What brings about the pause? The observer himself cannot bring it about.
What do we really know about observation, choiceless awareness, complete attention, etc. Krishnamurti used these terms to point out how our awareness, attention, and observation is distorted by our self-centered condition. If I could observe or attend without the bias and prejudice of my imagined self, could I even acknowledge its objectivity, or would it be too upsetting?
We can only know what it isn’t. I suspect that the quality of that understanding matters greatly however.
Yes Dan, the surest way to disarm ‘insight’ is to legitimize it. Makes me wonder though, if thought is capable of doing that, whether there was any insight - in the ‘the emperor’s not wearing any clothes!’ sense - in the first place. My ability to delude myself never ceases to amaze me.
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They are like two different worlds, the world of thought / self and the world of insight / awareness. Insight happens in the moment for whatever brings it about. It is light in the darkness. Memory can’t contain it…only a facsimile of it. Is it the difference between Mind and the brain? Or is insight a result of a part of the brain seeing its own activity in a new way?
The ‘self’ or self-consciousness is the ‘delusion’ it turns out, isn’t it? Mainly because of its limitedness, its exclusion, its isolation…it ‘gets us through’ but blocks the ‘flowering’. Knowing ourselves as we are, seems to be the only possibility for it to dissolve?
Along with the awareness of the stream of thoughts, there is another thing that can be ‘brought to the table’…for “fun”. That, is an awareness of the interval that lies between each thought. Can there be an awareness of that interval?
Huguette I have read carefully your long post and be reassure it make a lot of sense. Please excuse my bad english. I didn’t quote anything because all what you say is very clear and enlightening . Nothing to add or to question for now on my side. Just thank you for this.
If there is a cause for what we call love, is that love? Or it is only a form of pleasure. Put it another way: do we need a reason to love another person?
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Can you love me and, at the same time, leave me out of it altogether? That’s the point. You love me not because of who I am or what I represent.
No, not unconditionally; I am not talking of that. Nor am I interested in something called altruism. These are both theories. Don’t approach it that way.
No, the observer cannot bring this about directly. Ordinarily, the presence of an observer separate from what is observed signals the fact of reaction taking place, which is the mind preoccupied. Reaction is fuelled by the avoidance of hurt, or efforts to escape the isolation self is. When there is a preparedness to look at all of this, the reactive self is quelled, permitting a deeper sense of this hurt and isolation to be revealed. So the quiet mind for which observation is a possibility, is the mind facing things unconditionally. Ordinarily, anything conducive to observation is effectively shunned by the self, since observation leads to seeing what self doesn’t wish to see.
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Does this preparedness to look take time? Is it a gradual process? That still implies activity on the part of the observer. What is the factor that brings the pause? Is it a shock, a psychological crisis? It has to be.
You cannot approach the truth; it comes to you. To approach it, you have to know exactly where it is. Therefore no approach is ever necessary. Either it is there or it is not. Any movement to find it and you’re going to be forever lost. Altruism is a concept put together by the self: i.e. a selfless concern for other people. It’s a concept formed from selfishness as a way out of being selfish; therefore altruism is still part of selfishness. Also, to love unconditionally is a concept of love founded on all our notions of conditional love. That is why I am rejecting both these words.
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Altruism is not a theory. It’s a biological fact. We see it in insects and animals all the time. Even in humans, at times.
Where/when did Krishnamurti talk about this?
I’ll have to assume he was gaga when he said it because it’s too significant to have never spoken of it until he was so close to death.
All his previous uses of “the mind” referred to the cognitive process, what he called “thought”.
Yes, something shocking happens to reveal the reality of isolation. Preparedness which takes place in time, which is a tending to the body and its sensitivity, not being those things which can ordinarily dull awareness, helps see to it that the shock is not then covered up. The self, which is its content, its knowledge, is sufficiently resilient to remain with the fact of what has been seen, and not recoil in horror, so there is a gradual, which is time bound, working through of things. All of which means a change in information, and the ability on the part of self to be less reactive, so that observation is then more likely and not less, observation not being some arcane thing, but simply the fact of something seen, when there is no longer escape from it, which is reaction of the self. Observation is simply the absence of an observer separate from what is observed is all. There is no genuine reason for it not to be commonplace.
