The Book of Yourself Newsletter
Issue 46: September 2025
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The state of confusion and upheaval in the international as well as local political and social scene seems rather challenging, when not unprecedented. Looking back at history, perhaps there was never a truly peaceful time in the world, so we should not be surprised. Besides, the scholars keep reminding us that history is not linear but cyclical, that cultures and civilizations rise, flourish and fall just like the sun rises, reaches its zenith and sets. According to some, modern western civilization entered the stage of decline a while back and it is currently facing its gathering twilight. The degree of chaos and moral decay that we are currently experiencing and the inept way the ruling classes are dealing with it – they are the embodiment of that very decay – would seem to support such a view. So good old Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee might feel vindicated in their theoretical understanding of the recurrent organic patterns that have marked the birth, growth and demise of civilizations. However, religion, although historically bound to the same fate, has held up the possibility of freedom from this cycle, essentially attributing it to the human propensity to approach all things in life from the perspective of the me and the mine. In which case, the ending of this attitude might give us a chance to effect a peaceful transition to a new culture instead of having to endure the usual tragic and violent collapse, for at the heart of it lies a failure of intelligence and the corresponding crisis in values.
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“How did this misery come about, this suffering, not only inwardly but outwardly, this fear and expectation of war, the third world war that is breaking out? What is the cause of it? Surely it indicates the collapse of all moral, spiritual values, and the glorification of all sensual values, of the value of things made by the hand or by the mind. What happens when we have no other values except the value of the things of the senses, the value of the products of the mind, of the hand or of the machine? The more significance we give to the sensual value of things, the greater the confusion, is it not? Again, this is not my theory. You do not have to quote books to find out that your values, your riches, your economic and social existence are based on things made by the hand or by the mind. So we live and function and have our being steeped in sensual values, which means that things, the things of the mind, the things of the hand and of the machine, have become important; and when things become important, belief becomes predominantly significant – which is exactly what is happening in the world, is it not?”
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The First and Last Freedom, pp. 23-24
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That fear and expectation of the third world war has not gone away. On the contrary, given the willingness of every major and minor power to engage in war, the chances of it breaking out are intensified daily by the current state of tacit and open conflict. K attributes the cause of this misery and fearful expectation to the collapse of moral or spiritual values and the glorification of sensual or sensory ones made manifest in the supreme importance humanity is giving to things made by the hand, the machine or the mind. He sees the source of confusion in this materialist bent, including a panoply of beliefs, which he places on the same sensory level of the whole gamut of gadgets and consumer goods. Things have value as the means to satisfy our natural needs, but they acquire an added and dangerous value through possession.
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“How we want to possess the coconut, the woman, and the heavens! We want to monopolize, and things seem to acquire greater value through possession. When we say, ‘It is mine’, the picture seems to become more beautiful, more worthwhile; it seems to acquire greater delicacy, greater depth and fullness. There is a strange quality of violence in possession. The moment one says, ‘It is mine’, it becomes a thing to be cared for, defended, and in this very act there is a resistance which breeds violence. Violence is ever seeking success; violence is self-fulfillment. To succeed is always to fail. Arrival is death and traveling is eternal. To gain, to be victorious in this world, is to lose life. How eagerly we pursue an end! But the end is everlasting, and so is the conflict of its pursuit. Conflict is constant overcoming, and what is conquered has to be conquered again and again. The victor is ever in fear, and possession is his darkness. The defeated, craving victory, loses what is gained, and so he is as the victor. To have the bowl empty is to have life that is deathless.”
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Commentaries on Living, Second Series, pp. 52-53
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There is a lot in this paragraph. We are driven by the desire to possess. The possession of whatever it is, be it a person, a house, a car, a painting or a coconut gives the object a greater meaning and worth. But in this very possession there is a quality of violence, as it involves the ownership and consequent protection and defense of the property. This violence of possession is part of the search for self-fulfillment and success. So the more it succeeds, the more it fails, for it is still violence. Such victory and gain are therefore deadly. The pursuit of these ends is actually endless and there is constant conflict in overcoming the impossibility of arriving at a final achievement. What is conquered has to be conquered again and again because it is a form of violence that invites resistance. So the victor in the defense of possession lives in the darkness of fearing to lose it. And those who lose out are as the victors, for they too seek to achieve and conquer. So from K’s perspective the only way out of this recurrent misery is to have the bowl empty, in which, in the absence of deadly possessiveness, there is deathless life. So possession is not just a matter of having and not having, of success and failure, but of life and death.
