Do you know what negative thinking is?

Kinfonet Discussion
22

Negative thinking is basically just intelligence, the intelligence to see: “what is” false, “what is” based on conditioning, “what is” based on corruption, etc. Negative thinking is not the opposite of some coin (of thinking), it is not the opposite of positive thinking.

Negative thinking is the absence of thought, the absence of thinking. In the awareness of “what is”, there is no thought operating.

In positive thinking, all the thinking that is normally done by almost everyone is done through analysis.

There is the seeing (via intelligence) of positive thinking in almost every aspect of the world. In sports, as it is played in the Olympics and in all competitive activities, this is all based on positive thinking. Trainers use positive thinking to train their athletes. Politics uses positive thinking to get support from electors - the ever-growing economy (the yellow brick road), the emphasis on stats to buttress belief in how many jobs are available and whether everyone of the citizens are holding down jobs - jobs which enrich only a few people, which exploit the majority, which is all a horrid arrangement. Students in most schools are indoctrinated to think critically, to analyze, etc.; educators are indoctrinated to praise and encourage the intellectual, who is rewarded with lucrative jobs, careers, all so as to support exploitation, greed, and enrich only a few, the rest just struggling to provide for their basic needs. All of this is part of the general corrupt society in which we all find ourselves, which is to be seen and understood. And then there is politics, “my” party vs. “your” party, etc. And, positive thinking encourages so-called democracies to shout “Freedom”, which is nothing more than the licentiousness and wilfulness of doing and feeling physically free in one’s activities, with very little consideration of another’s reality, or of the limits of nature to support such activities (hence climate change, etc.). Positive thinking lies behind all the advertising from billboards to TV. Positive thinking encourages bullies in autocracies to support the strong man - leading to wars, encouraging power, misogyny, and generalized violence, etc. In organized religion, positive thinking encourages an emphasis on “my” religion vs. “your” religion, beliefs in things that aren’t real, beliefs in “god”, the “creator”, praying (the very epitome of positive thinking), all with a view to cut the edge off of the general suffering of so many, giving psychological comfort, etc. - all of which results in the separation of one from understanding one’s own sorrow.

All of the above supports division. And the worst problem with positive thinking is that it makes it rather difficult or even impossible for anyone so indoctrinated and believing in the validity of their lifestyle to even consider possible something called negation (especially when they have only been operating with positive thinking for years and years). And that is because people like that view anything that is different from what they are accustomed with to actually do negation, because they assume and see everything as just what they are - just full of different opinions, which the so-called democracies encourage and support.

23

Sorry, I am not speaking academically, I was talking about the teachings of K. The point is that positive and negative are opposites, and just more of the traditional way of thinking, leading to opinion, debate, and all that stuff. In the way that traditional thinking is used to argue between people, it is a false intelligence.

24

Then why call it “thinking”?

25

Can the conditioned mind can do this and free itself, or is there nothing the conditioned mind can do to free itself because its notion of freedom is the power to choose and decide?

26

Exactly, when thought doesn’t interfere with the " what is" which is the holiest.

27

Peter!

Sorry, but you are not getting it. What everyone is taught/conditioned to learn through education is to think in school - and onwards, and the only kind of thinking they are taught is “critical thinking”. And, there is and has never been any opposite to “critical thinking”. Trust you get that, right?

K had a big job to do, to introduce everyone to a new 'way" (i.e. manner) of seeing the world. This wasn’t exactly “new”. The Buddha understood it and spoke of it. He referred to it as “nirodha” (negation). So, K in his wisdom, used the expressions “positive thinking” and “negative thinking” to begin to get people used to beginning to bring into being into their lives things like observation, awareness, etc. - so as to live in a wholistic way. I don’t recall him even using the expression “critical thinking”. But fundamentally, whenever he used the expressions “thinking” or “positive thinking”, he correlates these perfectly with what is known as “critical thinking”. It was neither brilliant, nor genius, it was wise, eh?? Some may consider this unfortunate that there appears to be - on the surface - this sense of opposites. That only indicates the degree to which this sense of opposites has been engrained and conditioned into people. However, considering how brainwashed everyone is (apart from their genetic conditioning, their parental conditioning and how it continues into the way they are being educated, etc.), Charley doesn’t see that K had much of a choice in getting people to see that they had been brainwashed. He had to get people interested in what he was talking about, about what he was offering. He was offering freedom. And there is no freedom in thought per se. No freedom results from thought… like ever! So, yes, he did the right thing. And, even hard-core intellectuals have started to experiment with awareness. Now, that’s good, and wonderful, right? And Charley has witnessed intellectuals on this site beginning to do and doing just that… :slightly_smiling_face:

