I hope this is not a question about nanotech.
It is imho too simple of a question and the answer is even more simple; you see it; not you, it is seen, right?
The next question might be; what happens when something is ‘seen’, what is the mechanism, the gears etc?
What does it mean to have seen something?
What has seeing to do with it? Which seems like a good question?
The cause and effect we easily see and know but all too often thought fits it into itself and is done. How is the whole thing seen?
What do you mean? … For who?
All these are the typical questions that the self asks itself, thinking that if it dies psychologically, it will not be able to enjoy life and living as it thinks it is enjoying it now (with all its constant sorrow from which it tries to escape all the time – calling that escape “living”).
Why do you say first “it isn’t for some kind of psychological reward” and then “it’s what has to be done for the sake of the ‘human brain’”? … Is there not a contradiction being the second an expectation for some kind of reward also?
If someone where to ask you “Once one has died definitely to the self, does he exist or not?”, what would your answer be?
What is the actual meaning of the words “radical change” nowadays where life as we knew it until now is being blown up completely and the mind of the most is in total confusion about how the future will be? … So what is the place of a radical change beyond thought, in the building of nowadays “new world” if i may ask? (this is a very serious question)
With regard to the toothbrush: eyes “see” and image which they send to the brain and the brain recognizes the pattern, so you know that the toothpaste is in the toothbrush.
With regard to “other” things…
That it’s not you who have seen it.
It’s just a word to try to convey something. It doesn’t imply a seer.
Only a blind self can see “the whole thing”.
perhaps you might like movement better than mechanism; of course you come to see how things work in the thinking machine from observing it, that is all I can tell you, you watch and from watching you observe the mechanism happening when you realize you are observing a fictitious thing the brain and heart is holding and its gone, from watching it.
try it, you might like it, and its just a lot of fun
Only if one thinks “He’s up there and I, poor ignorant of me, am down here”.
Not if one thinks “I’m going to listen what another human being like me has to say about life and living, and let us ponder it together if possible”.
Why not?
So, do you consider Krishnamurti’s talks a method that one first use and then throws it away?
True.
It can if suddenly it becomes aware of that defensiveness and starts seriously questioning itself “Why am i defensive?”
All depends on what you mean here by “mind”.
How can a teacher make sure that his/her students know what he is saying if the students do not ask for clarification to ponder it together and only try to disqualify him after each explanation? … If you consider that @DanMcD is a teacher and you a student, shouldn’t you ask him ad nauseam what exactly he wants to say and ponder it together for as long as it takes? … Or is it that you don’t ask him because you already consider yourself “up there” and @DanMcD still “down here” hence he not being worthy of your supposed wisdom?
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Is that possible: to die definitively to the ‘self’? Has one put a stake through its heart (s)? Or is it always in the corner waiting for a moment of ‘weakness’ to present itself?
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Yes but the reward is not for ‘me’, it is that the species might go on, not destroying itself and those around us, if that is a reward somehow than so be it. Maybe it makes absolutely no difference at all, I don’t know…But we are suffering and we make others suffer. that is the fact.
I would say that it is the only question.
Wasn’t it Krishnamurti who said that the answer lies in the question itself? … If there is such ‘weakness’, obviously one has not definitely died to ‘self’…
Once a bloody thief asked someone why he had not left like the rest of the people, knowing that he was coming to town. “Don’t you know that I can split you in two with my sword?” he told him. To which the other replied: “And you don’t know that I can let myself be split in two by your sword?”
The great Christian mystics (Desert Fathers) and Muslims (Sufis) said that the spiritual combat against the self is always there until physical death, as you ask. The great Buddhist meditators said that it is entirely possible to definitely die to self. And K also hinted from his talks that this was also possible.
In any case, asking someone else if that is possible or not, i don’t think it makes any sense, since only oneself can answer that question … or as @Inquiry would say, verifying oneself the truth of what all those human beings said. Human beings who like you and me (and the rest) asked themselves the same question that we are asking now … that is: if it is possible to definitively end the causes of suffering, and therefore suffering itself.
And it was that deep question and their own search for the answer that made the difference (if there is any difference between them and us).
I don’t know if I have answered your question.
P.S.: Life is very short!
And what will you do to stop this? … If the species don’t go on, constantly destroying ourselves and others, it is because the deep-rooted ignorance in ourselves and others … If the Buddha himself said that he did not have the power to liberate us, but that liberation It has been all the time in the palm of our hands, it would be interesting to know what you would do: first to eradicate ignorance in yourself … and then that in others … knowing that life is very, very, very, very short … and that in the time that a thought about doing something lasts, we are no longer here.
(I seriously ask this to another human being like me)
Would you like to go deeply into it through a deep observation of the current state of the world as it is and not as we would like it to be?
It’s 4 in the morning here in spain and i think it’s time to go to bed. A pleasure to talk to you as usual, Dan. Good Night (or Good Morning to you) 
.
