. However, on the underlying plus side, meditation, contemplation, is the central activity to bring about insight, sometimes aided by forms of questioning such as Zen koans, which force the mind to break free from conventional thinking.
Observation, inquiry and open-mindedness are probably the three key actions to see through things, eventually and most likely leading to the radical “point-of-no-return”, the big psychological insight called enlightenment. However, we human beings are very inefficient at clearing the way to get there, partly because we are still caught in old beliefs and interpretations and cannot and will not ever really “know” what it is, and partly because very few people are sincerely investigating these matters.
If religion has any relevance left today, it should be centered on this question of insight, and not on the interpretation of ancient metaphors, its influence on politics and society or the inevitable corruption of its institutions.

Only by dropping or seriously questioning the existing framework of thinking can the creative process of insight act upon/act within the mind. You cannot actively trigger it. You can create the right circumstances, that’s all.
One may argue that self-deception operates in the exact same way. It is well-known that, despite their important contributions, many scientific and mystic geniuses were attracted to far-out, esoteric nonsense, because of their extraordinary curiosity and open-mindedness, not wanting to lose time by being too skeptical. The same applies to many well-educated people who are not satisfied with the limits and half-truths of traditional medicine, for example. This is a possible downside of open-mindedness.
So how does one recognize true insight from false insight or deception? From my perspective, you can never really be 100% sure, but a mind that is moving towards sanity becomes much more sensitive and healthy, so that it becomes better at discerning true from false. It is the same with the body. Once you drop some bad habit, you will feel the difference. Time is the ultimate judge.
A true insight stays forever, whether it is the simple understanding of a fact or whether it is a deep understanding of life beyond language, of seeing the validity of certain questions and to live the answer instead of desiring certainty.
The path to insight is also a matter of trust in oneself, of connecting with trustworthy, sincere people, and not to be afraid of making mistakes.

Probably some of the people reading this will be distressed by the fear that opening up the mind can lead to the letting in of doubt and insecurity, and of “evil” thoughts, in extremis “to be possessed by demons”. As protection mechanism, most of us have this automatic judge/thought police built in, labeling certain thoughts as bad and others as good, in the belief that this is the only way to remain sane and morally stable. This robotic behavior works for the multitude, but it can become a serious mental problem and it is most definitely a grave limitation of one’s personal growth.
It can indeed be a big step to take to abandon the certainty of second-hand knowledge, especially if you’re an intellectual person, and to confide in one’s own intelligence, openness and potential for insight.
It is clear that highly neurotic and anxious people first have to get themselves straight before plunging into deep questions. Most people who sufficiently know themselves are capable of telling whether they are ready or not to move beyond the intellect.
Rest assured though, insight is a natural process, so there is no need to be afraid. Your mind will flee when the uncertainty gets too much anyway, there are millions of ways to close off and distract yourself.

Insight is the key to the further maturing of intelligence.
We may think that our species has already evolved very far, but psychologically most us know very little about our selves and our relationship with the world. As long as we put all our energy into more knowledge and scientific insight, and as long as we continue to bypass the black box that is our mind, the black box that is doing all these wonderful and dreadful things throughout the world, humanity is doomed to disappear, because we fail to see the self-destruction, pretending the black box is not there and imagining that our thoughts and actions have little to no impact on our surroundings and the planet as a whole.

Serious observation, meditation and openness are three things that are not rewarded by society (in the end, they reward themselves, but rarely can they totally flourish in a person – no (wo)man is an island).
In many places on this earth there is not even the luxury to get into these matters because of famine, poverty, political oppression, …
It is up to us in the “free countries” to decide  if we continue the same old games of superficial change or if we are finally going to start to change the whole game from within, to drop all meaningless pursuits and fully engage into healthy living.
The planet can do perfectly without us humans, that is for sure, but how will we explain that to our children? Are we going to keep ourselves blind from our stupidity and continue all the nonsense or are we going to get to the essence and start focusing on insight, not sporadically or casually, but together, here and now, on all levels?

Nothing is impossible, it just hasn’t happened yet.

First of all, let’s point out the two important concepts here: self and self-image or identity. The definition of identity could be formulated as “anything the self identifies with”, literally anything it considers to be “the same entity”. Various neuroscientific experiments show us that the “self” cannot be located or restricted, that it is probably just a byproduct, a phenomenon of consciousness, some even say it does not exist, that it is totally made up ₍₁₎. This sort of statements is true in some way, in the objective context, but not from a practical point of view.
As we grow up we develop a sense of self, and while it is obvious that this can become very problematic, from ordinary psychological suffering to a whole range of mental disorders, i don’t think it is possible to throw it out the window just like that. It may change gradually or dramatically, you can dissociate and identify solely with something you call “Self”, “Awareness”, “Being”, “I am-ness”, which is utterly foolish, you can influence and play with it an many ways, however i don’t think we can live without it. I went very deeply into this matter years ago and i saw it can’t be done, or at least, that it is not a sane thing to do.

