May 11, 2008 at 10:16
· Filed under blog, personal
Pakistan’s leading English language newspaper published a two-page interview on their Easter Sunday issue. Check it out.
Here’s a small preview:
This is a conversation about the book, the writer’s process, and his insights. The questions are deliberate: they are asked from the level of ‘the initiate’. It is an early stage when one is seeking a pre-supposed gratification from wisdom, such as ‘How can it make me more money? Be more attractive? Seduce more partners?’ Some of the most profound advice is lost on ears because the seeker is only looking for pre-defined answers, thus focusing on what they want and missing what they are getting. Are we failing to get answers because our questions are flawed? This conversation speaks to those who may realise that it is indeed the question that needs re-framing.
Ramla Akhtar: Who is Peter Cajander?
Peter Cajander: Peter Cajander is your conceptual image based on your perception, information, and knowledge you have. It is your ‘mental’ impression that mostly reflects your own past experience and history. Each and everyone has a different ‘understanding’ of Peter Cajander. And none of them is truer than any other—they are just subjective interpretations. So, Peter Cajander is not what you think.
RA: What is reality?
PC: It is whatever you perceive it is. That is your reality, but don’t expect anybody else to underwrite you definition. There is no absolute or objective yardstick for reality. Or to say it differently in a word: energy.
RA: Reading through FOR, one feels as if the mind is more an impediment than the wonderful tool we thought it to be. What good is the mind after all?
PC: Not much. It’s a good servant but a poor master. Would you rather prefer to have peace of mind and silence? Or constant rambling almost 24/7 without a way to quiet it down? Won’t you rather use the mind only when you specifically need it? Mind is useful when you need to think something, i.e. find a logical solution or plan something. Otherwise it should be mute and not act like a radio gone bizarre by jumping from station to station non-stop. If you observe your own private radio it only plays something from the history channel (your past) or from the sci-fi channel (the future that has not happened). Mind is never here, right now, present.
RA: The world pays a great importance to upholding belief systems. The philosophy of consciousness summarily dismisses belief system to address the subject of … consciousness! Where would people be without a belief system?
PC: A belief system helps us structure and ‘make sense’ of our surroundings. It is our conceptual framework that enables us to interact and cope with our circumstances and environment. It is based on our past experiences and knowledge. But since it is our ‘short-cut,’ we use it to extrapolate the past to the current situation and tend to ignore the present moment and not perceive it as it unfolds to us but how we ‘believe’ it is. So belief system can make us passive and ignorant of our surroundings. And without it? Everything would be fresh and new, ever-changing each moment.
RA: Why should we seek reality when the culture places a great importance on the qualities of imagination and creativity? Is there a conflict here?
PC: Who says that reality is boring and has nothing to do with imagination and creativity? Creativity is based on doing something unique and new — not repeating old and known patterns. Only our thinking is rigid and boring — it does not create anything new. We only know what we know. Why do you worry? Because you cannot think your way out of the issue you’re worrying about. In other words, you’re not creative! Thinking is not creativity. Nature is creative — it does not copy itself. Everything it creates is unique and original. We are part of nature and we create our reality by living it. Each morning you have a new empty canvas to draw and fill with your desires.
“Fragments of Reality is a really great summary of wisdom.”
“The book inspires ideas and methods that one can experiment with in daily life and help improve the quality of living.”
“The book offers valuable insights to life and to more harmonous existence, connecting these in a practical way to our modern-day living.”
“I find it fantastic that someone could have written a book that brings into modern terms what Ramana Maharshi, Huang Po, Bankei, and others have said from ancient times.”
“The intrusion of politics into the field of economics is simply an evidence of human ignorance or arrogance, and is as fatuous as an attempt to control the rise and fall of tides. Since the beginning of political institutions, there have been attempts to fix wages, control prices, and create capital, all resulting in failure.”
“Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits” is a good case in point how the law is turned into a business driven by high level politics.
The Dunwalke-website puts it another way: “Make a law, make a business.” — Old New Jersey street saying.
For many the government is the only option available when one is talking about defence. This does not need to be the case. Get convinced by reading an excerpt from Murray Rothbard’s Power & Market (pdf).
How do you like it when someone is exchanging nothing for something?
Kings did it in the past and we are doing it at the moment in massive scale as well.
“Too many people living in democracies are lulled into believing that they are free because they have the right to vote and elections are held periodically. If you take conscription for military service as an example, I think you would find that if it was proclaimed by a sole monarch, the people would revolt and disobey. However, in a democracy, when the politicians vote for it, the people comply and still think they are free.”
In the twentieth century 170 million people were killed by governments. It’s the bloodiest century in all history. Read an excerpt from A Century of War by John V. Denson.
Our current societies involve a third party called government that is authorised to incur into any violent actions and force in order to protect its citizens. However just by watching the news it’s nothing new to realise that these powers are also used against the very people who give them to its agent, the state.
“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? Continue reading..
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