Maybe most would say that the trajectory of humanity from the trees to outer space is really all that is important, man’s material progress. That there is suffering and violence, brutality, etc, is man’s nature, ‘human nature’…that it can’t be radically changed. In myself there has been change from an exposure to the idea that there is a possibility for man that has been if not overlooked, misunderstood. In my understanding, it has to do with ‘attention’. In another context here Kimo (Inquiry) suggested that man’s ‘wrong turn’ was the development of “civilization”. That in the hunter-gatherer groups, there was no room for the concept of someone seeing themselves as ‘separate’ from his/her tribe. One unit, one organism…individuality not a possibility. Jack Pine, here on the forum, described the awareness of a soldier moving in the jungle, the intensity of attention demanded when a missed sound or movement could likely mean your death. With civilization, for most of us the need to be intensely aware of our surroundings diminished. We can still see it it our animal neighbors, the ‘fight or flight’ response always there in any moment. So is that absence of awareness of what we are doing, thinking, feeling, etc., a reason for what has become of us? A laziness of awareness, a void that has been filled by psychological thought? Another thing that can be observed in the animals, they live in the moment. To not ‘be in the moment’ can be death by a predator. Thought in us has created to a degree that can’t be found in any other brain here, the idea of a past time, a present time, and a future time…does that concept of ‘times’ which has been so instrumental in man’s discoveries, inventions, creations, etc. have any place at all in his psychological world? Is that the cause for what we see around and in us, the endless conflict, the beliefs in this or that? A mis-applied understanding of time?
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Thanks for your really interesting response, Dan…
If you let me, i would delete that “maybe” with which you start your post, since this type of thought denotes not just a thought, but a fact for most. We could even add the majority thought that “one alone cannot do anything to change the current state of things” … even if they think that it is possible to change some things in themselves (which is obviously a contradiction).
Now, why has “human nature” been widely accepted as INHERENTLY violent, brutal, etc. and that this cannot be radically changed? … Which in turn makes me wonder if there is any interest in making people think that this is so and that it cannot be otherwise.
Misunderstood, yes.
Now, what has been misunderstood and why?
It is obvious that if I approach any talk with a luggage i will try to fit what i hear in that luggage, so that by the time i leave i will have increased my luggage EVEN THOUGH in the talk i have heard that what i would have to do is remove that luggage or even get rid of it totally.
So in the end, if for example i had 100 words in my luggage before the talk, now i have 200 or more (depending on how long the talk has been 
) … Jokes aside, the real question here is, have i understood what we have been talking about, or have i simply compared it with what i already had in my luggage and draw the conclusion that i have understood and from there i agree or disagree with what has been said?
What does it mean to understand?
I don’t think so. The development of “Civilization” (for me) is simply the consequence of that “wrong turn”, which made “civilization” inevitably inherit and amplify all the patterns and ignorance of that “wrong turn” until today and beyond.
“Separated” in what sense? … That they had no room to see themselves as equal to other groups, with the same needs, the same fears, etc? … Where does the conflict between two groups or tribes really lie?
Why? … Just because the groups were bigger and some of their members began to feel more protected/secure? … What is your view behind that statement?
Can I ask something?
Why do we let others think for us? Is it really because of the laziness you speak of or because we have believed what others have told us that we cannot think for ourselves due to our ignorance? How can we be aware of what we do, think, feel, etc. If century after century have been others who have always told us what to do, think, feel, etc.?
And with all that luggage we now pretend to be aware of everything!
But, shouldn’t we ask ourselves before, deeply, where everything that I have in my head that makes up my reality and that of others has come from? And if it’s really mine or is it simply borrowed and accepted without further ado? Otherwise we will repeat the same pattern as our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. thinking that now we know more than they, so our thinking and our decisions will be much wiser than theirs … forgetting that that was exactly what they thought at the time.
And I know, it is difficult to suddenly question all my reality and try to see where it really comes from … because suddenly one is alone, one begins to think and observe deeply that supposed reality from within, without the help of crutches or braces to hold on to in case of difficulties, without having any idea where that path would lead.
And not everyone is willing to walk that path. So they start it with great enthusiasm but soon they turn back, and then they begin to talk to others about awareness, freedom, etc., something that they heard but never experienced, thus closing the uninterrupted cycle that our ancestors began centuries ago and that has endured INTACT to this day.
So I think it’s not laziness, Dan, but a terrible fear of being alone, with no crutch or brace to hold on to in case of difficulties.
I would say no, but rather a deep-rooted sense of permanence. If you go out and start telling people that we are immortal, everyone will laugh at you and call you crazy saying “Everyone knows that we are impermanent, that we are born and die and therefore we are only here passing through”. However, the reality is that all of them live their lives as if they were never really going to die.
Now, what was it before, that unconscious feeling of believing ourselves permanent or psychological time?