The self is of course an image, an appearance (not necessarily an illusion, as explained below), but without it we would not have any stability or direction in life. We would not be able to learn, to mature, etc. This is not so hard to see i suppose.
It gets much trickier to realize that we are all locked into the representation system of the brain: our mind can be seen as a sort of “Matrix” (as in the blockbuster movie yes, which is in fact loosely based on G.I. Gurdjieff’s teachings), as a virtual reality generator of the world, including our “selves”. We don’t really see the world, we see our representation of the world, distorted, fragmentary and biased. Our mind tricks us to believe that the images it builds up are correct, complete and objective, that’s all ₍₂₎.

There is the largely untapped potential of looking at something more directly, with childlike innocence, fresh and non-judgmental, but there will still be some unconscious processing going on before the signals become consciously aware within you. You are the processing and the interpretation of the signals. The moment you fully come to see this, to realize how your mind constantly deceives you, that there is an unbound self without the known (no-self?), not as an intellectual fact but directly, as it operates in realtime, including all its implications, the whole perception changes, but you will still be stuck in your mind and body.
The point is: within time it is impossible to get out of your “Matrix”, out of your consciousness, out of the essential ways of the world. You may dream or imagine that you can fly, that you are totally independent from others, that you will save humanity, but the underlying truth will hit hard sooner or later. In case of subtler fantasies, it is much more difficult to face the truth. Most of us are total experts in trapping ourselves in stories, illusions, especially the very negative and depressing ones. In these situations the letting in of truth can be an overwhelmingly liberating experience.

Even if you are able to be highly awake, you can only be aware of a very small part of what is going on, since our system is constantly filtering things out. When you are focused on something, everything else drops to the background. People who have gone more deeply into the matter will say: that would mean we are all eternally trapped inside our realities, without any chance of getting free!?
Well yes indeed, partly at least, but could it not be very likely that, since every thing is one, the wholeness or emptiness can be “found” or “sensed” in every part, including our brains and minds? Consciousness can be seen as an electric field, a process, that is part of or connected to our mind-body process or energy field, which in return cannot be separated from the other processes going on in the universe.
We are all part of this big ongoing mystery, and supposing everything resonates, it is only a matter of not resisting, of opening up the mind, to tune into the aliveness of this mystery.
We can all come to realize that our reality is not the ground, not the essential truth, which is infinitely greater and cannot be grasped, only conceptualized. Even hardcore atheists and cannot deny the existence of something (nothingness?) that can’t be explained. Well, okay, they can, they have the right to feel independent and isolated of course.

Each one of us is bound by a whole lot of determinism, by natural laws and natural cycles. There is no escaping this. Most of us are also largely determined by our personal past and the surrounding culture, and from that we can break away. It is however much easier to conform to society, to cling to a fixed identity, to act and react according to existing patterns, and not to question the whole system.
Much of the past only lives on through images, through knowledge, but it still has relevance. It is ingrained in your mind ₍₃₎, in your body, in your behavior, in the state of the world as it is right now. As the memory function of the brain cannot be separated from the rest of your consciousness, it is silly to think that you can actually be free from the past by discarding or ignoring it. There is no other way than to be more aware of the whole, to discern illusion from that which still holds true, that which is an actual representation of a fact, a worldly fact. As the saying goes: “The truth can and will set you free”.

There is even more to it. There is also the unconscious part of the mind, your many “I”‘s or subselves, your inhibitions, your instincts, … Unless you discover more about yourself, exploring the depths of your mind-body, you will remain largely stuck, controlled by invisible parts of your past. The whole idea of freedom, of free will, becomes laughable in this respect.

It might seem harsh, but you could state that many of us live as robots, not aware of our programmed minds, caught in a web of beliefs and unnecessary restrictions, with many blind spots and mechanisms to stick to what is known and not to ask any deeper questions. Emotional reactions or other behavior can be totally automatic, and many people do not become aware of this unless there is a serious breakdown, or a social malfunction.

We should keep in mind that total unlearning and unconditioning is another fantasy of the absolute, but you can take it very far if you want to.

Ultimately, reality may merely be a construction of the mind, and probably there is only the emptiness of the here and now. How far will that insight take you? How are you to face the “unreal” problems of the world, your own problems, those of your loved ones, …? What about your fears and desires?
Since it is impossible to tackle the whole all at once, the most urgent question is: “Where do i go from here?”
We usually don’t see that all is included in the here and now: both the past and the future lie within it – the actual, the factual, the non-factual, the desired, the most feared, the probable, the most likely, the impossible, …, and, most important of all: the unknown.
Confusion can only fade or disappear by seeing through the whole of thought, both the personal and collective, by being very skeptical, by holding anything to the light of your own intelligence and seeing whether it is illusory or not. Active thinking and actively and passively observing, meditation in action, is indispensable to become more integrated and aware. Only by embracing and coming clean with your past and integrating all parts will you find peace within yourself. No magical trick, state of enlightenment, divine intervention or whatnot will do that for you.

