Inquiry with Javier Gomez Rodriguez, October 4, 2026
We met at the Centre on another beautiful day for our first Sunday dialogue with Javier Rodriguez, who will be facilitating the gatherings in October and November.
We began with an overview of Javier’s Overview of the Dialogue, a booklet he wrote based on Krishnamurti’s and David Bohm’s ideas about dialogue, as well as his own understanding.
We started with a question: “What is the self?” Some participants explored the possibility that the self isn’t real, as well as the possibility of communicating through the heart and through telepathy.
Javier encouraged us to look carefully at what is actually happening rather than moving too quickly toward ideas of harmony. He suggested that although we naturally want harmony, it is often through staying with conflict and contradiction that we begin to see our conditioning, attachments and assumptions.
Javier pointed out that in the “Book of Oneself,” the first chapter we encounter is Conflict. This led to a deeper exploration of whether freedom and wholeness can emerge through directly facing conflict rather than trying to move away from it. We also considered whether the conflict we see in the world begins with the contradictions we experience within ourselves. Javier offered the insight: “If there is a contradiction, the Self is active.”
Toward the end, we discussed whether dialogue itself can have an influence beyond the group. A participant suggested that attentive listening, noticing our own reactions and questioning our assumptions can create a different quality of relationship.
- Anastasia Shtamina