So, either one begins to experiment with awareness and discovers what that does, or one doesn’t. That’s all. In the end, it’s your life, not mine. eh??

28

On occasions when the conditioned mind has little to lose by not interpreting.

29

I think most people would agree that interpretation continues (despite our theoretical prognoses).

The most useful form of psychological freedom would be the understanding of what our interpretations are : merely the mental expression of conditioning/experience - and not some ultimate description of reality - not the boss of my actions.
Maybe this could be considered negative thinking? Freedom from the known.

30

When I see there is thinking, the activity of thought, the movement of thought, of any kind, that is the negation. There is a stillness, a beauty, an integration with it all, undivided. A movement not limited to my thought, my activity; it is human thought and it is the past. I don’t make any case for what particular thought it is, nor how to understand it, nor how to live for one self. It is obvious, that’s all.

31

When we talk about negative thinking, the first thing that sticks with us is what is generally thought about thinking. We have been told that if we see things optimistically, we will fare better. The belief in progress is attached to this idea. Negative thinking has been set against this as the pessimistic variant from which one should actually distance oneself. People are distinguished according to whether they see the glass as half full or half empty. This concept is based on the fact that people have a need to feel more comfortable und successful within the circumstances in which they live, to be more comfortable with the life they are currently living.
But when we talk about negativity in thinking here, the starting point is the question of the limitedness of thinking in general, the way this limitedness shows itself in the form of life, the repetition of patterns, mechanisms, etc., combined with the question of living in a way that is not shaped by the limitations set by thought.
The study of these questions leads us to the point where we say that we must have a fresh mind with which to face the challenges of life. So one sees the need to empty the consciousness. What happened yesterday must not be able to have any effect on what happens today. But how to empty the consciousness? It cannot be emptied as one empties a backpack, simply by reaching in and taking out the contents piece by piece. Consciousness is identical with its contents. And so we are in the situation that we hold something in our hands of which we know that we must get rid of it, but do not know how to get rid of it, because we have to realize again with every new attempt that we hold it in our hands.
This is our situation. And no postulates and no statements will help us here. The knowledge of proper nourishment does not make us full.
Some see this as a paradox. But that does not help. It’s just another expression for the fact that thought has become entangled in a web of its own making. This does not dissolve the net.
If we now put this against the background of Krishnamurti’s teaching, the question arises in which way through the approach of Krishnamurti this net is dissolved.

32

As I was growing up my closest friends were Jewish. It would have seemed to me that putting them to death for being so would have been unspeakably wrong. Obviously not true for others. They ‘believed’ that would be fine and even a benefit to humanity. For them to ‘change their mind’ a negation of that belief would have to take place. Would thought itself be the source of that negation? That seeing into the anachronistic animal mind, it would see how ‘out of place’ the tribal consciousness is and simply seeing it for what it is, negate it? Seeing the destructive effects of divisive thought / beliefs, they dissolve, negate themselves, there is no ‘negator’.

Seeing the false as false negates it. What ‘sees’ is awakened intelligence.

33

Thought believes that following its own movement is “negation”.

34

When thought is disabused of a belief discovered by critical thinking to be false, one could call this the awakening of intelligence, but I think what K meant by that phrase is the illumination of the totality of thought - not just one part of the whole system.

Critical thinking is a tool, like a magnifying glass. Turned to one part of the whole, it brings to light crucial elements overlooked or distorted by hypocritical thought.

