When someone finds a particular theory of perception as (if not more) compelling than what K said about direct perception (which is no more actual for us than a theory), and brings this to a discussion about K’s words on the subject, how does it serve the need to understand what K was saying?
Well, I’ll keep silent for a while.
But to answer @Inquiry
We are only ever attacking (testing) our ideas about the teaching - which might be just as helpful as merely repeating K’s words.
Who is this “we” who is “only ever attacking (testing) our ideas about the teaching”?
I’m here to find out what K was saying - not to attack any of it or test it against ideas I have about what K was saying. Why would I have ideas about what K meant by what he said when I can’t possibly know until/unless it is perfectly clear what he was trying to convey?
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Hi Dan,
I haven’t read all of this thread or any other recent thread.
What I can say is that it is not possible to explore ‘observer is the observed’ or other such statements intellectually. Care, love or affection has nothing to do with knowledge, so a forum like this may not point towards it.
Perhaps if we see knowledge has only a very small place which is technical and nowhere else, we can directly find.
Nowadays knowledge or information seems to dominate. We are bombarded with information, on media, internet, TV, politicians, religions. All are telling us what to think. Information has become a distraction, absorption.
Better to see it has only one use which is technical and drop everything else. Media is telling to hate, American vs. Russian, Hindu vs. Muslim, Israeli vs. Palestinian or what not. We believe in these labels which is actually a creation of mind. If we restrict intellect to only technical use, then perhaps we can know how to meet another person without a label, what it means to have affection. Just like 2 friends who listen without any wall between them
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In simple terms it means that every time we try to investigate into what it means to perceive without images, to perceive without the baggage of psychological memory, rather than go directly into the question or spend any time with it as a question, you would rather have a discussion about the neuroscience of perception.
There is, of course, a place for the investigation of what neuroscience has said about perception. And we have discussed it many times already. But no amount of discussion seems to be sufficient for you to put aside the doubts you have about perception - which stem from your own subjective understanding of what the neuroscience is saying.
And this means that we never turn our attention to the question of what it means to actually perceive without images.
So your position seems to be that until neuroscience gives the go-ahead, all discussion about perception without memory may be false, because the language of neuroscience is the final authority on the matter.
This being the case, the question is really then about what place our theories and knowledge about perception have in actual perception?
Do we need a theory - whether Hoffman’s or Krishnamurti’s - in order to perceive clearly? Or can we look, listen, perceive, be aware, without any theory, without any mental image we may have created for ourselves or that we may have adopted from other people?
Are you suggesting that it is not possible to explore the ‘observer is the observed’ through words, through talking about it, discussing it, using words?
In which case why do you think that Krishnamurti talked about it, discussed it, again and again, with different audiences, different groups, using words?
This forum is such a hive of extremes. There are people who only want to be abstract, intellectual, verbal. And then there are others who reject any and all use of reason or logic or words - except (naturally) their own use of reason, logic and words.
It would be marvellous if there could somehow be a meeting in the middle somewhere.
Can one love intellectually? I don’t think that is possible at least for me. One can love only directly.
It reminds me of the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. One can love a rock, a tree, an animal, another human being, because there is direct relationship. Even a rock is part of a whole. It has texture, you can touch and feel it. There is direct relationship. Words don’t allow that.
Beauty of people like Krishnamurti or Hermann Hesse is that they use words to point at something that is beyond words. They use words only as a means of communication but point that word is not direct relationship.
I want to live, have a direct relationship with life, with nature, people. That being not intellectual, but direct.
Danger of Internet is one can get lost in world of words, in illusion, in Maya. To have direct relationship with nature for example may be a walk in nature has a more direct experience than intellectual discussion on nature
Who has asked this question Adeen? Only you are asking it as far as I can see.
Of course I agree. But you are using words to point this out to another. You have an interest in making what you have to say transparent to another. This is why you have read Hesse and Krishnamurti, to understand what they had to say.
But nobody - certainly not myself - is saying that words can feed the heart. Nobody is saying that a description of the rock can communicate the nature of the rock. One is not saying that a “discussion” about nature can replace one’s direct contact with nature.
