From a meeting with Madame de
Salzmann
Thursday March 1
Transmission
The
concept I have of transmission is of knowledge passed from someone to someone
else. This concept is so strong, or,
rather, my belief or unconscious acceptance of it is so strong, that even
though a possible new understanding has been glimpsed it cannot be altered
without very strongly experienced proof.
If transmission were a sort of exchange of substances along a route or
channel existing between the one transmitting and the one transmitted to, it
would mean that something would flow in two opposite directions. If real change
of understanding is possible it would mean that the level of both the giver and
receiver would change, the receiver giving and the giver receiving.
To begin with, if I am in the position of transmitter, a
change is needed in my state. If I am
searching for a more active attention, freer to listen, freer from associations
connected with and my reactions to what I hear, there could be a greater
freedom to explore the question with the questioner—to go into it more deeply
with him, without being caught in it from outside, as it were. If my attention is more actively engaged
there could be a participation in the whole exchange that would permit the
exchange to flow in two directions, and activate the ‘hearer’ in both the giver
and the receiver.
If this active attention is not being searched for, if I
hear the question passively with my ordinary attention, I will reply passively
and nothing can be transmitted, no matter how clever my words or how strong my
emotional force. Instead of a new quality of attention and receptivity,
permitting the flow of new knowledge both ways, there is a one-sided
relationship of dependence, already existing and now strengthened. Instead of an increase in activity and
freedom, a mutually harmful attitude of dependence is more and more fixed.
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