“Can you know the unknowable, that state which we call death, while living?”
Krishnamurti For Beginners | Ojai 6th Public Talk, 21st July 1955
Can the brain know the unknowable when it doesn’t really know anything more than what it believes? To know the unknowable, wouldn’t the brain have to know when it is out of its depth, in over its head, facing the mystery of existence?
This brain is engaged in the ongoing process of distorting actuality to conform to its beliefs, opinions, suspicions, fears and hopes…its psychological contents. This bundle of memories undergoes constant moderation because life is dynamic and the brain’s contents, the known, must keep up.
But does this brain see the foolishness, the self deception, of what it is doing, or does seeing it make no difference when it’s the only thing it knows? Clearly, this brain is committed to the insanity of creating and maintaining the illusion of sanity. But knowing this is better than not knowing it, isn’t it?
“Can you know the unknowable, that state which we call death, while living? Can you put aside all the descriptions of what happens after death which you have read in books, or which your unconscious desire for comfort dictates, and taste or experience that state, which must be extraordinary, now? If that state can be experienced now, then living and dying are the same.”
K Ojai 6th Public Talk, 21st July 1955
Knowing this rather than that is still the movement of the known.
I hold on to what I know, and if I can improve what I know, if I can hold the correct conclusions, then the authority of the known is reinforced.
I can even use what I know to smash those who know lesser things than I.
"So, can I, who have vast education, knowledge, - can I come to an end?
I is the recorded memory of all that (including my conclusions about K’s teachings) can that “I” come to an end?
Can you and I while sitting here know that end? Then you will find that you will no longer ask foolish questions about death and continuity,.
Then you will know the answer for yourself, because that which is unknowable will have come into being.
The brain in its ignorance brings into each new moment its knowledge, its experience, its ‘mess of potage’ denying itself its ‘birthright’ which is to be ‘present in the Presence’?
Like night and day? There are many things we must obtain to survive. But the self-striving is different. It brings the old into the new. It needs to see the danger in that and ‘die’ to itself in the moment. Without the perception that that is absolutely necessary the brain can’t let go of the past.
The perception of the self-danger is intelligence or insight, that shows the brain how it has trapped itself.
By definition we cannot know the unknowable, it would be like seeing what we cannot see. But we can (perhaps) experience and be the unknowable. What would this mean: to experience death in life, to be death?
When I am out hunting (or gathering) - if I accept my situation fully, as in dedicate myself 100% to the situation - there is no space for me and my suffering - there is just the hunt (or the gathering of delicious backberries, the sound of birdsong, the sunlight on the skin) and my concerns about future me is nowhere to be found.
The experience is not important. What it feels like to not be is only important in that we might lose our fear of not being.
What is important is not that I have some experience. What is important is my relationship with my imagination. Am I totally subservient to my image (of death or of life)?
What is important is the acceptance of “death” - whether I die or not is besides the point (though actual (psychological) death would prove that death is not what I imagined)
Freedom from harm (that is caused by humans) is about freedom from the known (and our evolutionary psychology) - freedom from the confusion being driven by this primitive process arises via an understanding of that process.
Psychological death is what we call the death of fear, of the I - freed from that existence, life is no longer simply the mirror of pleasure and pain.
I’m with you assuming by ‘understanding’ you mean a ‘seeing’ that goes beyond the merely rational and intellectual. For me, it’s where logic breaks down that things get really interesting and illuminating!
Of course. I doubt that anyone here is beyond the movement of the known. But the difference between believing I’m doing my best, and knowing I’m doing what I am conditioned to do, is critical.
I can even use what I know to smash those who know lesser things than I.
I’m not sure I know what you mean by a “lesser thing”. Give an example, please.
Why use the word “smash” in this instance? Is pointing out to another what they do not know or misunderstand a violent act?
It would be a mistake to think that nonsense illuminates anything - Or if thats not completely true - it would be a mistake to think of nonsense as a path to truth.
Freedom from rationality may arise as an effect of openess, but habitually it is merely a sign of confusion.
This raises the question of what Krishnamurti meant by being free of the known. He couldn’t have been saying the brain must purge itself of all its knowledge because much of it is essential for technical and practical reasons that have nothing to do with the self.
So it seems to me he was implying that when intelligence is awakened, it knows what content the brain needs to keep and what not to keep.
Ditto for reason or anything else as a path to truth, quoth the Krishnamurti. That said, reason seems the better guide for the majority of truth-seekers than nonsense.