Aside from the above reflections, is it actually possible in this world to live without any identity, without any self-image? How would you communicate? How would you make a living? How would you relate to people? How would you survive without a sense of self?
Stating that “all identification with form is wrong or unhealthy” would mean you cannot listen to music, watch movies, read books, or even have a decent conversation, because you can only connect with something or someone by identifying. Correct me if i am wrong!
The moment you start clinging to the image(s) is when the trouble begins. An example: suppose you like listening to classical music. Even if you did not care at all about your self-image, this would still be part of your identity, something you feel connected with. The liking gets stored anyway. This does not mean that you are attached to the music or the composer. Attachment and identification are two separate mechanisms.
As long as identity is not exclusive, and more of a question than an answer, i don’t see any problem. See for yourself, go into it, see what is happening.

You are your mind. You are your thoughts. You are you body. But you are also more, potentially much more and less than that. You are the world. You are a process. The more you get in touch with the truth of things, the more you open yourself up and allow insight to come about, thought changes, your reality changes, you change.
Only in a state of freely thinking, of seeing and not judging, not knowing, can there be space to allow the energy that keeps your reality accurate and actual, up-to-date.
Meditation has no end-goal, it is it own means and end. It is our only tool to live in a truth-based reality instead of an illusion-based one.

Whether we like it or not, no matter what, we are all trapped in reality. The liberation from psychological suffering lies in looking deeper and beyond, in opening up to a larger perspective. The question of self and identity cannot be solved, is not to be solved.
Being aware of oneself, of one’s images, of the facts, being open to the changing nature of all things, is the key to change, to act intelligently, to be free from choice, free from illusion.
That is the one and only freedom, the true meaning of being fully awake and alive.

(1) cfr. “The Ego Tunnel” by Thomas Metzinger (haven’t read it myself though)
(2) to learn more about this, read Charles Tart’s “Waking Up” or “States of Consciousness”, for example
(3) “Synaptic Self – How our brains become who we are” by Joseph LeDoux gives an excellent overview of how self emerges and persists through the whole brain system of neurological functions and interactions

by David Bohm,  which brings together his theories of wholeness & implicate order and the essence of his dialogues with J. Krishnamurti. Since i somehow overlooked the importance of this highly underrated quantum physicist slash critical thinker in my last post, this is a little tribute. And for the last time i am exposing some essential parts of my personal history to explain where i am coming from and what i am aiming at (after this one, no more exhibitionism or story telling, i don’t see the point).
You may wonder: what’s the link between the two? Well, noticing how very little interest people show(ed) for what Bohm had to say raises some serious questions and doubts about my own endeavors and where we are (not) going.

It is peculiar how i failed to recognize the impact of David Bohm’s words during his conversations with K. (cfr. “The Limits of Thought”, “The Ending of Time”, “The Future of Humanity”). He kept himself in the background, hesitating, always leaving the final word to Krishnamurti. He did steer things though, trying to get something “useful” out of the circular mystical answers. Only recently did i finally start reading his ideas on wholeness and the nature of thought, and i was surprised, because they very much resonate with what i am trying to convey. “Thought as a System” is a masterpiece in my opinion. It may only be a redacted transcript of a weekend of questions and answers among friends and colleagues, with its consequent shortcomings, but i do not know of a book that deals with thought in a more clear and concise way. Maybe Charles Tart gets very close as well. It is far from complete, but it highlights most crucial of  errors or illusions in collective and individual thought, in only 240 pages. The difficulty is to help it get understood, to get it all across without falling back into the old traps of thought. The main point of the book is this: how can insight and creativity come about when there is all this confusion going on, both consciously and unconsciously, inside and outside? How can one become aware of thought’s deceptions and become free from all that, free from the past, and face the unknown? Bohm proposes the concept of “proprioception of thought“, which comes down to thought being aware of itself, just like one can be aware both consciously and unconsciously of his own body and movements with “classic proprioception”. In other words: no method, only permanent alertness, awareness, observation. Ontoscopy, yes sirree. Maybe “holoproprioception” would be a better term, but that sounds even more complicated i suppose.

