I Already Know
by Dennis Guthrie
November 6, 2011
Often in our lives we say “I know”, “yeah I know”, but what do we really know? What can be known? What is knowledge? We assume we know so much and anything that we don't know we'll find out sometime later on. It seems that the knowledge we “have” can always be added to, built up, expounded on. Surely that is true as far as technology goes. This implies a step by step process that never ends. If, on the other hand, I say “I know that person is no good, mean, thoughtless”, then that knowledge I “have” acts, affecting the eyes, the ears, the whole body. That knowledge about another, which is a memory I've made based on the knowledge I think I have acts. I see that person as cruel, I hear them as mean. It works the same way for a cheerful, helpful, caring person. My limited knowledge, which is the past, judges, seeing and hearing the judgment as my reality.
Let's take the opposite. Let's say I don't know anything. People often give you their opinion of a person whom you've never met but are about to, or just met and will be working with them, on and on. So their opinion or judgment becomes part of your knowledge affecting the way you look at them. You can say, “I wouldn't listen to anyone else's opinion, I would make up my own mind.” I think that statement would need fully examined But at any rate that statement is also your knowledge and you've already listened and translated the impression of say one co-worker about another. So it becomes your knowledge regardless of what you say that it doesn't.
I think the most dangerous lines of thought would be “I already know” and we'd be better off in most situations by walking the line of “I don't know a thing”. Not knowing implies a certain freedom from the past. Is it possible to act at all without memory? Would that be action at all? You may have a snap answer to these questions, but if we say, perhaps honestly, “I really have no idea” then what happens? When we ask each other what our names and how we are doing daily, there is quick reflexive answer. “How are you?”, “I am fine”, or “I am having a good day” on and on or even “I am tired”. When you say you're tired the other person reacts in a somewhat predictable way, asking why, perhaps having some kind of sympathy. What happens when you say “I don't know how I am doing”? The conversation, the atmosphere of the whole conversation changes, a different opening.
The idea of being tired or happy or excited or anything makes us that way. The knowledge of what it is like to be those things are the same. If we did not every have the knowledge of being upset or tired we would not know how to “properly” behave in that way. Identifying myself as the idea or the concept of Dennis I can interact with other concepts that “I know already”. I can't have any relationship with anything “I” don't know. Without the knowledge passed on to me about being tired or anything else, which is an idea, the the idea of Dennis could have no relationship with it. Like disliking it or doing something about it, like sleeping.
We all take for granted we know so much, but what we know like a reflex are the concepts we've all excepted from the past. Like a tradition. So anything we say, for example, “I hate shopping” is a reflex or condition that we know how to act out. We who have accepted that idea know how to act it out. Feeling anxious about shopping and try then to get out of it, complaining about it. So I am a concept having a relationship with that concept which I have accepted as a real thing. So words build the concept and affect the whole body in a quick reflexive way. Perhaps by asking ourselves impossible questions or ones that up until now we would call nonsensical this all too quick reflex could loosen it's hold a little. Basically I think if it is seen that we all are acting so quickly from memory. And that in that looking it frees us up to then not act on it and perhaps act more freely more fully. We don't have to be bound by our own memory or be so firm on “what I know”. This may just be another idea too, another concept. I don't know.
A Thought Experiment
by Dennis Guthrie
September 17, 2011
Please take a minute and get yourself ready for a little thought experiment today. Clear your mind of your troubles for a couple of minutes and explore this thing with me. Perhaps you can think up some thought experiments that you could share with othersl. Einstein used thought experiments accepting light speed as a constant, because all the data showed it to be true, while everyone else was not accepting any change from the old, ordinary way of looking. Okay, now that we are relaxed and set and have no distractions at the moment with a calm quiet mind we can begin.
