Your definition sounds fine - maybe I should have said :“not operating under the dictat of fear”.
I think the main job of the trusted guru is to calm down the student in case of any psychological upheavals or amazing insight.
I’m just saying its difficult to separate the self and the brain - if only because the movement of the self physically changes the brain - the self becomes part of the brain.
The brain seems very comfortable with the presence of the self-image and the duality of thought projecting a thinker, etc. Though the intellect has become aware of the danger of individualism, it doesn’t seem to bother the brain as long as things keep humming along for the organism? It finds ‘security’ in the self’s tenure even though the intellect sees what a ‘mess’ it’s making? What is the brain’s responsibility in hosting the ‘self’? Do ‘lives matter’ to the brain or only it’s own organism and to a lesser degree, the lives where there is an emotional attachment? Is compassion a brain function or is that ‘located’ somewhere else?
Even in a vegan household, the fridge doesn’t care if someone puts some non-organic, industrially reared meat in it.
The brain is formed by habit. Habit of its ancestors, habit of its user.
It is capable of a variety of stuff, but it’ll mostly do what its used to.
Yes the self has logically to be considered as embedded in the brain, regardless of whether scientists have located its exact location, and if self is required to be wiped, or the matter on which it depends changed or altered in some fashion, then there does need to be some form of healing process possible. It is now considered other organs in the body, such as the lungs can regenerate.
2 things come to mind reading your comment:
1)I was referring to the idea that the habitual thought patterns physically become neural pathways in the brain.
2)Some of us may be more confused and traumatised than others - but I refuse the sentence that the self is a disease. I would merely argue that the human potential is greater than being totally enslaved by the self.
Have you ever observed a deer, a cat or a bird, they seemed to have an awareness of there surroundings all the time, so to me we have lost something instead of having something extra comparing with the animal state.
I had a metaphor about this problem this week. It has also to do with an empty mind.
The strings of a piano can only sound clear if there is nothing on it, no dust, no key from the tuner or a blown piece of music. The sound is not from the strings but through the strings, you cannot separate one from the other, but the strings are always ready to produce sound even if it is hindered by what is wrongly present on them.
This discussion “Black lives matter” is all about judgement and comparison (which is the movement/function ? of the self) who’s got more, less, better, worse than me/us?
Yes, what you say is true, the animals have a higher level of attention (and maybe awareness) than us because there is no interference of thought in their cases. However, we should enquiry about the difference between physical awareness and psychological one.
Anyway all mammals have all the three levels of the nervous system as well. I spoke about that because it explains why we are trapped into thought/ego, but actually I didn’t explain it well (I didn’t want to be too long).
The functioning of the nervous system is such that when one of the three levels takes control of our actions, the other two are inhibited. Awareness is produced in the cortex according to scientists so when the limbic level (emotions, habits, social conditionings, etc) is operating and so controlling our action awareness is excluded and we behave like robots. This explains our difficulty of being aware without the observer.
The scientists say that thought is a product of the cortex, the higher level, but in my opinion the whole process of thoughts/emotions belongs to the second one (limbic) because it’s a mechanical process which takes place without our will, like all functioning of the limbic system. Actually something like learning a new skill requires awareness at first so it belongs to the cortex, but once we have learn it (take for instance riding a bicycle) it is recorded in the brain like a pattern and so we can do it automatically. This shows that the cortex is no more operative.
Neural (or nervous?) patterns are very useful because they make us spare a lot of energy and time. Think what will happen if we had to learn all the times to ride a bike as it was the first time. 99% of our actions are automatic patterns. Violence is a pattern and a very old one (and the rule in the nervous system is that the older a pattern is the stronger is). Identification with the tribe/nation is another old pattern. And the self is nothing but a lump of patterns all linked together. To observe without the observer means that only the cortex is operating without any interference of the limbic system. This requires a lot of energy. K. stressed many times that there must be a different kind of energy from the one of thought. Once the cortex is fully working it will exclude naturally the limbic system and so no ego.
If I remember it well, Bohm, in one of his video talking about K., said the same thing. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emAeFuwtelQ&list=PL0C3373847C423315&index=48&t=0s)
There is a defensive mechanism in our brain which hides the inner truth making the whole process unconscious. So when we try to be aware the mechanism springs into action and fear arises.
We must realize that K. is asking us to make a biological leap or quantum. He often spoke of a mutation of the brain cells. I think very few of us really reflected about what that means. A mutation in the whole functioning of the nervous system! So we are dealing with very strong patterns and a lot of energy is required to make that leap. (See my reply to WimOpdam).
It would seem that the brain does not care about other people lives. (But the brain is only a part of the nervous system and there are parts much older than the brain which have a stronger impact in our behaviour). But then we find empathy in most of us and also compassion as you said. Is it embedded in the brain? Or comes from another plane? K. used to say that the mind is much bigger than the brain. This is an unproved and irrational notions and we cannot do anything about it. Anyway it is there.
