This is important that it’s a ‘one-way street’. Intelligence ‘reads between the lines of thought’ is the way I recall Bohm putting it. It can influence thought but not the other way round. But thought once affected by intelligence can ‘align itself’ with intelligence and move in a different direction. Many examples like nationalism or religious beliefs and rituals etc, once ‘seen through’ by intelligence, loose their hold on the mind!
We are conditioned to keep and defend our beliefs and conclusions ie our knowledge, but in the psyche this is all always the past. The moment to moment learning (awareness) about ourself keeps the ‘door’ open to the possibility of seeing things anew….intelligently.
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Hi, Dan!
In the book ‘The Future of Humanity’ at some point David Bohm tells Krishnamurti: ‘Well, intelligence can use thought, as you have often said. That is, thought can be the action of intelligence - would you put it that way? (…) Or it could be the action of memory?’ To which Krishnamurti answers: ‘That’s it. Either it is the action born of memory and memory being limited, therefore thought is limited…’ (…) Yes, that intelligence has nothing to do with memory and knowledge’.
What I understand from all this is that, as human beings, if we want this intelligence to operate in our lives, we must use the right tools to bring it about, such tools as you say being awareness and I would say meditation and others. And this is from moment to moment.
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You say “for example” and provide no examples of “very confused points of view”.
Why do we turn to K, or quote him, have we turned that authority into a crutch or a weapon?
We’re here to talk about K’s teaching. If you feel anyone here is using K’s teaching “into a crutch or a weapon”, be specific and provide examples of what you’re referring to.
As long as we are not aware of the motivation driving us, we cannot adequately pretend that we are inquiring honestly.
Are you aware of what motivates you to keep sounding the alarm about something you can’t show the existence of? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, but where there’s only constant smoke alarms…
Before responding (on a K forum) should we not at least take a second to see what is driving us? Is this not the beginning of consciousness in its place ie. no longer the ultimate authority; no longer mine or yours but a ripple, an expression of the whole.
Good advice, to yourself as well as everyone else here.
I’m asking whether we can be aware of the movement of self - for example our desire for certainty, and the dictat of conclusion, and how that is a very real danger, obvious in our relationships here.
Is this a forum for battling philosophers, or are we taking the fact that there actually is a problem seriously? A problem of relationship that cannot be addressed by trading certainties.
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Should one be uncertain about what Krishnamurti was saying and what he meant by what he said, or must one “get” the message as K intended it to be received?
As for “the dictat of conclusion”, I’m not sure what you mean. Aren’t we here to study and determine what K’s teaching is so we won’t need to keep coming back to it, referring to it, arguing about it, interpreting it, making it a lifelong study that never ends? Was that what Krishnamurti intended for it?
You say “our desire for certainty” is a real danger. Are you saying one’s desire to have little or no misunderstanding of what K said and meant is a danger? If so, please explain.
Is this a forum for battling philosophers, or are we taking the fact that there actually is a problem seriously?
Give an example of this alleged philosophying.
are we taking the fact that there actually is a problem seriously?
Can you make it clear what this “problem” is that you keep alluding to but never directly address?
When I made it abundantly clear that Paul Dimmock was violating and abusing the spirit and purpose of this forum, you objected. But as it turned out, he confessed his duplicity and mischief and revealed that he was more interested in “meeting” someone who loved him than in learning about K’s teaching.
Wouldn’t if be better if you quit hemming and hawing and said what you’re so reluctant to say so we know exactly what your concern is?
One concern is that I am the new villain in your mind. Maybe I best avoid addressing anything you say, and see if that helps.
“Villain” is an overstatement. Dimmock was mischievous, if not malicious in the way he jerked people around. I know your concern is sincere, but you don’t believe in confrontation. Why don’t you communicate by message instead of publishing your concern and distracting from the study of K’s teaching?
Would you say that K was conditioned to keep and defend his beliefs and conclusions, i.e., his knowledge, @danmcderm?
Whether your answer is yes or no, why?
I can’t know that, but listening to him, it seems unlikely. His stated aim was to set man unconditionally free so he must have thought that what he had discovered in himself and in others that that was a possibility. I have seen enough in myself to agree with much of what I have heard and read. And ‘insights’ seem to keep on coming. I’ve heard that he wished to keep his message from being interpreted though I don’t know what that means, distorted maybe? I see him as a ‘pointer’ not as someone to be idolized. Man is in trouble and I think that he thought that what he had discovered, could possibly help?
He dealt in facts.
To take K’s teaching seriously, one must be honest enough to admit one does not know whether he was free of conditioning; be open to the possibility that he may have had no illusions, no psychological thought creating the conflict and confusion that is our condition.
The truth is that one can’t honestly know if Krishnamurti was who/what he seemed to be because our capacity to perceive directly, deal only with facts, is limited to practical matters that don’t conflict with our biases, prejudices, hopes, fears, desires, self-images, etc., and one can’t know until/unless the brain is free of the contents that sustain conflict and confusion.