Bohm’s seemingly outlandish physical theories of wholeness, his political stances and his inquiries into mysticism made it very simple for the establishment to ridicule him and neglect his contributions. Time will tell if it remains that way or not.
Are there any noteworthy scientists alive today that try to study the whole instead of focusing on a little fragment of reality? In the study of consciousness, nearly all energy is put into scientific research of other people’s brains and philosophical theories. The past centuries, there have been tremendous insights into the exterior world, giving rise to most of the scientific branches we have today. The past decades, there have been tremendous insights into the functioning of our minds and our consciousness, but these are all “external” looks the inside, no insights from the inside concerning the whole. Okay, there is some research being done on the effects of longtime meditation and mindfulness, and tons of data are coming out of all these and other studies, but who is putting this knowledge into action?
And with all due respect, but from what i have read and heard about mindfulness, it is primarily a series of methods to calm the mind, to have a few insights into life here and there. I can’t help but find most of the contemporary efforts superficial, not really addressing the deeper problems of our way of living and thinking. There is a lot of compromise and superficiality within 99% of the available teachings (if i am wrong on this, please correct me).
We should realize that science will never succeed at explaining the inner ways of the mind, as the observer cannot be separated from the observed in this case. The growing evidence of great plasticity of the mind and brain should only encourage people to look further and consider the possibility of radically transforming their way of thinking and doing, from within.
It can happen.

The last few months i personally have been somewhat trying to reverse engineer my own path to radical change, and i must say that, at this moment, seeing how predecessors such as Bohm have been set aside, i am less confident in continuing this thing i am doing right here. I begin to wonder if it really amounts to anything, as it diametrically opposes most of what society stands for.  At the same time i know that there is not really anything else i can or will do, because nothing feels more urgent than this, but still… Maybe it’s just a phase i have to go through, i don’t know. It takes time to become a good “teacher”, to integrate all the pieces into a complete whole, and sometimes i lose patience, not acknowledging the necessity of the deepening process, of further meditation. To me this is serious business, and it involves a lot of responsibility, even if there is nobody around to correct me.
In retrospect, i guess a somewhat extraordinary combination of events and DNA has brought me to where i am now. I’ll try to recapitulate in a nutshell.
Not long after i went to university i started to discover the problems of adult life, on many scales, and somehow my inward rebellion and anger pushed me further to get to “truth”, what’s really real.
My intelligence is above average, and i have always felt somewhat an outsider, partly due to that i suppose. To make things worse, the repeated rejections by a number of girls made loneliness my main course for many years. This resulted in two booklets full angry, dark poems and prose, dissecting my own faults and pains and desires and the hypocrisy of the surrounding world. Maybe i got caught in a self-fulfilling reality from time to time, but the alienation was not really a choice to my knowing. Also, the realization that i had lost nearly all interest in my studies (IT), the effects of my weak digestive system and not having any worthwhile perspectives made my frustration rise sky high. Probably that has been a blessing in disguise, as i did not want to settle for anything less than the truth, and since my needs were never met, the fire of discontent kept burning strongly. I stayed off booze and other drugs, i did consume a lot of sugar,  TV (praise is due to Seinfeld) and porn. Maybe i would have been diagnosed as “depressed”, i’ll never know, i refused to fall back into some sort of compromise, of being distracted from all the issues that were bothering me. I continued to do my thing, i wrote, i drew, i made music, got onstage a few times, i met people, …, i got my degree, i moved on,  i pushed my limits and undid a lot of my inhibitions, but the blues stayed with me. And i watched it, watching myself and the world vigorously.
After these 4 or 5 years of wanting to get rid of my loneliness, a whole lot of questioning in all directions, trying to bring myself to complete integrity, reading some insightful texts (including J.K. and Bohm of course, but no traditional “spiritual” literature), and a short adventure at art college, i finally started to cut through the whole of my confusion and eventually everything changed forever at one point: gone were the artistic aspirations and gone were the deepest pains of loneliness. I was very skeptical at the time, brushing it off as a temporary thing that had happened. I somehow knew it was wrong to interpret in any way. It was as if i no longer consciously clung to anything, and gone were all inner conflicts and worries (in retrospect, i should say most of them). It felt so amazing, too good to be true, that i didn’t even write it down in my journal. I only proclaimed to my closest friends that i literally knew that i “would never be depressed again”. Things progressed further a year or two afterward and it was only then that i realized the significance of what had changed in me. My life would never be the same again. (see FAQ for a little more info)

This brings me back to the difficulty of what i am trying to say.  I don’t know how much it takes for someone else to get to the same point, should they want to go there. On one hand, during those years i had the luxury few people have: a whole lot of solitude and time to think (i wasted most of the time though), but on the other hand, it is really a matter of not wasting time, of asking the right questions and seeing a lot of harmful patterns. I don’t think it has much to do with IQ or intellectual capacity, on the contrary. The smarter you are, the better your mind is at fooling yourself, at escaping in endless analysis and hiding behind tons of old and incoming knowledge. In the end, to get to the root of your suffering is somewhat a “battle” against yourself, against your wrong ways of thinking and seeing.
I have been my own teacher more or less throughout, and perhaps that is the safest way, to not lean on somebody else’s authority and to question everything, with the danger of getting totally lost of course. Maybe it would have helped if i had more “illusion cutting tools” at my disposal, it’s a tricky affair. Maybe now there is your potential “advantage” of me helping you cut away some of the confusion that still exists and is very much alive, but i could also involuntarily add to your confusion. Tricky indeed.

