And words, images, and feelings arise spontaneously when you see or hear something. It’s a conditioned response the brain can’t stop. All it can do is be aware of its conditioned response, take an interest in it, and not make the mistake of trying to change its behavior, since its original mistake was choosing to be I, not just a brain.
So you disagree with the teachings of K. No problem,that is not my business.
Your problem is eagerness to draw conclusions.
My problem is all human’s problem.
Fear is the main human problem. I don’t know why we haven’t resolve it , not merely intellectually or logically but resolve fear through direct observation without the association of the intellect which is the past.
It is so simple that the mind rejects it.
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I don’t get it - the state of being afraid, is direct contact with fear, isn’t it? When the fear subsides enough, we can start thinking about the fear if we are so inclined - but when there is only fear, then that is pure emotivity. (nothing particularly transformative)
What does it mean to be aware of fear? I don’t suppose we just recognise that we are afraid (no transformation there)
In the other thread there is this idea of being trapped, focussed on particular contents - is simple awareness just lack of resistance : flowing from projection to projection, subjective delusion to sublective delusion, never caught in one idea?
Usually when one feels afraid one is not in the state of being fear.
Everybody feels afraid from time to time - almost nobody is completely aware of the fact of fear as it arises, so that the difference between themselves and the feeling (of fear) is annulled.
If you recall, in the thread titled ‘Can the mind be totally aware of total conflict?’ K was asking if one is ever “totally aware of conflict”, “totally full of this sorrow, this confusion, this conflict?”, and said that “I do not think we look at this confusion, this conflict so totally”.
This is probably the Krishnamurtian equivalent of the Great Doubt. One must be so completely with the state of fear (or suffering, etc) that there is no escape for the mind in any direction, so that there is only the state of fear, a complete attention to the fact of fear.
Then, K says,
When the steam is full it must do something: explode.
An explosion of attention that wipes away fear completely.
The problem with fear is that fear doesn’t feel good physically or emotionally. It is disorder that we can’t fathom . So we have created all sorts of defences against the feeling of fear.
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Concentration is inattention, according to Krishnamurti, if there is a total concentration of the senses creating extreme inner tension it can’t be attention, because attention includes care, not extreme tension. And fear can be intelligence in the words of Krishnamurti, it depends on the reason this fear comes about. You can only be cautious in a world you cannot trust if you have this fear/alarm warning you of the danger you can be exposed to.
If I am fear, the world is a fearful place. If I am afraid of my fear, and learn that watching it will make the fear go away - the sweaty concentration on my own fear is just the confused movement of fear.
I am trapped, there is no escape from me.
I am fear, and the movement away from fear, and I am all the scary things out there.
Hello, Macdougdoug!
If you put it like that, it sounds rather neurotic to me, and that ´s scary! Luckily we can always look for the next step and let unbiased awareness do its job! Luckily we can compensate mental activity and concerns with physical activity, that’s what Krishnamurti calls ebbing, I think! One must be aware of a balance between outer and inner energy, we can never let inner feelings prevail over this balance between the two!
The self is not always present, sometimes there is only activity without mental conflict/confusion.
But is this freedom from self or just momentary absence?
Are you sure? (I’m not, either way.) Is our sense of self like our sense of breathing? The body-mind knows 24/7 that it needs to breathe. It’s part of our foundation of existence, it doesn’t come and go. Is the self like that, present implicitly even when absent explicitly? Is there no escape?
Is the self absent when it is not active?
If we put aside the idea that I have an intrinsic existence, that I am a real thing/entity with an independant existence - but rather a process that is either on or off - then we could use the metaphor :
Is the water flowing when the tap is not turned on?
Today, someone at zazen class said : “my meditation was going so badly that I experimented with : trying to be aware/present to the next thought that appeared”
The next thought that arose was : “forget it, thats a silly experiment” and she promptly dropped the experiment - she mistook her thought for truth/authority.
Is the self ever fully not-active? Consciously? Unconsciously?
Is the past ever fully absent? If everything we think, feel, do is influenced to some degree by the past, born from the soil tilled in the past, is there ever no-past?