So I wonder how much there is an intention on your part to actually be in relationship with me (for instance), seeing as you do not read between the lines of my communications on Kinfonet?
The danger of the internet is also that one takes no responsibility for their effect on a text-based discussion, takes words out of context, creates oversimplifications to assert one’s views, and does not take into account the actual humanity of the person they are communicating with. Right?
To use words to discuss, talk over, what K has said is not an evil thing. Nor was it discouraged by K, who, on the contrary encouraged people to “tear apart” what he said, think over it, discuss it, look at it. Which is all I have been trying to do on Kinfonet.
It’s not possible to have deep meaningful relationship over the internet at least for me. Sorry if it sounds very harsh but it is my take if I compare my offline and online relationships.
That’s alright. I’m not asking to have a meaningful relationship as such, I’m just pointing out that human dignity involves treating the person at the end of any text based communication with the courtesy and respect one would have for anybody one meets face to face. This is easy to forget in on online situations, that’s all.
In person I think we would actually agree and see eye to eye much more than we are able to do here. So it may be worth being open to that possibility, even though it is not possible to establish this here.
Best wishes.
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Words aren’t “part of a whole”? Isn’t everything that exists in the universe part of the whole? Is it possible for anything we know of, use, and depend on to not be part of the whole?
Yes, you are right.
I see a limitation of words in trying to explore K’s teachings. It is like health and illness. One is never aware of good health, only illness, when body shows symptom of pain for example. One is not aware of non-pain as such as it is absence of pain. Similarly it is with words. The words can only point to illusion which is itself. Truth can’t be conveyed by words. Fact has to be experienced directly.
I see danger of exploring on word level in a sense if we are seeking truth in words.
There is limitation of K’s words also. They are not truth, but to me they only point to illusion. To experience life directly, his words may also have to be put aside. If words come from direct experience, then that is ok. Words then are only expression. They are not repetition but only expression.
Krishnamurti sometimes made a distinction between reality and truth. Truth itself is outside the field of reality. It can be pointed to within the field of reality - through words, for instance - but so long as one remains in the field of reality such truth can have no meaning.
However, in order to communicate within the field of reality about anything - about the observer and the observed, about the nature and limits of thought, about seeing and observing with all one’s senses fully heightened, about division, and so on - words are of course necessary.
To argue about such a thing is fruitless, because one is obviously using words to point all this out.
What it does reveal to me, however, is how full of judgements and assertions one is, even when one claims to be living beyond the word, beyond reality. We don’t see that our very judgements of others are grounded in images and values that are themselves the product of words - whether these words are spoken silently or kept in the basement.
The illusion may be simply that we treat our judgements of others as though they were truth, and not merely reality.
There is a way of relating in which words are secondary and so do not become a source of contention. That is perhaps the only healthy way to communicate. But who will communicate in such a way? So long as judgements interpose, or contention over secondary issues, no such communication can happen.
Even our language is a barrier!
Another essay from David Bohm on the subject:
"THE NEGATIVE APPROACH TO THE MEANING OF LANGUAGE “ by David Bohm.
Words and their meanings are never more than abstractions, which cannot substitute for that to which they refer n(e.g. using the word for “dinner” and thinking about what it means to us cannot provide the kind of nourishment that comes from actually eating a meal ). Moreover, words cannot abstract all that is to be known about any given thing.
Indeed, they do not even abstract all that is essential to the function of that thing
(e.g. the word “chair” abstracts what is essential for the function of supporting a person who sits on it,
but not what is essential to its functioning at the atomic or nuclear level).
So, it is necessary to recognize that all language has essentially negative and partial relationship to that to which it refers.
A. Korsybski has put this relationship very succinctly in the assertion: “ Whatever we say it is, it isn’t .”
This statement is not a metaphysical assertion about the basic nature of “ what is.“
Rather, it is a very deep challenge to the entire structure of our communications,
both external and internal ( which latter are called “thought”).