The whole “E” thing is not so perfect or lovely as most people fantasize it to be. I would never want to go back to my days of blindness, that’s for sure, but  it is not so easy to position myself in society, for example. If i can’t get to share my insights – not the words, but the underlying truth – what is their meaning, what’s the use? Meaning only has real meaning when it is shared among a group of people, or am i missing something here? This is a serious question i am meditating over.
And in the end, i am still the outsider, maybe more than ever before, who still moves in solitude most of the time, and who still gets lonely every now and then. It is strange, the distance between me and people has never been further and it has never been closer.
I don’t buy the permanent happy buddha selfless doubtless mind state crap. It is all too easy to let all your feelings go, to ignore the facts and adhere to some self-aggrandizing belief.  Facts remain facts, flesh and blood is flesh and blood.  There is always some meaning to be found behind personal unease or worry, even in a messed up society. Oh well… We’ll see where it takes us. The doing is the seeing, to paraphrase an old friend i have never met.

Whether or not Bohm went beyond the “point of no return” does not matter, really. He had a very clear view on what is fundamentally going wrong with the mainstream way of thinking and acting. Rumor goes that K. got tired of Bohm because he did not “get it” and did not see through the whole thing, but from my point of view that is not essential. He was looking and moving in the right direction, and that is already a huge step to take, considering the immense outward and inward pressure not to do so.

Nowadays a lot of people are saying that human consciousness is changing at last. I have my doubts about that. It is not because we have become more aware of our environmental problems that we have suddenly turned or will turn to the root cause: the dangerous  inconsistencies and blind reflexes in human thought. The danger of constantly living, thinking and communicating in images and not being aware of this and the underlying realities and truth.
As long as collective thought, which is corrupted in so many ways, weighs so heavily on all facets of our daily lives, and as long as there are not enough sincere voices that point out the incoherence, without getting into fluffy spiritual nonsense and beliefs, the chances of people getting free is around zero to none.

The people who are familiar with the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti clearly see a lot of similarities between his and mine, and that is not a coincidence.
The fact: reading and listening to J. Krishnamurti’s words helped me a great deal in getting insight into my own life and the world as it is, despite some of his outdated and downright wrong views.

Frankly, most of Krishnamurti’s discourses still stand today and i have no intention of repeating, recuperating or reinterpreting them, but there is still a lot to dig deeper into, to clarify, and to reformulate in the context of today’s affairs. Sometimes i think we’re not far from “Krishnamurtism” being established by the people who continue to preserve and republish his teachings all over the world. I find it very disturbing and kind of sad that apparently nobody set forth his work like i am doing. Either nobody bothered to get dirty and/or managed to plow through the confusion or maybe i am just plain crazy to put my limited time and energy into the furthering of his meditations.

My hesitation to mention his name has to do with keeping my own unnoteworthy public image “clean” and this icon creating business around his figure, which he hated for sure. For this reason, i am not putting up clear pictures of the man, they only distract. If you really want to know more about him, search online for transcripts, or check YouTube, there is a lot of footage available.

To put things a little more in perspective, on my own path to insight, there were three authors that stood out for me: Henry Rollins (dead honest acceptance of one’s darkest thoughts), Friedrich Nietzsche (the killing of God and the will to move beyond) and, last but not least, Jiddu Krishnamurti (the anti-belief anti-authority anti-guru who traveled the world, out to incite a radical psychological transformation in anybody who cared to listen). Also worth mentioning: any dissonant voice i encountered that had some meaningful, enlightening things to say has contributed to my world view, and eventually my non-world view*, the embracing of emptiness. Certain comedians, scientists, artists and their works, crazy politicians, …, anybody touching upon something profound can be of “use”. Every once in a while they get some media attention, and as an effect, some of the truth seeps through occasionally, which can be very therapeutic in my opinion.

Still, no one can touch the energy and plain truthfulness of Krishnamurti’s words. His harshness and intensity discomforts a lot of people, but that’s what i like about him and what fired me up, and i am quite positive that there are no “soft” paths to truth.
Anyway, i shall continue by pointing out the main differences between K’s teachings and mine, to explain what i deem is necessary now and why i continue doing this ontoscopy written meditation thing.

