In the early days of his teaching, Krishnamurti talked about “purgation”, the emptying of the mind. He stopped using that word and spoke of emptiness. He says here that perhaps there is a second when the mind sees itself completely without being anything. That is, without content, enabling thought to operate coherently.
So the mind can be filled with all the mischief and misery of fear, envy, ambition, anxiety, resentment, etc., that is the mind as we know it, and it can be emptied of all that when it sees itself = not for its content - but for its emptiness and its harmonious relationship with thought.
Not if he has been paying attention. There’s no such thing as a waste of time if you’re learning as you go about what you’re doing. For an activity to be a true waste of time, you have to learn nothing from it, and to do that you have to be an imbecile or so inattentive and uninterested as to be hopeless.
But you don’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t move away. The truth is right there.
By the way, one of the clearest examples of K talking about mind and brain came in 1984, February 9th, Mumbai (Bombay), First Question and Answer meeting. The 5th question is: What is the difference between the brain and the mind?
K: We are saying, and the speaker may be wrong, and he has discussed this matter with several so-called scientists, and even then the speaker may be wrong, don’t please accept what he says; doubt what he says, question, enquire. He says the brain is the whole limited consciousness with all its content - pleasant, unpleasant, ugly, beautiful, struggle - all that is the content. And the mind is something totally separate from the brain. The mind is outside the brain - the speaker is saying; the scientists are not saying that. The speaker says the brain is one thing and mind is something entirely different. The brain with all its content, with its struggles, with its pain, anxieties, can never know, understand the beauty of love. Love is limitless. It is not I love one person only. It is too vast, too tremendous. And the brain with all its contents, miseries, confusion, cannot comprehend or hold or be alive to love; only the mind, which is limitless.
So there is a difference between the brain and the mind. Then what the questioner doesn’t ask - there is still a further question involved in this: what is the relationship then between the mind and the brain? The brain is limited, limited because it is made up of all kinds of separate parts, fragmented, broken up, and therefore it is in constant state of struggle, conflict. Whereas the mind is totally out of that category. There is a relationship only when the brain is completely free, if that is possible, from all the content of its memories. This requires a great deal of enquiry, sensitivity. Intelligence is not of the brain. The intelligence of thought cannot contain the intelligence of the mind. You understand all this? Does somebody understand what I am talking about? No. All right.
You are assuming that there is something to learn about the machinations of the self. I doubt it. We have had two thousand years of recorded conflict and there is still war between people. I am a violent human being. Either I see it wholly and it ends totally; or I pay more attention to it and it carries on. Apparently, we’ll find any excuse to carry on.
Yes I have no true agency in all this, I cannot actually change what I am, but who is the I who can do nothing? Who is the original self? The seat of self is said to be the brain, and I can pass from brain to brain, from one observer to the next, but what then? I may settle for that, going from one observer to the next as long as I can. I can scratch an existence as an observer even as I bring about ruin, and I can strive to keep isolation at bay by remaining occupied, running one of my many diversions. So what is keeping all this going?
‘Nobody got it’! There are different reasons why he may have said so, many people have understood that he meant people in general, other people accept now that he meant to say that he wasn’t investing anybody close to him with the right to speak in his name, but it could be that he was so weak then that he got back to his original self and this would be some sort of ‘confession’, as in fact when saying ‘nobody got it’ he doesn’t exclude himself. And we can be reminded here of Christ’s last words ‘My god, why have you forsaken me?’
There is no original self; it is all second-hand. In the doing nothing, there is no I, no me, no self. That is real isolation, aloneness, because it not something artificially conceived.
Good that you doubt, Paul. Don’t assume you know what will end the self…or bring insight and clarity to the mind. It may be a spontaneous observation of one’s own behavior at work or with a friend or neighbor. I may see…actually ‘see’, in the sense K uses the word…that I’m exploiting…or that I’m being exploited …in a relationship…and it ends. Insight does bring change, even though it may not be total transformation, and the self may continue to dominate most of our daily life. Yet insight may significantly change the way we interact with our fellow man. OK…maybe I’m totally off base, but I doubt it.
Insight is action. Agreed. At the very first opportunity, thought will attempt to convert insight into concepts and use those concepts to put together a system. From what I have been told, I believe this is what happens in things like the dialogue groups established by David Bohm: people get bogged down by so many rules that they end up going round in circles. I may be wrong; I have never been involved with it. But I think it is very clear that learning only occurs at the moment of insight, where there is no separation between perception and action. So it is never ‘my’ learning, which is the mistake people seem to make when they try to make a system out of what they have seen. What matters is simply to see the same thing together at the same time. Then no system is ever necessary because we both have the treasure in our hands.
Or, simply, after travelling all over the world for decades he has never yet met a person who has the same fire in his belly. I don’t feel it is a complicated issue.
And you do carry on. For over a decade you’ve implied that you have “done it”. Clearly, you have done nothing but repeat yourself, never realizing what you’re doing.
Violence ends now or it will never end. The self ends this very moment or it goes on forever. That’s entirely up to you. I don’t mind repeating this; it is worthwhile repeating. No-one is forcing you to listen to it or to react to it, but yet you carry on reacting. The impetus for that reaction has nothing to do with me: it is your own ideals and images that create these reactions. I am just a noise in the wind.
How would you know? The self hasn’t ended for you, clearly, so why not speak from what you really don’t know instead of from what you believe? Your incessant parroting of Krishnamurti is like a tic. No one needs to hear you echo K’s words as if you’re living proof that they’re true.
Why do you want to banish K so quickly? What has he said that has upset you? You are not facing the fact that the self ends now or never – in its entirety. You would rather sustain a pointless argument than argue a valid point that says, ‘This is why the self should continue.’ You have no valid argument for the continuance of the self; and therefore in place of silence you react. At least follow your own advice and be aware of this reflex, pay attention to it. Then there may be a totally different kind of response.
Look at it another way. If I sound like K it is only because there is nobody else around, psychologically. I cannot prove the self has ended; but it seems you can prove it for me. This may be the whole point of our dialogue.
Is not together simply a notion separation is of non-separation, and are they really the same thing? What is it you understand can happen when two separate entities see a thing together as you put it?
Instead of impersonating K, why don’t you just quote him? Every time you feel the impulse to do your K-shtick, stop and find the appropriate K-quote and post that.
But the self has no originality; it is something passed on like second-hand clothes. A child wears what it is given to wear. A child gets hurt by those who have themselves been hurt. It is the past that does all this, but something original can only happen in the present. Is this meeting or dialogue for both of us an original event, happening for the very first time? Or are we just recycling old news?
It is not as I put it. Are we together? Then we shall know what it means. At the moment, we don’t know; we have to find out. No system can show us in advance what will happen.