Examiner, it might be good if you could read some of K’s biographies. You may be right about respectability coming out of fear, possibly the fear of not belonging. But being respectful comes out of love. It’s what we do for others, like caring, being kind, being empathetic.
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Yes, when you want something from someone you become very kind.
When there is a motive behind kindness then there is thought acting in the background. And thought is sorrow and conflict.
That might be a good thread to discuss elsewhere, Examiner.
There is no method in meditation or understanding. She didn’t as usual get what k was trying to convey.
This is not multiple personalities. The physical shell has a voice. The conscious mind has a voice. The subconscious and unconscious minds have a voice of their own. And finally, the Higher Self has a voice of his own. Of course, in ordinary people, these different voices do not manifest separately, but they do manifest. In fact it is a nice exercise to see which of your thoughts come from the conscious, the subconscious or the Higher Self.
And yes, contrary to what K or the Buddha said, we do have a higher self.
Do the higher and the lower self have the same personalities?
No the lower self screams its right while the higher self assumes its rightness, but they use the same body.
At the same time what is in the name?
A rose is a rose by any name,
like shit stinks by any name!
The higher self is the radiant spark of God with all qualities the same as that of God. The lower self is the foreign matter surrounding this spark, because of which the higher self (or real self) of a person is unable to fully manifest. the analogy of the clouds hiding the sun applies here. what exactly is the foreign matter ? it is the mind with unhealthy ideas and habits and tendencies (or conditioning) and the physical body and negative emotions from the emotional bodies.
think about the difference in perception and insight in a person like Krishnamurti and an average person. K is able to see clearly to some extent, but an average person is attached to his nationality and religion and various other conditioning factors, so he is not able to perceive clearly because of the foreign matter surrounding the divine spark. awareness is one of the attributes or properties of the higher self. this awareness can see quite clearly in those areas where there is no obstruction through conditioning (foreign matter), but can see dimly in those areas where conditioning is an obstruction.
the whole point is to free awareness (or the divine spark) from these conditioning layers so that the divine in man has a chance to fully express itself. it is (in almost everyone) able to express itself in a few limited areas where there is little or no conditioning, but stumbles in those other areas where the man is not free.
So is there only one self who’s a bit confused? and when its confused we call it the lower self?
Thanks to K, it is difficult for me accept beliefs outside of science. There are several theories about what went on it this case, but I prefer to stick to the medical explanation. The more we understand trauma, the clearer this case becomes.What is Trauma?
Yes because thought is measurement. Thought says the lower self and higher self but in fact there is one mischievous self that wears different masks at different occasions. That is why it is very difficult to identify the self.
yes there is only one self
A mentally ill person is incapable of questioning himself, understanding himself in relation to the world, living without prescription medicines, living a conflict free life, transforming himself.
Your ‘medical explanation’ is nothing more than your own ‘scientific belief/opinion.’
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Just in case you missed this, Drax:
From the DSM-5: Functional Consequences of Dissociative Identity Disorder: “Impairment varies widely, from apparently minimal (e.g., in high functioning professionals) to profound. Regardless the level of disability, individuals with dissociative identity disorder commonly minimize the impact of their dissociative and posttraumatic symptoms. The symptoms of higher functioning individuals may impair their relational, marital, family and parenting functioning more than the occupational and professional life (although, the latter may be affected).” Me, Myself, and I: Dissociative Identity Disorder - YouTube
Drax, my opinion is Krishnmurti was a highly functional public speaker. And though he had others supporting him, he knew how to get what he wanted. So, his condition which was apparent at different times in his life, to different witnesses, had little impact on his functioning.
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No, I haven’t. There is no question of minimising the impact in K. There is a Total absence of any such impairment. I am talking of ability to live a life full of energy free of conflict etc.
I mean DID is supposed to be disorder, right? So apart from when he undergoes that experience, where exactly does the ‘disorder’ manifest. So you mean to say just having such an experience without it impairing his normal life itself is a disorder?
If so good luck with your scientific belief system.