1) K’s hypocrisy and personal biases
Due to his personal background, the severe Theosophical indoctrination with a lot of unnatural circumstances and childhood traumas, Krishnamurti kept a few bizarre idiosyncrasies, despite his renouncement of his past.
He fervently disliked any kind of authority but at the same time he felt absolutely infallible during a lot of his conversations, as if he was the only one who saw or had touched truth.
He considered himself an extraordinary being, which he was of course in several aspects, but he took it very far, seeing himself as the “World Teacher”, fortified by his entourage of course, and this created a large gap between him and the rest of the world, and it undermines many of his statements. Offstage he could also be quite different than who he insinuated to be in public, which of course does not tear down the whole of his discourses, but it makes one seriously doubt and wonder.
There is no way of comparing. My own upbringing was fairly calm, no traumas, no breathtaking stories. An atheist education, some artistic aspirations, a skeptical mind that tried to think its way through the trenches of solitude and alienation, and most of that has been left behind for good. There will still be unconscious biases in my thinking, and i strongly encourage you to point them out whenever possible.
There is nothing special about me. I only stand out in this day and age because the majority of mankind is caught in the illusions they lock themselves and others into. Anyone who is serious, self-critical and willing to put time, patience and effort into it can become much more aware and, with a little bit of luck, (s)he can move beyond psychological suffering. I still have some fucked up ways, i am far from a saint, but that is not the point. Laying bare the senselessness and the insanity makes one move away from it, but no one is absolutely free from aggression or illusion in an aggressive and illusion-fueled world. It’s up to us to get out of the trap, on all levels, not only psychologically (our messed up consciousness remains of course the root cause of most worldly misery).

2) Benevolent advances in psychology and neurology
One cannot deny some of the helpful insights psychology and neurology have given us. Since Freud, a lot has changed, some theories and methods have become much more realistic and successful. While it is still true that psychologists and psychotherapists can do a lot of harm, primarily because they themselves are still insane and most of them try to conform their patients to society’s insanity according to the rules they have learned, some have done some very important work. K failed to acknowledge this, or he trivialized it.
Ironically, he put a lot of emphasis on knowing and observing the self, which sounds a lot like cognitive therapy, and nowadays even mindfulness is seriously studied as a means to treat anxiety and other psychological dysfunctions. This can only be encouraged. Science alone is not the way to paradise, but it can prove very useful.
I am not too fond of most psychotherapists either, but there are exceptions, perhaps many more than i know of.

3) Difference in tone
I do not like to sound condescending. I do have a similar hard and dry approach with an occasional bit of humor, but i try to answer in more concrete terms instead of beating around the bush like Krishnamurti sometimes did. This is not always possible however, and i know a lot of people criticize K and other mystics for staying too vague and answering back with questions, but in many cases, there is no other way. There are no real solutions to our psychological problems, it is mainly a matter of asking the right questions and digging deeply into them, of seeing the intricacies of the whole for ourselves.

4) Subtle and larger differences in interpreting things
A big problem with most mystics, even the most sincere, is their interpretation of everything they have experienced and the projection they make out of their personal path to reach the end of suffering. Notions of existing religions may slip in, some things may get overlooked or considered unimportant, they may still be caught deeply into complex self-delusions, …
Krishnamurti is probably one of the most “clean” in this respect, being very radical and suspicious of any illusion, but he had his flaws too. I’ll give you an example.
K largely proposed his transformation of the mind as an all-or-nothing, immediate transition, and in my view this is true to some extent, though it can go other ways and it most definitely does not end there. Things are not as simple as he frequently put forward. Insights can come over time, piece by piece, extraordinary states may be experienced, things can be wrongly interpreted and new illusions may get installed inside your mind, etc etc. Constant awareness, wakefulness, is the key, which he relentlessly stressed, and i second him on that totally, but he shouldn’t have oversimplified and only regard the absolute, as some permanent state. The way i see it enlightenment is a movement, an ongoing process, of both the individual and the group, reflected in the interactions, which is the only indicator of value.
More of this and other nuances i will nail down later.

5) The age and time difference
Quite naturally, as a 29 year old, it is impossible to yet have grasped all of the depth the K-man plunged into during over 70 years or so. He commented on the 20st century, now we’re in the 21st. Not that a whole lot has changed fundamentally, but language and culture evolve, so the commentaries need to be updated as well, to keep them vibrant and relevant. Furthermore, i still have other activities besides this destroying of the false and the discovery of meaning. Maybe it will become more prominent in the years ahead, idunno, it depends.
(For those who wish to know, i have no idea where my life is going at the moment. I have great doubts about getting into the spotlight, but probably i will not have a choice. As long is can control the integrity of what i am doing and trying to say, it should be possible to work some things out.)
I still read some of Krishnamurti’s thoughts from time to time, to keep me sharp and to inspire me (just like he secretly read Buddha).
You could call me a “student” or “pupil” of, but certainly not a follower, and i am definitely much more a student of life and the mind than anything else. I regularly had to “kill” Krishnamurti to move further inside my mind.
I advise you to do the same with my words. It is an absolute necessity to move beyond them, to become free of them and face the essential questions with a clear mind.