To understand this challenge, let us begin with the fact: “ We are always talking about it “
( “ It “ refers to anything whatsoever). When we read Korsybski’s statement, our first response is to see that we have already begun to say something about “it” (whatever “it” may happen to be).
And than, noticing that “it” is not what we say, and that what we say is at most incomplete abstraction even from what is to be known, we assume that “it” must be something else, as well as something more.
But “something else” and “something more” are also what we say “it” is.
As we do this for a while , we begin to be struck by the absurdity of the whole procedure.
For whatever we say it is it isn’t.
What is the appropriate response to such situation ?
Evidently, one has to stop saying anything at all, not merely outwardly, but also inwardly.
It is suggested here that if all the “chatter” of thought can really stop, then something new can happen.
But even to say this much may be going too far.
For if this means that “it” is will be something new, “ then the novelty that we say “it” is will be what “it” is not.
The paradox with which the reader has to be left is
“ What is it when there is no saying at all, neither outwardly nor inwardly ?”
So simple and to the point and yet one realizes " this are only the words "
Or, the same thing but put very simply: the word is not the thing.
To look at an apple 
without the word ‘apple’, is to begin to see what it is as though for the first time.
Similarly, to look at a content in consciousness without the word for that content is to be in direct contact with it - the word being the ‘observer’.
For me, it goes beyond that one-liner.
Every individual whether it is the speaker/writer or the reader/listener of the message gives meaning to the words used, and in that giving of meaning is the possible incomplete or erroneous action on both sides.
One may wonder if Krishnaji as speaker did not give meaning to the words and therefore they come across as truthful.
Is that what you point to in your last sentence?
In communication it is important that both the speaker and the listener share the same basic understanding of what the word refers to.
Misunderstandings take place when one of the parties involved gives a different meaning to the word, and so take it ‘the wrong way’.
This is why so much communication is actually a process of clarifying what we mean by certain words. But, of course, in order to do this we still need to use words, and so unless there is some common sense we will go around and around misunderstanding one word after the next, without any communication being established.
Does this not sound familiar?! - This is what often happens on Kinfonet.
So there is an art to clear communication, to stating things clearly using words that everyone can recognise and understand. And where there is a word being used in a new way, to have the patience to clarify what this new meaning is.
Is this what you are wanting to say Wim?
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The word “feeling” suggests something beyond the intellect, doesn’t it? We’ve also mentioned that K’s teachings “ring true” for some of us. This “ringing true” surely affects the body in areas outside the brain. Do things ring true because we hear something which we have actually experienced to some extent at some point in our lives? For example, when K talks about attachment, does this ring true because we have gone through exactly what he is saying and know it to be true?
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If we agree with this hypothesis - and I think we must (as this is the recognised model of : perception, interpretation, experience and conditioning); can we conclude that its conditioning all the way down (even for those that may be released from the dictat of experience/the known)?
Now when we see the statement I made above (about conditioning), what happens?
As humans we will react to what we know - is one of the things we know the idea/fact that “conditioning is bad”?
Yes, I think this is so. This goes for most aspects of what he has talked about, but of course one has to be careful not to assume too much overlap between what Krishnamurti talks about and our own experience.
I may have a sense of what he means by ‘the sacred’ - based on my own experiences of feeling awe, wonder, amazement or reverence - but these experiences probably have nothing to do with the actual ‘sacred’ K is talking about. Whereas attachment is something most of us have experienced for ourselves first hand, so one doesn’t need to second guess too much.
The more challenging areas are things like attention, observing without the observer, seeing without images, listening. Because there seem to be two quite distinct responses to these matters.
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The first is the assumption that one knows what Krishnamurti means by choiceless awareness, observing without the observer, seeing without images, etc; but one’s understanding is relatively superficial, overly simplistic, and neglects certain aspects of one’s actual experience.
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The second is the complete opposite: namely that choiceless awareness, observing without the observer, seeing without images, is almost impossible except for a Buddha, or is even scientifically infeasible (due to the way one has understood scientific theory about such matters).
If one can avoid either of these traps, then exploration becomes richer and more fascinating, because one realises that Krishnamurti was talking about something truly possible, though not easy or casually straightforward.
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