Imagine a calendar at your house, or a friends, or parents place, work, anywhere. You are standing in front of it or near it in a room you are familiar with. Picture that. Now see that it says 2011 somewhere on it, and you come along and wipe it off and write 2038 instead. You say “yeah it is 2038.” Your wife or husband or brother or co-worker comes along and agrees with you, “yep it's 2038.” Everyone around you, your family, your co-workers say that it is in fact 2038, nothing else has changed. Everyone in your state agrees to the same. Everyone in the world agrees too, it is 2038. We all skip 27 years like that!
Go into that deeply, nothing else has changed, except all of us agreeing that it's not 2011, we all agree it's 2038 instead and go on about our business. What is that state of the mind that goes deeply into this? It has seen the illusion of time in that way hasn't it? Has this mind given up the constant urgency of that movement to the future? Have petty fantasies, desires, ambitions subsided for the moment?
Take a good look around you and at the passing car and know it is 2038, everyone says so. Or better yet peer out the window across the street and look knowing it is 5047. Everyone agrees, everyone knows. What takes place?
What are human beings keeping track of? It's obvious that the Earth has gone around the Sun many more times than 2011. Adding AD years doesn't change things. Keeping track of records and years and differences is seemingly more important to us than living now. Why?
Progress?
by Dennis Guthrie
August 20, 2011
I think if we go into the whole concept of progress clearly and rationally together we may find something so interesting so eye opening that it will no doubt change our lives completely. We generally use this word to mean a forward movement of improvement. I shudder to add a movement toward perfection. Simply put, better through time. If we are able to look with clear eyes and open minds we will see, I believe, a huge and costly assumption that we are making continually.
Lets look at two things at the moment. Imagine we are examining the outside world and the inside world. We can see progress outside as improvements in technology. A building can become safer through time for human beings. That is a progress of a kind. We'll use a few more examples here. Imagine a series of bridges, each one slightly better than the last. Sturdier, more flexible, cheaper, can span a greater distance, etc. So we can picture a thousand bridges in a row, each better or improved in some way than the last. We can grab any one of those bridge and improve it. If you go into it a little you'll see that this process of step by step improvement implies and endless process. As soon as a new building goes up and is finished, we can improve it. This gradual progress in the field of technology is what we have been doing for ages and ages. It actually works there in that field, you can see it with your eyes.
I think at this point is crucial to see that “progress” then is a concept for human beings only. We can make buildings safer, stronger, more energy efficient and so on. Because we say it is safer for us, it is better. And this process of taking what we know and adding to it is endless. We can always make a better bridge and we will never make the perfect bridge, or one that never needs to be upgraded in any way. That is so important to see, that we can always improve on our last improvement, outwardly in technology. This is endless. If we look again at our line of a thousand bridges and make it a million and pick any one of them at random we would be completely lost as to where we were in that whole field of progress.
We should take that idea and run with it and look at another important example. Lets picture a disorganized pile of red bricks. They are just scattered on the ground everywhere and you have a comfortable chair about 30 yards away. It's a beautiful day, nature is all around you. You sit and watch, your eyes are watching. Someone comes along and begins to stack these bricks one by one into a square style stack. You watch and see that this action, or movement actually takes time. Also you put together that this movement is physically demanding, it takes struggle. So we had a mess of scattered bricks and now with effort and time we have a organized stack of them. It must be clear that ourwardly the bricks and the person moving them are different. You have watched the whole affair with your eyes and ears and brain. The mistake comes when we say that the tidy stack is BETTER than the messy one. It may be more useful for human beings, but that is all. A full grown cat is not better than a kitten simply because it's older. A maple tree is not better than another simply because it is taller. To say that September is better than August because it is newer is a huge mistake.
So I think we should question some things. We have made advances in medicine for sure, but killing millions of people with bombs or gases or germs over killing one or two with a bow and arrow. Is that progress? I say it's not. There has only been progress in technology.