35

Inquiry,

You caught that one, eh? lol … which leads to the fact that meditation must be unconscious. Conscious meditation isn’t meditation… The “I” cannot negate, cannot see. While the “I” is in operation, so is thought, which implies that a part of the “I” is observing / listening to another part of the “I”… which hasn’t gotten to the point where the one doing that hasn’t yet realized that “the observer is the observed” - in other words, the seeing of the truth that “the observer is the observed”. And you are right, that really isn’t negation. :slightly_smiling_face: It isn’t negation because the conditioning hasn’t been seen as yet, the conditioning which lies at the source of the thinking which is going on. So, the “I” can hear the thinking, but that changes nothing at all. Loads of people believe they are meditating. It is always the conditioning which initiates the thinking - the conditioning must be seen and understood for there to be the freedom and negation of that conditioning. Then and only then. Until intelligence has arisen, until one meets K’s requirements, what lies buried deep within can’t be seen. The unconscious just won’t cooperate for the conditioning to be seen…

Years ago, Charley’s “I” tried to access a rather difficult and important conditioning (for months !!) - a conditioning which one knew about superficially. Charley just wasn’t ready then, it eventually arose all by it’s self… naturally. Intelligence must be fully awakened because it is intelligence which is the intermediary between reality and truth. When a right foundation has been laid, the unconscious will naturally and unconsciously yield up all its secrets, all orchestrated by intelligence. It is then that the mind is ready to see itself, to confront itself. Until then the brain which demands security will oppose/obstruct such seeing.

So, again, to summarize the listening to thought remains a static kind of thing… Many of the dishonest techniques by the fake gurus suggest brushing those thoughts aside, because - in a sense - they have experience there which has told them that just listening to thoughts is a useless activity…

36

" Sir, you are not agreeing with me; this is not a matter of agreement, but it is a matter of perception, seeing, because I want to go into the next question: what is negative thinking? If I leave Hinduism to become a Communist, it is a reaction; and that reaction does produce a certain activity which superficially is more beneficial but essentially limited, essentially conditioned, essentially destructive; if I leave Communism and become a Socialist or a Fascist, it is likewise a reaction; and if I leave all this and go off to the Himalayas or to Manasarovar, it is still a reaction. Now, such a reaction, though it looks negative, is a response to the positive. And what I am talking about as “negative thinking” has nothing to do with either of these two. The mind has to see the falseness of the so-called positive action and of the reaction to the positive - which it calls negative. The entirely negative action comes into being only when you see the falseness in the positive and the falseness in the negative, which is a reaction to the positive.

If I see something false in what has been said, in what has been maintained, then the action is not a reaction. The action of a man who sees that all spiritual organizations are false, that they cannot lead man anywhere except to slavery - such perception and the consequent dissolution of the spiritual organization, is not a reaction. It is a fact."
https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/bombay-5th-public-talk-1st-march-1961/Negative%20

37

So according to K negative thinking is seeing the false as false and truth as truth. To see is to think which is none verbal perception.

38

You know when I write, I see what I write. When I eat, I see what I eat. When I say something I see what I say. I also see some people will indulge themselves and pretend they don’t see they are picking on the ordinary use of language when they question, what is this, to see? This endless quarrel with people has really got to stop. See what you are doing, all of it, for yourself, and understand, you are the see-er, and its a matter of seeing clearly, not indulging your quibble with others words.

39

And yes, you can say following, or observing, there is a movement of thought, an inner voice, an inner dialogue, all of that, is a negation of thought. Rather than mock, be serious. Be alert to this mechanism of thought. It doesn’t have to be explained. It is observable, like an awareness of the bird singing in the tree, or the rustle of the leaves in the bushes. The observation, the awareness, the understanding, or the seeing, of this phenomenon, is what changes the nature of the mind. No word gets the point, right. It is you or me who gets the point or not.

40

A big “if”. If you could see and acknowledge how your interpretation causes mischief and misunderstanding, why would you keep doing it? For whom is the interpretation intended if its effects are not wanted?

41

If I may ask, did you mean to see is to think, or to see is not to think , which is none verbal perception ?