Yes, I know. I have lived in Boston for instance and the atmosphere was completely different. But I in that account I intentionaly focused only on that negative experience. By the way what I told before was not all, I had some other few bad experiences in N. Y. which made take the decision to go back to Boston. Anyway the point of my story I wanted to highlight was the behaviour of the policemean, and that, I think, is a common feature in many American cities. A friend of mine for instance, had some nuisances with the police in Los angeles just because he was strolling in a street. But you should be better informed than me about this matter,
Dominic,
Are you saying that the self that we are talking about here is something more than the collective memories, knowledge, images, ideas, and so on, which are the content of consciousness, recorded and registered by the brain? I don’t deny that the human being is more than that but, as I see it, the SELF is totally THAT. That is, presently self and consciousness are that.
Reflecting on itself, on its content, on the repetitive quality of its actions, the brain/self can see its limitations - I can see my limitations. It/I can understand that awareness, love, compassion, beauty, and so on, are not rooted in memory. If these were rooted in memory, I could produce them at will - but I can’t. But I see that awareness, love, compassion, beauty cannot be put together by its/my efforts. So presently, love is not part of the consciousness. There is a dividing wall between love and consciousness. No?
Huguette, when one wants to find someone faulty she/he will find faults anyhow despite the good faith of the speaker.
The sentence of mine which you quoted must be read and considered together with what I said before that. If you do it with a pinch of good will and less fussiness you’ll be able to see the similarities, in essence if not in the wording, with what K. said.
Not everybody can have a perfect memory as probabily you have, and I had listened that video long ago.
“K. when someone asked him this question, said that there must be intelleligence in your daily life and then that intelligence will act according to circustances. (My wording). Which in essence means you can never know what will be the right action in advance. But he also said that there must be no violence in us, and when one has lived without violence all his/her life then intelligence will be able to act.”
When I said “there must not be violence” I was clearly summarizing the speech of K. No serious student of K. can think that he was dictating a line of behaviour. So I find your clinging to that sentence quite unfair and unnecessary.
Isn’t the consciousness the “wall” itself? No consciousness = no ‘impediment’ to love, compassion, etc.?
No that’s not it, Voyager. What I object to is the approach of sitting back in my cosy home from afar and judging/analyzing how people in horrific situations should react. I can say from a distance that Nat Turner should not have rebelled and reacted brutally against white people, including children. I can say from a safe distance that the Warsaw Ghetto rebels were wrong to kill German soldiers. I can condemn abused children, abused wives, abused people, who kill their abusers. But they were IN the situation and I am not.
What I am is violent at times - not outwardly, not physically, but inwardly. All I can do is look into the violence where I can observe it directly - within ME and find out whether there is such a thing as living non-violently.
That is, when violence arises within me, it inevitably affects my actions and relationships. It can’t NOT affect action and relationship. So can I find out if there is such a thing as inner peace so that IT acts in relationship and not the violence? Because if there is no such thing, the inner violence is still present and inevitably acts, even though I may not seem to be violent outwardly. If I can’t end my own violence, how can I demand of others to be non-violent?
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Good example.
“communist’s contention that violence is right when you have suffered oppression , he wouldn’t agree”
That’s is another (good) answer to Huguette’s post.
OK Voyager. I’ll think over what you said. I don’t want to be unfair.
Good point, Dan. (xxxx - making up the 20 required characters!)
I think we had clarified this point, but let me add some more considerations.
First of all I didn’t say exactly that (I have to be fussy here). I’m not familiar with Warsaw Ghetto rebels, but I suppose from what you say that it was a hot blood reaction. Than we have the abused chidren and so on who killed their abuser. I never meant to condamn that, and you won’t be able to find any word in that line in my post. As I told you afterwards, I can understand an emotive reaction and I don’t blame them. What I blame are the organized movements, or ideologies, like comunism, or Black lives matter, or blue lives matter (which by the way I never heard of before reading this thread) which justify violence because of the wrongs or suffering they endured. I think that once this distinction is clear, we can agree on the rest.
It has occurred to me that this fear of ‘ending’ is what pollutes living. But also that one can never know that one has died! One can only ‘imagine’ life going on without me. And most likely it will. But we can’t know that we’re no longer here! Only in the fearful, sad, images, the 'self comes up with. I connected this ‘insight’ to something K said about pleasure. That you don’t know you’ve enjoyed something until the enjoyment stops and thought declares: “that was nice!” In fearing ‘death’ the self is fearing something it cannot know. But the images prevail and pollute. Our ‘conditioning’ separates death from life. We make them opposites.
First of all; Thanks for your contribution in this dialogue.
Reading your posts abouth not knowing what to do confronted with violence, I wondered if you have ever heard of Etty Hillesum. As Anne Frank also a young somewhat older dutch girl but less known.