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“We are the things we possess; we are that to which we are attached. Attachment has no nobility. Attachment to knowledge is not different from any other gratifying addiction. Attachment is self-absorption, whether at the lowest or at the highest level. Attachment is self-deception, it is an escape from the hollowness of the self. The things to which we are attached – property, people, ideas – become all-important, for without the many things which fill its emptiness, the self is not. The fear of not being makes for possession; and fear breeds illusion, the bondage to conclusions. Conclusions, material or ideational, prevent the fruition of intelligence, the freedom in which alone reality can come into being; and without this freedom, cunning is taken for intelligence. The ways of cunning are always complex and destructive. It is this self-protective cunning that makes for attachment; and when attachment causes pain, it is this same cunning that seeks detachment and finds pleasure in the pride and vanity of renunciation. The understanding of the ways of cunning, the ways of the self, is the beginning of intelligence.”
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Commentaries on Living, First Series, pg. 113
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Psychologically, we are our possessions, our attachments, whether these be to things, to knowledge or, as K puts it, to any other gratifying addiction, such as the universal concern with money and power. They are forms of self-absorption because the property, people or ideas we are attached to are expressions of our self-concern. K does not hesitate to say that attachment is self-deception because it is an escape from the hollowness of the self, an attempt to fill its emptiness. Without such attachments, the self is not. So the self is its attachments; or, in other words, without the mine there is no me. K traces the drive to possess to the fear of not being, which breeds the illusion of attachment and the bondage to conclusions and beliefs, which prevent the quality of intelligence and freedom in which alone what K calls ‘reality’ can come into being. Without this freedom and intelligence, the cunning self pursues attachment and then escapes from its pain by seeking pleasure in the pride and vanity of renunciation. So attachment and renunciation are the two sides of the same coin. Understanding the ways of the possessive self is the intelligence that empties the bowl of attachment, opening the way to the benediction of inward poverty.
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“Poverty is one of those strange things; the various religions throughout the world have preached poverty – poverty, chastity, and so on. The poverty of the monk who assumes a robe, changes his name, enters into a cell, picks up the Bible, reads that everlastingly – he’s said to be poor. The same is done in different ways in the East, to have one loincloth, one robe, one meal a day – and we all respect such poverty. But those people who have assumed the robe of poverty are still rich with the things of society, inwardly, psychologically, because they are still seeking position, prestige; they belong to the category of the religious type and that type is one of the divisions of the culture of society. That is not poverty – poverty is to be completely free of society, though you may have a few clothes, have a few meals. Poverty becomes a marvelous and beautiful thing when the mind is free from the psychological structure of society for then there is no conflict, there is no seeking, there is no asking, no desire – there is nothing. It is only this inward poverty that can see the truth of a life in which there is no conflict at all. Such a life is a benediction, that benediction is not to be found in any church, in any temple.”
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Talks and Dialogues – Saanen 1967, pp. 24-25
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Poverty would seem to be where all this was naturally leading. That is what the image of the empty bowl would seem to represent. And the empty bowl of course reminds us of the mendicant orders. A number of religions, seeing the devastation of greed and power, have required vows of poverty, chastity and obedience from those who would enter their priestly or monastic ranks. While such austerity might have its merits, it is not the poverty that K is talking about, for such people, in his view, still belong to the religious type sanctified by tradition and caught in the ambitious and hierarchical structures of society, which are divisive and perpetuate conflict, which is not religious. For K poverty becomes a marvelous and beautiful thing when the mind is free from this psychological structure of society, for then there is no seeking and desire for possession, which puts and end to division and conflict. He sees in this total inward poverty, in this emptiness, the ground of a life that is a benediction that is not to be found in any temple, church or palace.
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Poverty is something that everyone tends to shun, for it is the way of misery. I still recall how one day K sat with us students at Brockwood and pictured himself asking his son or daughter, and for him that’s what we all were, what they wanted to do in the future. He imagined them saying that they wanted to make money. “What for?”, he would ask them. “Because we do not want to be poor”, they would reply. To which we would respond: “What’s wrong with being educatedly poor?” This struck me as significant, for it placed the value of education above that of the riches of this world. Education, in the deep sense he meant it, implies a way of life free from conflict, therefore free from self-centredness, at the core of which lies the false equation that to have is to be, which means there is no me without the mine. Our attachments and possessions are a way to escape from our inner emptiness through this illusory sense of being. The way of intelligence is to see through this illusion and empty consciousness of its false identifications. For K this is essential if we are not only to answer the present crisis and threat of violence but to be open to the advent of ‘reality’, which is at the core of the truly religious life.
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Be well, amigos, and let’s ponder over the deep significance of this inward poverty,
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Photos by J. Gómez Rodríguez: 1. Sea inlet near Victoria, Vancouver Island, Canada. 2. Main House, Swanwick Centre, Vancouver Island, Canada.
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