So we looked at some outward examples. Lets turn to the inner stuff. It is extremely important to see this idea of progress and put it in it's right place and keep it in the limited field of technology only. Inwardly if we are honest, we are all building images of ourselves. I am this kind of person, or not that kind of person. I have an image of myself as an American, a writer, a good friend, a nice person and on and on. I have so many images of myself, and the image of myself. And we all try and become a better person, we try to make progress there too. I think this is the biggest problem in the world. The idea that I am not so good a person as I want to be and give me 6 months and I'll be better. In the mean time I won't be. So I have an image of myself as fearful person and I'll work to not be that way and this requires time and effort. I have an image of myself as a friendly person and someone comes along and says I am cruel and mean and I get hurt. My image gets hurt. So I need a new image, an image that cannot be hurt in that way. As I am making or building this new image I suffer physically. Just like the bridges, we have a line of a thousand images of myself each slightly “better” than the last. This process is exactly the same, it is endless. That movement only really exists outwarldy. There is no image I cam make of myself that is perfect, that is unable to be hurt or unable to be flattered which is the same thing. So if I have a line of a million images and grab any one of them it always could seem like the first or the beginning one and I begin to improve it. The very nature of this process means never ending, forever. Outwardly the brick and the person "improving" them were different, but inwardly the image that needs changed and the thing doing the "improving" are exactly the same thing. The realization of this impossiblity must hit home rationally and intellectually and deeper still into the bones.
One more quick example here. Lets say I walking to the store. It actually takes time to walk from my house, down the sidewalk to the store. It is a critical error to assume that because I have a goal in mind of getting to the store that the halfway point is better than the starting point. 2011 isn't “better” than 1980 because we are progressing somewhere. Only the clothing, the technology has changed. That's improvement of a limited kind, a view. A rowboat becomes an aircraft carrier.
At this point we must be extremely clear. This is the most important thing for us to see. If we understand what is going on, if we can see it this will no doubt change our lives completely. So this movement is actually only taking place outside. It is not really going on inside the head. There is this movement and it is only taking place outside in the field of technology. If you use your eyes and look around you you'll see it. The Earth is going around the sun. It is in a certain position now, August, in October it will different. The universe won't see that difference as progress in any way. One day the sun will explode and the solar system we live in we'll be gone. Again, the universe won't see this as progress or regress at all, it's simply part of this movement, which is free of time. If you can see that this movement is just going. If we can see that the endless process of image building and modifying them is the cause of all our worries and anxiety, all our psychological stresses but that that movement is only taking place outwardly in technology and not actually in our heads. It's not two movements one inside, one outside, only the movement outwardly that the mind has adapted inwardly. It really isn't there. If everyone says that movement is inside as well and a person comes along and says no that movement isn't actually taking place inside, only outside, it's a fact it's only an outward movment, does that have any impact at all on anyone? It must have! If you go deeply into this fact, you'll be free yourself from the concept of inward time completely. Time has only crippled the brain and mankind, and it isn't even real. Freeing yourself of time is the same thing as eliminating the fear of death in your life, they are the same thing. If I am speaking clearly this frees up the mind and brain to actually look at what is going on, what is actually taking place. This observing is realling being alive. This understanding frees you up from the authority of all others inwardly as well as your own thoughts having authority. Dead images trying to improve themselves over and over and over has no meaning at all. The being free from that may have. The idea of progress through time is just that an idea. There is just a movement going on, that's all.
Something
I have wanted to try and write in a different style about what I think is wonderful and beautiful in science and contemplative thinking. I have read very few poems and have written none. I do not know if it is structurally correct or if it is any good. I had a good time writing it.
Wounding the Innocence
By Aaron Guthrie
03/04/2011
How thought is taking on endless measure,
In endless division thought draws its treasure,
Divining man in abstract universe,
Action not taken from the seeing first.
Memory seeking endless pleasured ease,
Through chaotic patterns expanding needs,
Repeating and wanton with desire,
Becoming something, should reach much higher.
Acting out detachment from wholly facts,
Left untended for an insensible past,
Projecting knowledge in prospect,
Carelessly failing now the five respects.
Images filtering man against world,
Wound innocence, never to sense the world.