I observe whatever pops up in my mind: thoughts, feelings, images, inklings, emotions. I do it either because the spiritual communities I pay attention to all tell me I should, or to help me get out of a painful obsessive loop, or (less often) out of sheer curiosity and interest in what makes things tick.
So, to continue the previous line of inquiry - i.e. consciousness, the contents of consciousness, and the choiceless awareness or non-judgmental observation of whatever is arising in (or as) consciousness (which is the flowering and also the emptying of the contents of consciousness)…
And now - as this is another topic to which K gives a lot of importance - thought.
K’s talks usually explore the various contents of consciousness in turn: pleasure, fear, desire, images, hurt, self-interest, suffering, death.
In the course of doing this he also touches upon a dimension that lies beyond consciousness: beauty, love, compassion, attention, insight, meditation and the sacred. But these - he says - can only come about through awareness and attention (not thought).
So why does K feel the need to analyse thought and its nature?
Obviously, thought is the substance of consciousness, thought has put together the contents of consciousness. But why does K feel that a full comprehension of the nature of thought is such a key component of his teaching?
Apparently it is because his approach is negative.
That is, in order to point out the importance of the state beyond thought - i.e. observation, attention, intelligence, love, etc - he feels it is necessary to first be aware of, to see clearly, the eclipsing dominance of thought, its nature, its all-pervasiveness in our lives.
Last Talks at Saanen 1985
Talk 2
I am asking you, the speaker is asking you: what is thinking? And you begin to think.
All our life is thinking and sensation. The child says, ‘My book’, ‘That’s my swing’—that is thinking. By thinking mankind has sent a rocket to the moon. But that thinking also put a flag up there. To go all that way to the moon and put up a flag! …
Thought has created the whole world of technology. Astonishing things are being done of which we have very little imagination, which we know very little about—the computer, the extraordinary submarines and so on and so on. All that has been done by thinking—right? And thought has built the most extraordinary buildings.
When you write a letter you have to think, when you drive a car you have to think, so thinking has become extraordinarily important for all of us.
Thinking is part of our programme. We have been programmed: I am a Catholic, you are a Protestant, I am a Muslim, you are a Hindu, you are a Communist, I am a Democrat—you follow? It is part of our conditioning. We are being programmed by newspapers, magazines, the politicians, the priests, the archbishop, the Pope—you know the whole thing, how we are being programmed.
So thinking is what? Why do you think? Why do you think at all? Why don’t you just act?
You can’t. First you design very carefully what you are going to do—is it right or wrong, is it as it should be or should not be?—and then your emotions, sensations say it is all right or all wrong, and you go and do it. All this is a process of thinking. Should I marry, should I not? That girl is right, that girl is not…
Thinking has done an extraordinary amount of harm—war, hate, jealousy, wanting to hurt others. So what is thinking?
The so-called good and the so-called bad thinking, right thinking and wrong thinking; it is still thinking. Oriental thinking and Western thinking; it is still thinking. What is thinking? …
You cannot think without memory. Then what is memory? Go on. Put your brains into it.
Remembrance, long association of ideas, long bundle of memories: I remember the house I lived in, I remember my childhood. That is what? The past. The past is memory. You don’t know what will happen tomorrow but you can project what might happen. That is still the action of memory in time.
How does memory come? This is all so simple. Memory cannot exist without knowledge.
If I have knowledge of my accident in a car which happened yesterday—it didn’t—that accident is remembered. But previous to that remembrance there was the accident, which was the knowledge—right? The accident becomes knowledge, then from that knowledge comes memory. If I had had no accident there would be no memory of an accident…
Knowledge is always limited whether now or in the future, so memory is limited. So thought is limited. Right?
This is where the difficulty is. Thought is limited. Whether it is noble or ignoble, religious, or non-religious, virtuous or not virtuous, moral or immoral, thought is still limited. Whatever thought does is limited…
Anything that is limited must create disorder; if I am a Muslim, which is very limited, I must create disorder; if I am an Israeli, I must create disorder, or a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Christian, and all the rest of it. So is thought the very root of disorder? Go into it, sir…
So, as human beings, we have lived for millions of years in a state of violence, disorder, conflict—and all that is brought about by thought. All of it.
So one begins to enquire: is there something else which is as active, as clear, as precise and energetic as thought?
K discovered long ago that thought is very limited. Nobody told him; he discovered it, or came upon it. Then he began to ask, is there another instrument like that?
Thought is within this brain, within this skull. The brain is the holder of all thought, all memories, all experience. It is also all emotion, sensation, nervous responses. It is the vast memory that is held there, racial, non-racial, personal—all that is there. And the centre of all that is thought. It may say, ‘No, it is something else’, but that is still thought. When it says it is seeking super-consciousness, it is still thought.
So one asks, K asks, is there another instrument, or not an instrument, a wave, a movement which is not of this kind?
Whats this about? Why does something that is limited necessarily creat disorder?
I can’t see the link, the therefore.
Actually, there is the idea that if I act from a tiny bit of knowledge, the possibility of wrong action is immense - Is that what we’re talking about?
I don’t know if you’ve seen the two part discussion between K and Bohm (in 1983 at Brockwood)? Bohm asks K the same question.
I can’t remember the exact example that they use, but Bohm says something like - “The table is limited, the glass of water sitting on the table is limited, why need that create disorder?”
K replies by saying something like - “Obviously it doesn’t. I am talking purely psychologically.”
By psychologically K means things like identification with a nation, race, class, religious affiliation, etc; any personal identification with belief, ideology, with one’s past experiences, achievements, status, etc.
I.e. everything that divides a human being psychologically from another.
We’ve been psychologically ‘divided ‘ from one another for so long, it’s difficult to see ourselves as just another animal species but with a big brain. Technologically we’re tops but psychologically we’re a mess.
