Action – Reaction

The mind… will re-act from the past (in any situation in life), because whenever it is faced with something in the moment, in the now, in rush all these memories, all these experiences. And whether one likes it or not, it is a purely mechanical process; we may think we are in control, but that is entirely illusory. Thus, there is no fresh response, no appropriate action; it is always the memories and the past experiences that dictate the action, which is therefore not really an action at all but a re-action.

from ‘Dialogues on Reality: An Exploration into the Nature of Our Ultimate Identity’, Robert Powell, Blue Dove Press, 1996. ISBN 1-884997-16-36. Buy from Amazon US; Buy from Amazon UK.

3 thoughts on “Action – Reaction

  1. ‘The separate self is not an entity; it is an activity – the activity of resisting what is present and seeking what is not present’, says Rupert Spira, in other words, the separate self is pure reactivity.

  2. No free action, only reaction

    If that were all there is, then the multiplicity of body-minds would be real in and by itself – or themselves – even taking pure or witness consciousness as its (inactive) background. This may appear to be the unexceptional situation at the empirical level, but there is the buddhi ‘inspired’, as it were, by consciousness with the result of a spontaneous action (not a reaction) occurring at a particular moment in time. We can see this, and may have personal experience thereof, in moments of emergency. It is as if any previous experiences, and the memories themselves, were momentarily erased, allowing for the most appropriate action to take place. The ego is bound, but Spirit is free (Spiritus ubi vult spirat).This, at least, is a kind of, provisional or intermediate (or mixed), explanation.

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