So to come back to the notion I am hurt in relationship. The sense which the self ordinarily is as an observer separate from what it observes, is that hurt occurs as part of a specific event which inevitably involves another self. So hurt manifests as a hurt, to which can be added a further hurt, and then another, forming an accumulation, which is a time-bound notion again. This is a narrative existing as knowledge self is. So now comes an amended narrative. I do not get, which is to say acquire, come by, accumulate, hurt, in relationship. When I come into the room, all of hurt is already there, already being another time-bound notion. I bring all of hurt with me into the room, and as an observer separate from what I observe, I simply experience an aspect of that hurt. I cannot be made to feel hurt I am not to begin with. Self is not my self and other self, self is just the self. Self is ancient, another time-bound notion. The age of self cannot be calculated chronologically as in geological strata, and psychologically self has only just come into being, complete with full back story, and hurt is as old as that self. So again, less reason to react to hurt, to feeling hurt by someone or something. Less reason to react, greater ability to simply examine it, more likelihood of observation.
re: “mind”
Enquiry and Pilgrim,
I don’t think K was always right and I don’t think he was always without fear. But, for me, most of what he says sheds light on the fundamental human questions. As I see it, K used certain words - including “mind” - differently in different contexts.
I don’t know if you agree or not but, as I see it, intelligence, “the ground”, beauty, love, compassion - none of these are a part of the content of consciousness, except merely as ideas or ideals. So - again for me - there IS something beyond the content, and that “something” is sacred, timeless, beyond the travails of the particular brain.
So I don’t know if you will find the following excerpts to clarify the 2 different meanings of “mind”:
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/sacred-life
… thought cannot make anything sacred. You understand the beauty of it, sir? To discover that, to come upon that - feeling, thought can never make the tree beautiful, the mountain beautiful, your face lovely, thought cannot make it, therefore thought, which is the response of memory, thought which is measurable can never be sacred. Right?…So can the mind be without thought, and use thought when necessary? Which means, the mind being empty of thought can use thought, and live with thought, in harmony, not one and the other. And this is meditation. So that the mind has no illusion; and illusion arises when you want to achieve. When you say, ‘I must attain that,’ and then you can invent something which you will attain and think you’ve got it.
…So my mind, so the whole of my mind is sacred - you understand? - not its content is sacred. I wonder if you’re meeting all this - but that quality of mind that’s completely empty. And out of that emptiness, space and silence, thought can operate. This is all my description, you understand? - it’s not yours.
Now if a few of us see this together, and it is not mine or yours, but it is so, then we create a new generation. You understand? And then you won’t be bothered about changing the people, changing the heart of the people in power. They are not worth changing. Any man who is in power is corrupt.
…in enquiring into what is sacred, perhaps there is a second when you see, when the mind sees itself completely without being anything.… To find out what is sacred the mind must know the total content of itself. And its content makes consciousness. You understand, sir? Consciousness is its content. If there is no content there is something else, isn’t there? If my content of my mind is worry, resentment, wanting to fulfil, bitterness, anxiety, fear, afraid of so many things, wanting to do this and that, that is the content of my consciousness. When the content is not - you understand? - there is something entirely different. And we try to make one of the contents into the sacred thing. You understand? That’s why one must know the total content, conscious or unconscious. And that’s another problem.
Public Discussion 6 Saanen, Switzerland - 07 August 1972
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Perception is the truth. There is no argument about that. But there is no perception in a concept; a concept merely contains the shadow or the imprint of a former insight. One may then give tremendous value to the concept because the insight has already faded away and without at least the memory of the concept to cling to one may feel lost. But where there are no concepts at all, the mind is free to perceive the heavens. So I don’t have any concept of my own. I mean this. Love is not a concept. We are removing all the conceptual rubbish that lies around this word, that’s all. What we shall discover from this removal, we have yet to find out. So all I am saying at the moment is that our current concepts of love make no sense at all. If you answer the question of why you do not love me, you’ll get to it, but I cannot answer it for you. All I can do is put the question. It is up to you to listen to it and decide what to do with it.
If you are tired of hearing the word ‘love’ move to something else. But if we are truly serious about the ‘self’ coming to a total, absolute end, we cannot avoid being equally serious about love. After all, there is no more important word in our whole human lexicon. Get this word right and we’ll find that everything else doesn’t matter; it can all be sorted so easily. But we haven’t yet got this word right.
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Is it as simple as this: that I cannot do a thing? I can try all sorts of techniques, meditations, preparedness and all the rest of those sorts of things. It is still the observer at work. Whatever he does or tries to do, at the end of it all he will still be there in one form or another. Therefore all of his effort is a waste of time. Surely, that’s the shock.
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