6) Openness
K was completely opposed to referring to other teachings. I mostly prefer to do the same, but, on the other hand, it narrows down the dialogue, as if it all has to come from one man initially. In the end, the reader, who most likely consults other literature, always has the last word, and the goal is to get as wide and open as possible, despite all the unclarities, contradictions and half truths inside any form of communication. Of course, it is much easier to track down the mistakes of one musician playing solo than those of a full orchestra.
The last few years i have been putting a lot of time and effort in integrating insights from other fields into my global understanding, my teachings, which should become apparent soon, without going into complex, intellectual talk. To understand the self one does not need to have had a long education or have read a lot of books. Most intellectuals just get better at deceiving themselves by clinging to all sorts of philosophies and complex theories.
Maximum simplicity and depth are my constant concern, and i still have a lot of work to do in that direction.

There are trustworthy, valuable sources of wisdom out and in there.
In recent years i have read some very truthful and insightful texts by Osho for example (yes, he did some very nasty things, he lied a lot, but the man deserves some credit for his intelligence and his poetic and playful views), by Gautama Buddha, a couple of Zen masters (the Hsin Hsin Ming is a gem, also the 2 booklets by Shunryu Suzuki), the ancient Taoists like Lieh Tzu and Chuang Tzu, the challenging views of quantum physicist David Bohm, contemporary voices such as Charles Tart, Shinzen Young,…
You can also go out in nature, watch how life unfolds, outside and inside yourself. If you observe closely and without judgment, you will learn tremendously.

That’s about it. More will probably come up as i move further, and my approach will probably change in many ways in the years to come, we’ll see.
I hope i got my point across.
As always, feel free to ask questions.
This is mostly about you, about us, not about me or a dead man called Krishnamurti.

(*: Sorry for these recurring paradoxes. This is no deliberate mumbo jumbo or esoteric guru wordplay, they are simply necessary to go beyond the known, to address the limitations and pitfalls of language. Once you see, you’ll understand.)

For a long period of time, man was forced to live a life of survival, of hunger and battle against nature’s forces. In such circumstances of scarcity and uncertainty it is only logical that there is a recurring psychological state of conflict and fear, of personal struggle (which was probably many times more wholesome than the plentitude of wars in recent times).
Fortunately nowadays, in many places around the world there is enough food and resources, and enough time and leeway to lead a simple yet comfortable life, without having to abandon society as was usual in previous eras, e.g. by joining a religious community. However, very few men and women make use of this serious advantage that our ancestors never had. Well, at least they never had it in this magnitude. There is enough information available to redirect our lives towards a more wholesome movement, much more in tune with nature, but it gets hidden and distorted by all the communication that is largely based on economic and political interests, and by accidental misconceptions and deliberate lies spread by confused individuals.
Opportunism and greed, two of ignorance’s best friends, are very strong forces.

Before we actually realize what we are doing in and on this world, we lock ourselves in by making a career, by having to support children, by going for the big house, the car, the frequent travels and other luxury stuff or some similar scenario. The inner gets shielded from the outer and this separation takes place almost automatically, unconsciously, because it gets ingrained in all of us, generation after generation. And exactly this self-deception of being separate, of being involved only to some degree, of conceiving problems outside of ourselves and coming up with partial solutions perpetuates (wo)man’s greatest mistake: that thinking alone will one day save us. Or god. Or some ideology. We do not see that it is all division in one way or another, that these man-made images of non-actual facts are endless sources of conflict.
Children are extensively prepared to follow the dividing route of “well fare and prosperity”, of serving society and acquiring money and recognition by achieving, by competing and deceiving. But where are the winners? The ones who have the most money? The ones who are lucky not to get sick? The ones who went up the ladder and got to pimp the system? Or the ones who fell off and turned out to abuse the system?
To begin with, on a practical level, the middle class have the ability to change the outer, practical course of the world, e.g. they can make wise ecological, political and economic choices, but only to some extent of course. Money and desire rule most minds still, and more than ever.
Thus, cynicism, hopelessness and doubt rise as well, and the actual roots of non-change – psychological fear and desire – remain hidden even deeper.