Yes. As has been discussed elsewhere, the over-valuation of thought - or rather the mistaken sense of reality given to thought - seems to have been the ‘wrong turn’ of humanity.
When thought (or the psychological contents created by thought) became as real as other people, animals, trees, and rivers, a ‘wrong’ path opened up.
There is a simple, useful arena for thought to act in (i.e. practical thought), where it doesn’t need to build up a sense of self, or create religious, national, or racial, class-based identities, etc. Otherwise, thought may not be necessary at all.
A little later in the talk I quoted from (Talk 2, Saanen, 1985) K asks
Can the brain use thought—act thoughtfully when it is necessary but otherwise, have no thought? You understand? Can the brain when necessary use thought?
It is necessary to live with thought when you drive a car, when you eat, when you write a letter, when you do this or that. All that is the movement of limited thought—that is, when necessary, thought can act.
But otherwise why should it chatter all day long?
So the limitation of thought is not problematic when it is practical, technological, scientific thinking. But the limitation becomes dangerous when it involves psychological activity.
The problems that thought has are multiple, according to K.
First of all, thought is not its object. The idea of a bird is not the actual bird. So to mistake the idea for the real thing is a danger that comes with giving too much importance to thought.
Secondly, and relatedly, thought is limited. That is, even the most comprehensive thought (or image) can never be anything more than a fragment of the whole, a limited abstraction of the whole. Thought can never capture the wholeness of a real perception.
Thirdly, thought is always late. That is, because thought is essentially memory, thought always arises from the past, and so takes place in the past (as it were). When we see a real bird, it is living in a present perception, it is present before us, real. But our idea or image of the bird is always playing catch-up with the present, but never arriving - and so is always the past.
Fourthly, thought is a material process (taking place in the neuro-chemistry of the brain). This is significant because the images that humanity has typically created about God, truth, nirvana, Atman, etc have implicitly been considered sacred. But if my idea of God (my image of God) is simply a movement of neuro-electrical impulses in the soft tissue of the brain, then my image of God is rather insignificant.
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But one can’t choose choiceless awareness.
Mindfulness, then. Nonjudgmental observing of what arises in the mind.
Can you do that? …
It very well may be that this is what is necessary to “set man free”, free in the sense of delivering the brain from its entrapment in a “network of words” as K put it. And that would include ‘judgements’ about almost anything. So ‘non-judgement’ isn’t an option for it except in the most inconsequential matters. This option is not at our beck and call.
Sure! We all (here) can! Not 100%, but to a meaningful, even life-changing degree.
Say you happened upon an approach that ushered you into a state of nonjudgmental observing. Sit, relax, take three long breaths … and (if all goes well) you’re there. Is the ‘there’ necessarily tainted by the rote mechanics of the approach?
No not at all but I think this ‘attention’ is a completely different animal that what we may come upon sitting quietly. He described his “secret “ as “ not minding what happens”. I don’t take from that a ‘sometime’ experience, but a state of mind that is free from what goes on mentally. Freedom from the known. He described attention as a different “dimension” of awareness. Beyond the superficial awareness we know. To be ‘non-judgemental’ about one’s own jealousy or anger or loneliness sounds to me like a state beyond. These ‘messengers ‘ say the state they found is ‘reachable ‘ by us…I don’t know.
Attention,
K (and others) referred to attention as the greatest virtue.
When the washer on the tap is leaking, one attends to that fairly quickly. When you see people getting real angry with each other, one moves away fairly quickly. When one was leaving a resto years ago in San Fran, and it was dark, and one crossed the street to get to one’s car, one sensed someone following - moving behind oneself, and one attended to that really quickly, getting into one’s car real quick, and locking the doors…
Now, K talks about seeing a snake, and jumping away immediately. He was always extraordinarly attentive to everything around him (apart from his connection to Rajagopal, and a few others). Personally, never saw one of those snakes, growing up in an area of the world where venomous snakes didn’t really exist - apart from when quite young, walking home one night, and seeing someone following oneself. As soon as one came across a side street, one immediately turned into that side street and ducked into a dark door entry way, and waited, all the while listening to footsteps walking back and forth for a good 5-10 minutes, until that “snake” gave up and walked away…
The brain, when healthy, works well to understand danger to one’s physical well-being… When unhealthy, it is oblivious to what is dangerous and harmful to itself.
It boggles one’s mind how people hang around “snakes”, feeling and thinking themselves immune to any danger.
edit: oh my, oops, just realized who started this thread, apologizes for posting here…a moment of inattention 
Is your thought about attention being a different animal based on your trust of the messengers, your intuition, your experience?
Psycho-spiritual well-being also.
When unhealthy, it is oblivious to what is dangerous and harmful to itself
Not only oblivious, it invites danger and harm and other forms of arousal.
You think we all can be non-judgmental “to a meaningful, life-changing degree”, but if you can’t prove it, demonstrate it, live it, it’s just something you believe.
Even if it can be demonstrated that the conditioned brain can be temporarily disabused of its prejudice and bias to be non-judgmental (with or without the use of psychedelics), it isn’t transformation of the brain.
If I needed to prove/demonstrate everything I said about either myself or especially anyone else, I would have to preface everything with: possibly, probably, maybe, imo, etc. (Which I usually do, but not always.) This pretty much stymies the flow and scope of communication/exploration.
Even a brain that is conditioned up the wazoo has the ability to recognize degrees of judgement that it imposes on the world. It might not want to do this, it might need some help or guidance, but most brains are quite good at meta-observation, looking at themselves, it’s built into the hardware/software.
So yes I think (believe, can’t objectively prove, speculate) that a conditioned brain can know when it is being more or less judgmental.