Without speculating?
If you take what Krishnamurti pointed to here as beyond words/description, then a strict application of Wittgenstein’s advice would be to not speak/think about it.
Who is saying that the question K is asking here is “beyond words/description”?
The question (slightly paraphrased) is:
What is preventing us from seeing the very simple fact that this world is ours, that this earth is yours and mine to live upon (undivided by nationalities, by frontiers, etc)?
The answer may be our self-interest. It may be the false significance we have given to thought, or to the temporary feeling of security that certain thoughts provide us with. It could be any number of things that we can put into words.
But the word is not the thing, right? The word “egotism” is not the actual movement of self-interest that this word is attempting to point to.
I feel you are mixing up what cannot be communicated (i.e. the state of compassion in all its profundity) with what we can actually talk about: namely, our own lack of love, lack of compassion.
No-one, apparently! I misinterpreted your previous posting, here’s the flow:
Me: The unknown, well, best I follow Wittgenstein’s advice and shuttahellupaboutit!
K: What prevents us from seeing the very simple fact that this world is … ?
You: Are you saying that we cannot do this?
I thought you meant “Are you saying we can’t do this because what Krishnamurti said is the unknown?”
I don’t remember discussing about the “unknown”? Maybe there was some miscommunication at some point up the thread?
In one of the OP quotes (no. 8) K asks whether true compassion can ever be communicated or transmitted to another - maybe this is what you were referring to?
Yes - we speculate based on what we know, our understanding of the whatever. Presupposition and projection and imagination are all part of the known.
Then: Nein!
Here’s where I brought it up:
Ah yes - you brought up the “unknown” in reply to my question, which was:
Can we go beyond “theory” and find out if we can touch, taste, smell this ‘fact’ that K has proposed, which is that we are the world?
The context for this question - which you may have missed - was a discussion between Emile and myself (and others), about whether K’s “You are the world” teaching might be an easier entry point into this discussion about compassion, than the statement made by K that:
So Emile was proposing that:
and that, furthermore
More plausible, that is, than beginning our dialogue with the idea of a compassion that can only exist when suffering and self have completely ceased (i.e. something that we currently have no direct experience of, no direct contact with).
So this is why I asked the question, Can we touch, taste and smell - make direct contact with - our kinship with the rest of the world?
For sure, I realise that with your Advaitist tendencies you might interpret this question as being unanswerable, because you probably interpret this as implying tat tvam asi or something similar. 
But same question, asked negatively (as K did in one of the OP quotations, here slightly paraphrased) is:
And I don’t think this question is unanswerable.
What is preventing us from directly perceiving our common kinship with the rest of humanity? Obviously, at one level, it is ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’.
And is there any evidence that the consciousness of another is intrinsically similar to our own? Well, yes: ‘they’ feel and laugh and suffer, and I also feel and laugh and suffer. We are not so very different in that respect (though, to be sure, this is a posteriori evidence, and not yet direct perception).
Any way, it isn’t clear to me that you want to explore this question further, so I will leave it there.
What about basic experience? It is usually considered part of the known. But is basic experience (sensation, emotion, vision, audition, balance, hunger, loneliness, mentation etc) part of “theory” or is theory my interpretation of experience?
Can we accept that I am experiencing hunger when I feel hungry? Or is this just delusion and possibly fallacious theory? (in your opinion - and why)
If we cannot accept that some experience is being experienced, then I suppose that the acceptation of not knowing is the only solution - no inquiry is possible?
Hello Emile. Yes, the meaning that K gave to compassion seems to have an intensity to it that anyone who has not undergone the kind of change K seemed to have undergone perhaps cannot experience. Most of us on this forum probably consider ourselves humane, we care for plants and animals and treat our fellow human beings, by and large, with respect and kindness. All of this is very important after all. But K seemed to go through some kind of revolutionary change which completely eliminated the separateness between him and other living things. At least that’s what I understand. After this happened, his closeness to all things living took on another dimension. How do others see all this?
Thanks for doing this James. This really helps us go deeper I think but I’ll need some time to reflect on all this.
It seems like a no-brainer: If I experience X, I am experiencing X. A tautology, of necessity true. It seems that you would have to be kinda kraazy to doubt it. Right?
Und so mon ami, OF COURSE I doubt it! (If I doubt it, am I doubting it?) What is this ‘I’ thing that is allegedly experiencing? What is X? From what perspective? Do I and/or X truly exist? What does it mean, to truly exist? If they exist, is I separate from X? If not, how can I ‘do anything’ like ‘experience’ to/with X?
Doubt applied universally (right on up to the cusp of absurdity) is a potent tool for inquiry (and ridiculous sounding foofaraw). Neti neti!
This is quite close to the path that led me to my “Everything is a story” schtick. I wouldn’t say no inquiry is possible, that wouldn’t be any fun! Rather: I’d say the fruits of inquiry are fictional, stories. Some of these stories might hew closer to ‘the truth’ than others, like hard sci-fi vs. fantasy novels, or (perhaps) the Upanishads vs. the writings of L. Ron Hubbard. But they’re all stories, as is everything we think, feel, do, and experience.
And, yes, I realize what I’ve just written is … wait for it, wait for it … a story.
(I.e. there is no red pill. Or better: The red pill just takes you to a more realistic story than the blue.)
I don’t think you can say this as you don’t seem to have any way of determining which is more realistic, nor even what realistic is, nor what a pill is or if it is, nor what red/blue means - the only option available seems to be silence or trolling.