Not as a response, but just for information…
K on occult…
“Look, Sirs, because the mind is quiet, the body becomes still, not the other way round. You force your body to sit still. You do all kinds of things to come upon this strange beauty of silence. Do not do it, just observe. Look, Sirs, you know in all this are various powers of clairvoyance, reading somebody’s thought. There are various powers, you know what I am talking about, don’t you? You call them siddhis, don’t you? Do you know all these things are like candles – candlelight in the sun? When there is no sun, there is darkness, and then the light of the candle is very important; but when there is the sun, the light, the beauty, the clarity, then all these powers, these siddhis, are like candlelight. They have no value at all.”
Krishnamurti in India 1970-71 Chapter 15 4th Public Talk, Bombay, p. 179, 180
“And in this process of meditation there are all kinds of powers that come into being. One becomes clairvoyant, the body then becomes extraordinarily sensitive. Now clairvoyance, healing, thought transference and so on, becomes totally unimportant. All the occult powers become so utterly irrelevant and when you pursue those you are pursuing something that will ultimately lead to illusion. That is one factor.”
4th Public Talk, Brockwood Park, 1975
“Truth & Actuality”, Chapter 9
So. And also now there is the pursuit of the occult - don’t you know all that? More and more because it is more exciting. I have seen everything in the world and I want to see something beyond the world, extrasensory perception and so on and so on. Sir, a man who is pursuing truth, who is trying to understand life totally, who sees the false as the false and in the false the truth, to such a mind the occult things are fairly obvious, such a mind will not touch it. They are totally unimportant: whether I read your thought, or you read my thought, whether I see angels, fairies, some kind of visions which I have not seen before. Because we want something mysterious and we don’t see the immense mystery in living, in the love of living - you understand? We don’t see that. And therefore we spread out in things that don’t matter.
Public Talk 4 Brockwood Park, England - 17 September 1972
Another interesting discussion between A Naude and K ……
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Just to be precise, don’t you mean hypotheses rather than theories? Nothing has been demonstrated, nor even really examined, as far as I can tell.
Ruth, aren’t you being rather selective in what you take from K? K did not simply invite people to question beliefs “outside of science”, but psychological beliefs in general. Such as one’s habitual belief in the continuity of consciousness.
Previously you mentioned that you find certain aspects of K’s teachings unpalatable and mentally destabilising - like you, I’m just speculating, but I think this is the real foundation for your activity here.
For me, your speculations about K’s so-called mental illness are not serious scientific investigations into real data, but an expression of your unwillingness to take seriously the possibility that what K talked about is actual.
I asked you several times to explain what you find incorrect or dangerous in K’s teachings (e.g. you mentioned finding his rejection of ambition, his invitation to die to oneself everyday, etc, as unpalatable), but you haven’t done so. So - with equally speculative freedom (I’ve also read Van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score) - I speculate that you yourself have been traumatised in your life, and that this trauma makes it difficult for you to face certain things that K has said, which you feel re-traumatise you. And for this reason, subconsciously, you want to sabotage K’s teachings by finding faults with the person (i.e. the clothes he wears, the medicalisation of his “process”, etc).
As Drax points out, there is an area of life which to all intents and purposes remains hidden from us, “occult”. It remains hidden because our minds are not generally sensitive enough to perceive it. There may ultimately be some perfectly naturalistic account of these “occult” phenomena, but the science (as of now) is not adequate yet to make proper sense of it - most likely because our explanations of matter are still evolving, as our explanations of consciousness, the nature of mind, are still evolving. But many serious religious people have talked about this - one can find it in Buddhism, in Hinduism, etc - so it is not just K who has talked about siddhis, extra-sensory perception, etc.
Despite your amateur medical speculations, I think for most sensible people who have looked at it, K’s “process” remains a rather mysterious phenomenon. There may be medically adjacent explanations that overlap with certain things that K went through, but they do not explain the multi-dimensional significance that they had for K’s inward psychological flourishing, the insights he had into reality, the extraordinary field of meditative perception it opened up for him (the results of which we can read about in his Notebook, for example). And K himself - a person who was quite perceptive about human nature - rejected the idea that such events were forms of mental illness. I think it is worth considering his own view of the thing.