Maybe - as in : is non-conceptual spaciousness ever only that? Or is it always being filled with the past?
But isn’t the primary issue/problem the delusion of conceptual experience - as in how we relate to it as the ultimate authority (aka truth)?
That is: We don’t simply recognize the present is built on the past, we elevate the past to an authority position. Even worse, we elevate our flawed, biased memory of the past. What could go wrong? 
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There is escape and we know this because we escape constantly.
When we say there is no escape, what we mean is that there is no freedom when we can always escape.
Escape is all we know, so we think of freedom as the ultimate escape. But freedom can’t be escape - it has to be the end of escaping. And escaping can’t end until there’s no need for it.
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Well, Macdougdoug, I understand that there are moments when we are free from the self, meaning that there are moments when we transcend time, rather, our consciousness is beyond time, that’s good enough for me. But that is to move away from the issue that we started with, which was about fear and dissolving it by somehow causing an explosion with an attention so complete that I think falls within the field of concentration. I understand that selfless action means acting without a centre (to use the language that Krishnamurti uses), it doesn’t mean that there is no self. If there is no centre there is no pressure, no tension, so the image of the explosion doesn’t apply. Anyway, fear may disappear for the time being but there is still fear in the world and you are part of this world, that’s all.
Hi Jess - the notion of fear, or sorrow, or conflict being dissolved by an explosion of attention has been discussed on a recent thread that you may not have seen. The context for that thread was a discussion Krishnamurti had with some friends in India - I will share the relevant section of the extract so you can see why K used this language:
K: Is your mind totally aware of conflict? Or is it just words? … Is my mind totally aware that it is in conflict? Or is there a part of the mind that says, ‘I am aware that I am totally in conflict’? Or is there a part of me watching conflict? Or is there a part of me wishing to be free of conflict? Which means, is there any fragment which says, ‘I am not in conflict’? Or is there any fragment which separates itself from the totality of conflict?
If there is a separate fragment, that is all foolery. Then that fragment says, ‘I must act, I must do, I must suppress, I must go beyond.’ Please, this is a legitimate question: is the mind totally aware that there is only conflict? … Is your mind totally aware that there is nothing but conflict? Or is there a fragment, a little part, which skips away and says, ‘Yes, I know, I am aware I am in conflict. I am not in conflict, but I know.’ So is conflict a fragment or total?
I will keep to the same [point], only put in a different word for the time being: is there total darkness or a slight light somewhere? … Is [the mind] ever aware that there is total conflict? …
When the room is full of furniture – forgive me if it’s a wrong example – there is no space to move. I would consider that utter confusion. Is my mind so totally full of this confusion that it has no movement away from this? If it is so completely full of confusion, conflict, and full of this furniture that’s in the room, then what takes place? That’s what I want to get at – not a partial this and a partial that. When the steam is full it must do something: explode. And I do not think we look at this confusion, this conflict so totally.
Could I use the word ‘sorrow’? May I? Now, there is no moving away from sorrow. When you move away from sorrow, then it is just an escape from it, or suppression, all the rest of it. Can one be full of sorrow? Not ‘Can one?’ Is there such a thing as being full of sorrow? …
So I say, ‘Remain with the fact of that thing’… Is the mind totally full of this sorrow, this confusion, this conflict? I won’t move away till that is so… If the heart is full of love and there is no part of envy in it, the problem is finished. It is only when there is a part that is envious that the whole problem arises.
PJ: Then one is full of envy.
K: Therefore remain with it, remain full of envy, be envious, feel it.
PJ: Then its total nature undergoes…
K: …a tremendous change.
PJ: In itself it undergoes a change.
K: Of course that’s what I am saying. When you say, ‘I am envious and I must not’, when somewhere in the dark corner is the educational restraint, then something goes wrong. But if you say, ‘Yes, I am envious’, and don’t move from that… Moving is rationalizing, suppressing, all that. Just remain with that feeling.
(from Explorations and Insights, Chapter 5)