Deep, wholesome change is rendered impossible by our primitive ways of living and thinking. People either wait for miracles to happen, for their gods to intervene, for their religious leaders to preach peace and to incite wars, for their politicians and scientists to come up with all-in-one end solutions that do not exist, or they “actively” join some political or ideological party, which comes down to the same thing: responsibility is handed out to the “ones in power”, conflict becomes inevitable, and everyone defends his or her position, so there is hardly any movement at all, only a switching of chess pieces and a lot of senseless discussion. Endless debating primarily based on the struggle for power and money, which goes on anywhere in this sick world.
How few minds have the courage, seriousness and perseverance to truly stand alone and become a movement of their own! Organizations are not evil per se, but from the moment personal views get lost for the sake of preserving static ideas (= old, outdated images), the troubles start. Moreover, as long as you have confused dividuals you’ll have confused organizations, no matter what. This we refuse to see.

Our psyche is embedded in everything that surrounds us in society. The world is a reflection of how we think and act. It is not a pretty sight, and it is not getting any better, certainly not from a health point of view. Wholesome, radical change is forever postponed, but it can only happen here and now. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. 99% of the energy gets lost in thinking and talking about it, and everything, including our personal misery, is approached from a political point of view, meaning we tell ourselves that there are compromises to be made. But we must realize that any compromise to the old way of thinking results in the same way of thinking. It may have a slightly different taste, but it is not change. And so the suffering continues.

Real radical change starts inside ourselves, by realizing the flaws in our thinking, by seeing through the illusions, including the illusions of change. There is absolutely little to no use in trying to change the world when you stay the same inside, switching from one creed or ideology to another. It will only create more conflict and confusion, so that humanity shall forever remain at psychological square one. Sometimes you get the impression that things are changing because the outward is rearranged a little, that’s all. If you can’t change your self, let go of your own fixed ideas, how will you ever change the world without creating more conflict? The image of a psychologist seeking therapy springs to mind. Experts remain clueless themselves. The blind leading the blind. This is how the world works.

It is so easy to become cynical. Even the people that get multiple opportunities to radically change the practical sides of their lives for the better often refuse to go there, out of fear, addicted to their debilitating, unwholesome habits. It is easier to go on complaining and subsequently turn on the television than to actually undertake personal actions and venture into the unknown. Life, relationships, society, the economy, …, in the end, everything is taken for granted. As if the world will turn out differently by itself, as if there are some magical pills that will cure all depression and disease, as if all systems will become more humane and sane by themselves. Eventually nature will restore itself, that is for sure. The question is: will the “homo sapiens” still be part of it?

Ask yourself: do we really need to become seriously ill, lose a loved one, have our entire society collapse, watch nature destroy everything that we constructed with our limitless arrogance and stupidity before we start making healthy changes, before we see what life is really about? Why don’t we face life and death in all openness? Is it not possible to be serious about all this just by looking at how we live, how we think and act and relate? Is it?

The ability to live intelligently, harmoniously, to be open to change, to deeply reflect and communicate is a quality with which most of us are born. It is the psychological mess and its practical consequences that we hold so dearly that destroys this extraordinary capacity of our species.
From the day you are born till the day you die you are being confronted with higher or lesser degrees of insanity, in your family, out on the streets, at work, in the media, wherever you go.
So, is there a way out? Is there a possibility of breaking away, of moving into a more sensible direction? How can there be clarity when there is so much confusion all around?

Insight needs space and fearlessness to come about.

As long as we silently agree to uphold the illusion that we want to change but can’t, that a lot of time is needed to see things as they actually are, as long as we depend on others to discover the meaning of life, and as long as we don’t take our own lives and that of our fellow (wo)men seriously, intelligence will never prosper and nothing will ever change.

(note to self: my writing needs more clarity, more focus)

No long paragraphs this time, only an elaborate diagram with which i have tried to point out the core of my observations. It should explain the content and movement of consciousness, of the omni-present way of thinking and acting in this world. Also, i tried to indicate the “tools” to see through illusion and confusion. Simply click on the image for a full-size view. Any questions, criticisms or remarks are very much appreciated. Post a comment below, send me an e-mail, attack me on facebook, whatever. This is about dialogue, not some holy gospel truth.

Some notes:
1) I used several colors in this diagram for clarity and ease of reading. Maybe i should have stuck to black and white to avoid unnecessary biases in the interpretations of the colors.
2) Since i used a 2-D plane, it is impossible to truly convey the interrelatedness of all things. I can only hope i managed to reveal the most direct relations between arbitrary concepts of ongoing processes inside our minds.
3) This diagram has nothing to do with communism or any other ideology (or religion). I explicitly show the inherent problem of property as a static state of mind that is unwholesome and downright destructive for mankind and “our” planet. Property of goods has its proper function in society, but in the hands of an attached mind, it gets problematic very quickly.
4) The future is unknown, but as long as we stick to the same old patterns, it will only be a variation of the past, and not a radical change. The only future is now.
5) The security/permanence most of us long for is of course non-existent, anywhere, anytime.
6) A translation in Dutch is on its way.
7) ASC’s = altered states of consciousness, e.g. meditative or drug-induced states.

Bring on the feedback!