Nor can anything I say make sense either to you (so I should keep silent too, really - if we were to accept your understanding of the situation)
The exact/correct description of the phenomenon in Absolute terms (as seen by some potential omniscient agent) may not be relevant when someone is kicked in the goolies - not stepping out in front of a speeding bus necessarily means that there is some reality/importance to the the statement : “X approaching Y” - whether X is actually made of inverse unicorn fluff waves or not is irrelevant.
If all that I can say is “Gah hgdg joo vvrrr”, what is the point in making the noise? In fact its worse than that, to be more precise I should ask : dhb hchxu xd “Gah hgdg joo vvrrr” hfhb bh? (actually, it might be worse than that - I should say : …)
Question : what makes absolute truth more truthful than relative truth?
It’s like the movie Inception: Is it ever possible to be 100% sure you’re awake rather than dreaming?
Remaining silent is boring! We want to interact, it’s a primal human need. Stories around the campfire.
Is it truthful-er? Or just different?
Guys - I’m not trying to be a thread-policeman, but the topic is compassion.
I know that Rick sometimes enjoys going wildly off topic (although he is well capable of staying on topic too); but macdougdoug, you ought to know by now that following Rick down these rabbit-holes rarely ends up anywhere super-constructive!!! 
Can we bracket any conversations about “the unknown”, “100% certainty”, “neti, neti”, “stories” etc for another thread, and keep our focus on compassion for this one? Thank you 
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Yes. I attempted to address this issue in my post on compassion (a) and compassion (b).
I wonder if it reflects the difference between his distinction between awareness and attention (or intelligence, insight).
In his last years he began to make a clear distinction between the brain and the mind. And in some of his talks and journals he mentions that awareness, watchfulness, and sensory seeing all take place within the brain. Sometimes he said that attention was inside the brain too, but usually he implied that attention - like insight, intelligence and love - was ‘outside’ the brain.
Although awareness - like affection and love - cannot be cultivated (according to K), we can experiment with awareness, with seeing, with listening, etc. Which is where I think compassion (a) comes in.
By compassion (a) I simply mean the feeling side of awareness, the part having to do with our emotional response - to beauty and ugliness, to joy and sorrow - both within ourselves and to others around us. In other words, it is part of what we might call sensitivity.
In contemporary discourse we might call this our interpersonal or emotional sensitivity - or “emotional intelligence” (obviously not intelligence in K’s sense of the word) - which involves our capacity for empathy, for sympathetic concern, etc.
All this depends on the degree of our awareness, and how sufficiently our emotional awareness (or sensitivity) is connected up with the rest of our activities (so that it isn’t compartmentalised). We cannot be sensitive without awareness. We cannot have sympathy, generosity, consideration for others without awareness. We cannot have pity or compassion for the killing of humans and animals without awareness.
And all of this has still to do with activity ‘within’ our brains.
But compassion (b) - as I provisionally called it above - goes ‘beyond’ the brain (according to K), and therefore beyond any ordinary experience we can reference with total confidence.
The very fact that K still calls it “compassion” implies that it has something to do with the quality of ordinary compassion - compassion (a) - that we already know about. But, as you say, it most likely goes way beyond this, because all sense of separateness has been “eliminated” in this greater compassion.
However, the one thing that we know for sure about compassion (b) is that it has to do with an insight into human suffering - or, rather, it is the insight into human suffering. So if we are serious about understanding what this compassion truly is, we will have to understand what human suffering really is - not just our personal sorrow, but the sorrow of consciousness itself.
I did a quick (ctrl F) search for “beyond” and “brain” - but came up empty.
@James could you give a K quote about compassion being beyond the brain? Or maybe an idea of what compassion from beyond the brain might mean? Is it that compassion does not arise from the intellect/mentation or biology?
Sure.
K sometimes uses a similar language in his famous Notebook, but he only began to make a more consistently clear distinction between ‘brain’ and ‘mind’ following the 1980 “Ending of Time” series of dialogues he had with Bohm.
Here are 3 quotes on the subject (one must bear in mind that for K the words ‘compassion’ and ‘love’ are virtually synonymous):
Is the mind different from the brain? Is the mind something untouched by the brain…? … And the brain has evolved through time. That’s obvious. Evolved through millennia, millions of years, accumulating knowledge, experience, memory, danger and so on. It is the result of time. Right? There is no question of argument about it. And is love, compassion, with its intelligence, is that the product of thought? You understand this? Is compassion, is love, the product, the result, the movement of thought? You understand my question? Can you cultivate love?
… So that which is not of time, which is not the product of thought, which is not the material process, is the mind. Thought, as we pointed out the other day, is in itself disorder, and mind is entirely, absolutely order, like the cosmos, like the universe. (Madras/Chennai, Question and Answer 1, 6th January, 1981)
The mind is outside the brain - the speaker is saying, the scientists are not saying that. The speaker says the brain is one thing, and mind is something entirely different. The brain with all its content, with its struggles, with its pain, anxieties, can never know, understand the beauty of love. Love is limitless. (Bombay Question & Answer Meeting 9th February 1984)
The brain is the storehouse of all memories. It is the seat of all reaction and action, response, both neurologically, psychologically, subjectively - it is contained as consciousness in the brain…. And so the brain is limited although it has got infinite capacity because in the technological world look what they are doing. And psychologically, subjectively, we are very limited. That’s part of the brain. The mind is something entirely different. The mind is outside the brain.… Like love is not within the brain. It is outside. (Brockwood Park 4th Public Talk 2nd September 1984)
Roger that. Wonderland exploration put on temporary hold.
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