To answer it we have to ask what is experience, thought, knowledge, memory, etc., because that is what experience involves, a reaction to the past. First of all, what is thought, the act of thinking, and why have we given so much importance to it? Does thought exist without words? Can we think images, symbols and representations without words? Are words pictures?
When you ask a question, the first reaction is to appeal to memory, recollections, knowledge and experiences. The action of thinking automatically calls on memory, because thought and memory go hand in hand. The thought process is to search through memory and past accumulations. If you are asked your sex, for example, you answer immediately. If you are asked the approximate distance between two destinations, you think about it and then you give a less immediate answer. And if you are asked what god is, you say you don't know, unless you are enlisted in an organized ideology, and therefore your mind is unlhealthy and conditioned...
So there are 3 categories of knowledge in response to memory as experiences and knowledge, stored in brain cells. 1/ what is obvious and does not require a long search, 2/ what requires a deeper search in memory, 3/ what has not been stored in the latter and therefore has no answer. So experiences, knowledge, memory and the reaction of memory are thought. They are one and not separate processes. Thinking based on memory is a thing of the past and can never be new. The new can only exist when thought is absent.
The whole of our existence is based on thought: social, moral, political, religious structures are based on the process of thought. Our interactions with others are based on images: my wife, my boss, god etc.
We are therefore related through thought, images and the past. As for emotions, can it exist without thought? If we didn't recognize a feeling or emotion would there be any? There is no feeling without the thought process.
What is a relationship? We like to think that the relationship is based on love, kindness, affection and consideration, right? But this is not the case. What is this relationship based on? on specific needs. Need for sex, comfort, recognition, companionship etc. We are in search of sensations which in turn give birth to memories and images. The relationship is based on images, on memory, on what "should be". Based on past incidents, pleasures, sexual memory etc. We are dependent on the other, attached, identified, possessive, jealous etc. All this has accumulated in time and in memory. That's a fact.
Is a relation between two images put together by thought a relation? Let's put aside the notions of love, romance and love feeling for the moment, and look at the facts. Can we have a relationship outside the pictures? It is the thought in the relationship that creates the images. If one considers oneself a christian and the other a Muslim then these are two images conditioned in relation, aren't they? Same between a man and a woman. The images then engender antagonism. As long as images persist, conflicts are inevitable. Is it possible to be in a relationship without the interference of memories and the past? Is it because thought finds security in its images? My wife, the nation, the group, god, etc. are pictures. I own my wife, she encourages me, gives me sexual pleasures and I do the same for her. It is a mutually exploitative interaction. Thought seeks security in images, but can it find it? These images are words, memory, fragile notions, but yet we cling to them.
It is a way of seeking permanence. This is why we invented ideologies, rituals and dogmas. We have been conditioned by upbringing, traditions and culture to believe in symbols. Can there be security in words, images and ideas? Clinging to images is the very essence of neurosis.
There is a form of absurdity in striving to live through images, and it is in the perception of this absurdity that the images stop, it is the end. The brain process is to record. it is conditioned to accumulate immediately, through descriptions and images. We spend our entire existence trapped in images: man woman, boy girl, it's so childish, because images naturally create distance and conflict. When thought clings to the absurd it engenders neurosis. Is it possible to move forward without necessarily recording everything and recording like a clerk? Because what causes wounds are the images we have of ourselves. It is the self-image that is hurt. It is the me, the center, the ego and its images that record. And we are stuffed with images. When one perceives the totality of the construction of the thought and the relation then the ego does not have any more importance. We can free ourselves from images and conflicts, no need to record anymore.
It is only in the importance one gives to oneself that one finds wounds. So, to answer the original question, experience does not allow the transformation of being. It is only out of thought and experience that one can change one's inner nature.
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