The mind, the self, does not want to die in any way, either physically or psychologically … So it constantly fantasizes about all kinds of puns that we all know quite well … JUST TO TRY TO GET NOT DIE, hence his fear of physical and psychological death.
So to finish, how can one become aware without ending first all this related here?
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Awareness needs no preparation does it? Figuring everything out and then at the end of all the analysis, awareness appears? Or is it the fear in the moment of not going through all that thinking…of just dropping it all? Thought says we must ‘understand’ before we can proceed. And that is the case when ‘knowledge’ is called for. That’s true when you’re building a rocket or something…but is it necessary here in the moment. The ‘baggage’ or “luggage” as you put it, of thought, memory, is it necessary for an understanding in this, the only moment there is. Thought fears silence. To thought, silence is worthless, silence is death.
But, psychological thought has to end, has to stop, has to die.Thought may not be able to ‘do it’, but is there at least the certainty that this is what must be done?
This is a very significant point, Dan! Preparation is just more action of the self…of non-awareness.
I’m afraid both of you have misunderstood my last question, since this “without ending first all this” did not refer to any preparation but to the end of others thinking for me, the end of being a second-hand person with all my accumulated knowledge and experiences, the end of being someone else’s puppet. In short: totally end whatever psychological crutch I may have and begin to observe myself fearlessly from within a psychological aloneness.
Since without that psychological aloneness, awareness cannot arise at all.
Thought can’t do it, being it the result of all our knowledge and experiences accumulated through time. Which means that whatever observation is made through it will be polluted by the past. “What is” can’t never be observed from “What was” without the former being polluted by the later.
How can we observe “What is” without dying totally to the past?
That is, to any psychological crutch i may have like knowledge, experiences, what someone else have said about “what is”, etc., as i have said above.
Re “second-hand”
A while back when the world was flat, people sensed that there had to be an end, an edge, a precipice, and if you went past it you would fall off the earth. Made absolute sense. And then people wondered about what would happen to you if you did fall off the edge…what was waiting ‘below’. had to be something right? Then some navigator found that there was no ‘edge’, the earth wasn’t flat, it was round! And it was turning! And everyone’s thinking changed (everyone who believed what they heard, that is). they did not discover this for themselves, someone else did and ‘told’ them about ‘what is’. K. and a few others did the same for us, as far as I see it. We did not discover that the “observer is the observed” or that the “thinker is the thought”, or that the “experiencer is the experience”, etc. , that was done for us…and left for us to find out the truth or falseness of it in ourselves. Until we heard about this, we were like the ‘flat-earthers’ working out of these dualistic minds, trying to figure it out, searching, chasing dreams of this or that. Without realizing that the ‘one’ doing the searching was an illusion of thought, thought playing a game with itself. A trick of thought: that this searcher was different, separate from what he was searching for…and also hoping that , in an illusory ‘future time’, he would attain it. The whole thing based on the idea that the self-image, the seeker, the ‘me’, was real and not a psychological illusion.
…simply changed their believing … without really “knowing” if that were so or not.
Wrong … K. and some others DID NOT DO anything for us. They just stopped, put aside all their knowledge, experiences and anything they might have heard or read about the truth, sat under the tree and said to themselves “I will not get up until I have found the truth for myself.” And only after they (supposedly) had found the truth did they TRY (without success) to share it with the rest of their fellow men and women out of compassion for them, wishing them free of any suffering.
And in that sharing they also told all those who decided to listen to them: “the word ‘truth’ is not the truth, so don’t try to see it with all your baggage if you are really interested in discovering what the truth is”.
But they not only did not put their baggage aside and listen, but they even made that baggage heavier, filling it even more with words.
So could you explain to me what K. and some others ACTUALLY DID for us?
Could you explain how K. and some others discovered it, being themselves human beings like us? … Could you explain why you think you cannot discover it also without having ever listened/read to K. and some others?
Are you trying to say that you see K. and some others like the Christians see Jesus, as saviors?
Are you trying to say perhaps, that we have realized what K. and some others said (or using your own words: “what they left us”)? How long has it been since you looked at the world? And haven’t you seen that we are still “working with these dualistic minds, trying to figure it out, searching, chasing dreams of this or that” despite all that (supposed) wisdom they left us “for us to find out the truth or falseness of it in ourselves”?!
By the way, if you dare to open and read the “Prajnaparamita Sutra” (pg.85 onwards) from Buddha, or the “Mulamhadyamakakarika (pg.105 onwards)” from Nagarjuna, you will surprisingly see that humanity has already known that the “observer is the observed” and all the rest, for (at least) 2520 years!!!. And we can all observe where humanity is still after 2520 years, and K. and some others, right? So as you can see, nothing has changed since time immemorial.
Now what do you think about what failed, is failing, and will continue to fail?
“Failed”, how, at what? What is the failure?