To give an example of the kind of inward, psychological experiences that went hand in hand with the “process”, I relate two or three here, taken almost at random from his Notebook:
As one sat in the aeroplane amidst all the noise, smoking and loud talking, most unexpectedly, the sense of immensity and that extraordinary benediction… that imminent feeling of sacredness, began to take place… The whole body was wholly in it and the feeling of sacredness was so intense that a groan escaped from the body and passengers were sitting in the next seats. It went on for several hours, late into the night. It was as though one was looking, not with eyes only but with a thousand centuries; it was altogether a strange occurrence. The brain was completely empty, all reaction had stopped; during all those hours, one was not aware of this emptiness but only in writing it is the thing known…. That the brain could empty itself is an odd phenomenon. As the eyes were closed, the body, the brain seemed to plunge into unfathomable depths, into states of incredible sensitivity and beauty. (July 9th)
Woke up in the middle of the night, with a sense of immense and measureless strength. It was not the strength that will or desire has put together but the strength that is there in a river, in a mountain, in a tree. It is in man when every form of desire and will have completely ceased. (July 15th)
The room became full with that benediction. Now what followed is almost impossible to put down in words; words are such dead things, with definite set meaning and what took place was beyond all words and description. It was the centre of all creation; it was a purifying seriousness that cleansed the brain of every thought and feeling; its seriousness was as lightning which destroys and burns up; the profundity of it was not measurable, it was there immovable, impenetrable, a solidity that was as light as the heavens. It was in the eyes, in the breath. It was in the eyes and the eyes could see…. There was only seeing, the eyes that saw beyond time-space. There was impenetrable dignity and a peace that was the essence of all movement, action. No virtue touched it for it was beyond all virtue and sanctions of man. There was love that was utterly perishable and so it had the delicacy of all new things, vulnerable, destructible and yet it was beyond all this. It was there imperishable, unnameable, the unknowing. No thought could ever penetrate it; no action could ever touch it. It was “pure”, untouched and so ever dyingly beautiful. All this seemed to affect the brain; it was not as it was before… As a terrific storm, a destructive earthquake gives a new course to the rivers, changes the landscape, digs deep into the earth, so it has levelled the contours of thought, changed the shape of the heart. (July 20th)
K also asked himself what conditions need to be present for these astonishing states of consciousness to come into being:
Why should all this happen to us? No explanation is good enough, though one can invent a dozen. But certain things are fairly clear. 1. One must be wholly “indifferent” to it coming and going. 2. There must be no desire to continue the experience or to store it away in memory. 3. There must be a certain physical sensitivity, a certain indifference to comfort. 4. There must be self-critical humorous approach… You can also add love to the list but it is beyond love. One thing is certain, the brain can never comprehend it nor can it contain it. Blessed is he to whom it is given. And you can add also a still, quiet brain. (July 23rd)
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The hypothesis (presented by Mary Zimbalist and Mary Lutyens) was that there were 4 entities involved in Vanda’s account of K’s behavior. The behavior matched the symptoms found in the DSM-5 for DID. Other posters presented their theories of why he was behaving this way.
James, I admire your dedication and devotion to the teachings. There is real love there. Yes, I find it best to be selective, especially after reading more of his biographies, most recently in Mary Zimbalist’s memoirs and her unfinished book. I like the way K’s focus shifted over time, from the early days of “This Path is like the jealous and exacting lover, hating his love to have other friends and other lovers. The road is my inexorable love, and it guards my love jealously, destroying all those who would accompany me or help me…Come all ye that sorrow, and enter with me into the abode of enlightenment and into the shades of immortality…I am the lover and the very love itself. I am the saint, the adorer, the worshipper and the follower. I am God.” to " It was the centre of all creation; it was a purifying seriousness that cleansed the brain of every thought and feeling; its seriousness was as lightning which destroys and burns up; the profundity of it was not measurable, it was there immovable, impenetrable, a solidity that was as light as the heavens". K was never at a loss for words describing his experiences and could lead others to believe these states might also be available to them–promises, promises or “a product line”, a skeptic might say. While reading the Zimbalist’s memoirs and book, I wanted so much to be a believer, but struggled with my ambivalence. Zimbalist revealed a lot, possibly unintentionally, unconsciously. But, I keep trying to accept K for the man he was. Anyway,…
" There are three other types of dissociative disorders:
- Depersonalization – experiences of unreality or detachment from one’s mind, self or body. People may feel as if they are outside their bodies and watching events happening to them.
- Derealization – experiences of unreality or detachment from one’s surroundings. People may feel as if things and people in the world around them are not real.
- Dissociative amnesia involves not being able to recall information about oneself (not normal forgetting). This amnesia is usually related to a traumatic or stressful event.