Would this be irrational because of the majority consensus that consciousness is produced by the brain? Because the hypothesis that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe that is manifested through the brain is less accepted (although growing)?
Yes, just so. It was not my intention to use this word “irrational” in a negative sense, but just to point out that in K.'s teachings there are things which cannot be explained rationally. Personally I think that consciousness is an aspect of universe. He also spoke of the “mind” as something different than the human mind.
While I was having a nap, it came to my mind another important aspect of this problem of awareness and so the end of ego: danger. Danger could be a key factor, have you ever considered it? K. often used to say (referring to the ego) “You don’t see the danger of it.” And “When you see the danger you act.” It seems that danger can increase awareness and bypass fear so the moment we see the ego as a real danger there is an immediate response of our brain/mind.
I remembered an experience I had, few years ago. I was sailing in a small sailing boat, alone, when a storm arrived. At first when the wind was increasing, I could take all the precautions to make the sailing safe, like reducing sails, but at a certain point the wind was too strong and I could steer the boat with difficulty. The automatic pilot was not able to steer the boat any more because the movements were far too quicker than its correcting mechanism, so I could not leave the steering wheel to reduce sails even more. The situation was really serious and I had no alternative but to stay at the helm and try the best to bring the boat and myself to the nearest harbour. It took me about three or four hours to reach the marina, not a long time in normal circumstances but an eternity in those ones. Anyway, the point is that I felt no fear. Simply there was no place for fear or no time for it. I felt very calm and my attention was continuously focused of the wind, the sails, the waves and the movements of the boat. I could not afford to be distracted for more than second, the boat needing constant adjustments and any mistake could be fatal. I remember I was greatly aware of everything and I even enjoyed the monstrous power of the waves and wind. I arrived safely to the harbour and after putting order in the boat I went to bed. At my awakening I started to think about those crucial hours and about all the things that could have happened… at that moment fear arose!
Had those thoughts arrived when I was sailing, I would have been paralyzed with panic (I’ve seen people reacting that way in the same circumstances) and therefore lost. I can say the perception of danger saved me.
Three hours is indeed a long time for the self to keep silent - you do say it felt like an eternity, does that mean that there was at least some intermittent judgment and suffering during the process? Any other weird stuff you can remember about this experience at sea?
Realisation that you are probably going to die and there is no escape, may make the self shut up - but it may also provoke fear paralysis as you say.
Another thing that makes the self dissapear is constant rejection - as in the case of the long distance runner or boxer who gets a second wind. Which means the suffering and the complaining and struggle suddenly dissapears - and there is no longer the runner or the boxer - only the run or the fight.
In the story I told here a few weeks back about my pain instantly dissapearing as soon as I decided that I didn’t care about the pain anymore - it was a case of dire necessity and faith in the teaching.
Just after I had posted that I realized that “eternity” was a wrong expressions. No, there was no sense of it being too long, and I used that expression now only to stress the dangerous experience. I’ts an evaluation in retrospect. No suffering but some kind of istinctinve judgement on how to steer the boat. In sailing there is a mix of immediate action but also planning and assessing the situation. One has to anticipate the effect of the wind and the waves otherwise they will crush you, but it all happens unconsciously as you have learnt in the past how to tackle them. Of course I had conscious reflections like: “let’s hope nothing breaks in the boat untill I’m around that cape ahead”. I knew that behind the cape there was some shelter from the wind and waves… no, nothing weird.
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Can you say more about this experience? Maybe there is a kind of teaching for us all.
What I learnt (through direct experience) was that suffering is 99% psychological - even what we call physical pain.
I was in great pain and in fear of doing myself physical harm - but as soon as I decided that I had no choice, and was willing to take the risk of injury (harm to myself) all the pain immediately and completely dissapeared.
This was at a silent meditation retreat in my younger days where we had to sit still in lotus posture (first time for me) for maybe 8 hours a day.
I wouldn’t be so sure. There can be another explanation (for what explanations are worth): the mind has the capacity to silence the body, or to disconnect itself from the body sensations. K. could not take anesthetics so when he went to the dentist, he had to endure the pain. He said that when the pain was too much the brain isolated itself from it.
Didn’t you have any unpleasant consequences after that? The lotus can harm seriously the knees.
No, no unpleasant consequences after 10 days of lotus posture (or 7, because it took me 3 days to come to the point of release I describe) - no more pain for 7 days - a lot of doubt though because of the hinayana doctrine they were trying to instill in us - which went against all my zen and K beliefs. It was like a constant Koan for me, to doubt all that was being said to me - which produced another release near the end of the retreat - in which I felt a sense of great ease and connection.
As I said - my interpretation (of pain being psychological) comes from direct experience rather than intellectual analysis - all I can share is a story.
I tell another story regarding dentistry : The taking of valium (due to a 2 hour long operation with my dentist) made for a pleasant experience where pain killers would not really have helped in my suffering at all. If the brain is not involved, there is no suffering. I don’t see what your explanation is trying to deny or pinpoint?