Moment to moment can avoid this action of looking from becoming a looking from memory, from the past ie, a technique. What it can reveal is the duality of an observer, me, observing what is going on. So along with the sensations, there is this me as observer who ‘stands apart’ and judges what is taking place…wishing it to change if perceived as negative and to continue if judged as positive. K has said that there is no real duality here, that the observer is the observed! So the looking ‘moment to moment’ can avoid thought creating a ‘more subtle’ observer, from creating a ‘continuous’ observer? How do you all see this? Is the ‘observer’ the root of psychological suffering?
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We must not turn the teachings into theories as much as not turning them into techniques. Observing without the observer has become a big issue in the Krishnamurti discussions, but that comes about to some extent from the tendency many people who listen to Krishnamurti have to try and find a mystical meaning in what he said. In some way, we all know that the observer is not the observed, on the other hand the observer is in fact the observed because we look at things and judge according to our conditioning. I’m putting it in a simple way and I think that’s the right way to put it. Now, Krishnamurti speaks of attention in a special way as you know. Attention coming from ‘attend’ when you give your attention to something or somebody you care about that something or that somebody. It’s a holistic attitude which means that there is no observer separate from the observed looking because the observer cares , it all happens inside the observer as we find this sort of experience in the many descriptions written by Krishnamurti about the beautiful moments he has lived. ‘Psychological suffering’?? That’s quite a tricky subject and we don’t want theories anyway.
In what way is the observer not the observed? What do you mean by this?
The closest I can get is that : just because I am perceiving, interpreting and reacting to my brains projections, does not mean that there isn’t an objective reality. And that I am part of that objective reality.
Do we just mean that it feels like I am in here, observing what is out there, separate from me. It feels like what I am perceiving, is some actual thing that exists independantly of me; that I am detecting some independant truth, out there.
PS. I am not claiming the non existence of objective reality, we are inquiring into what I observe.
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Macdougdoug,
That is the most prosaic thing in the world, I would say. The tree has a life of its own, it does not exist just because I perceive it! I can help in changing it or even destroying it, but otherwise it will live and die independently of passersby, so, in this sense, the oberver is not the observed.
I think you are saying that the world I imagine to exist out there continues to exist when I close my eyes. I must agree that I can still imagine a world with my eyes closed, but this does not mean that I am observing anything other than my own projections.
I know about trees. The trees that I know about exist in my imagination. Does the tree in my mind exist also outside of my mind? When I look at a tree, am I detecting what actually exists, or am I seeing something completely invented by my brain?
I am not claiming that nothing exists apart from what is perceived by me. I am asking what it is we see.
I think what you are saying @Jess is that there is an objective reality that is not dependant on what I observe (but that does not mean that I am observing anything other than my projections.)
Also, with the risk of confusing the issue further, I feel like I am separate from the tree, but the concept of separate objects may actually be dependant on the process of perception/interpretation. I mean : separation may be impossible to demonstrate (though it can be a very useful concept/model)
Can we clarify how we understand K’s ‘The observer is the observed’? Also ‘the thinker is the thought’ which I remember reading that Bohm said was the easier of the two for him to grasp…which is also the case for me. Ordinarily the ‘observer’ me stands apart from what I am observing so K’s statement from that viewpoint makes no sense. But taking the duality away by including me in the observed leaves me as ‘part’ of the observed, the picture that I have painted from ‘my’ experiences, my ‘content’, my reality? Self knowledge then is learning or moving with this ‘personal’ reality effortlessly without judgement , condemnation, comparison etc. This is the task for each of us?
To be as ‘nothing’ , to be with the known and be free of it?
Macdougdoug,
It seems you enjoy doing exercises on speculation but I don’t think it will help create a good society (it might but in a very abstruse way). I would say that science only exists and dominates today’s world because people believe in an objective reality, so I don’t see why you’re saying that ‘separation may be impossible to demonstrate’! The thing is Krishnamurti spoke of a ‘true religion’ where everything is in relationship and he also speaks of ‘standing alone’ in this relationship… this is a difficult equation to understand and actually live, that’s all.
The way I see it is that the body and its environment can never be separate. The body changes, environment changes, but they are never separate. We are living, breathing, and perceiving the connection.
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I enjoy attempting (or feel it is important) to look at our thought process together. By which I mean : our attempt to communicate is an invitation to be fearless and innocent. Can we examine our beliefs, look at what we are saying without authority, without fear/pride/identification? (whilst obviously remaining within our shared framework of culture, scientific fact and logic)
If I am saying something that goes against current scientific understanding, I hope that someone will point it out, and I will retract it immediately.
How would one go about demonstrating the truth of the claim? ie. that it is a part of fundamental reality rather than an emergent property of perception/interpretation.
Does the fact that our brain creates the projection that we call experience (or reality) not address the concept fully enough for you?