Het diary is a wonderful description of someone who kept here humanity and sanity intact in a brutal violence world. for example as she wrote on 29 mei 1942 while she was waiting for transport:
“To this world, which is so full of dissonance, one should not add the slightest dissonance.”
one year later she died in to Auschwitz concentration camp, on November 30, 1943 at the age of 29.
And yes I wondered if I would/could act as she did.
Yes Wim, I did hear about her but have never read her diaries. From what I have read about her, what a remarkable human being she was! Thanks for this quote.
When we talk about K.'s teaching we all are bound to talk about abstractions, since we didn’t have a real insight on the matter like K. That is: when K. asks: “Can you be free of fear?” For him the mind free of fear is a reality, a fact, while for us is just an idea. But this idea is like a pointer which -if we are interested - might prompt in us an effective exploration into ourselves which eventually could lead to the insignt.
Now when Dominic asks more or less the same thing you rebuff his words as abstractions because you don’t think he is “illuminated” like K. This could be true or not, but the point is that even the words of Dominique can be a pointer to a reality we can discover.
Das that make sense to you?
Yes, I agree that self is the knowledge, the memories, the ideas of countless so-called individual selves, and also its movement, its reaction, its momentum, as content held in the brain, with the question of can it end related to the fact of that content, and the content being wiped, so as the mind can be emptied and function properly which is also what Krishnamurti spoke about. Likewise, as you say, a quality like love, which is only another idea for the brain, cannot be held in the brain, which cannot be considered to be in touch with it.
My point is, when it is said that there is love, or there is other, which is not in the brain, but outside, which the brain is not in contact with, that means the brain is effectively shut out, and so shut in with itself, and so attention needs to turn to what it is for the brain to be shut in like this, which the self finds disturbing and unpleasant. This in turn is related to self seeing itself.
In the world fashioned by humankind, in something it knows as nature, self is having something it is reacting to as other, other than itself, which is logically impossible, given that it is itself, but still this is happening with terrible consequences, and great suffering. The matter of self ending, and content being wiped is related to this, but just as with the issue of a response I need to be in a world dominated by psyche experiencing this split (someone trying to kill me) is an immediate requirement, so this split in self as self/other is an immediate requirement. The question of ending of self over all is still there, but the vehemence of the split is too, and it is not a matter of either/or, it is both together as it were. These two perspectives are part of a whole. Do you follow what I am saying thus far?
There is always danger: the danger posed by the cliff edge, the steep flight of stairs, all of which require attention to be paid, and there is the danger of the deadly poisonous snake. But though there is danger, does there have to be fear? Ordinarily it is felt danger causes fear, but it may be seen that fear is its own thing apart from danger, and that the two are not of necessity related. So it may be possible to meet danger without fear, to meet the snake, know exactly what the snake is and needs in that instance, and the snake can go on its way.
There was a story told in one or other of the biographies of Krishnamurti I think, in which he was being driven through a nature reserve where there were tigers in the wild, roaming about the track or road, and one passed by the car with its open window, and Krishnamurti went to stroke its back, and the warden in the car with him, grabbed his arm and pulled it back. Now, I don’t know what was going through Krishnamurti’s mind and whether he saw the danger but felt it perfectly safe for him to stroke its back, but the warden probably knew fear, and responded to a perception of danger through that fear, thinking there is one response, snd one response only, in a situation like that.
We are starting from a wrong preemise here, the example of the snake has nothing to do with fear as K. intended, i. e. psychological fear. K. has stated clearly that “physical” fear (my wording) is natural and necessary because it help us to escape a danger or face it. (Thanks to the adrenalin it produces which enhances our reactions, run away or fight) And there is no problem with this kind of fear as it ends naturally once the danger is over. We cannot eliminate it and it is not advisable. People who have no fear, for instance of the sea can easily get drowned. What K. spoke about is the fear of something which is not present here and now but that we think it mght happen. I. e., i’m afraid I can be ill, or that I can loose my job, etc. This is a product of thought and is commonly called anxiety. So here we have another word K. used with a personal meaning.
Then we have fear of death. We must distinguish here between anxiety of death as something in the future, and so again it’s a product of our immagination. And fear of something or someone who is threatening our life, which is a fact. This belongs to the first cathegory, the "physical"l fear, which is natural, but the beaviour of poepole in front of a danger can be of two types: a “positive” or functional fear (adrenalin) which makes our senses more awake and so help us to face danger in a intelligent way.
Then we may have panic which is just the opposite: one feels paralised physically and completely dumbed mentally so that one is not able to face the situation and/or react emotionally and irrationally.
Is panic a product of thought? Perhaps.
I can bring a practical example of something which happened to me personally. I was sailing alone in a small sailing boat when a storm arrived. I’m not a brave and daring person and usually I try to avoid bad weather when sailing. But this time it came unexpected and it was something which could easily make you loose your mind. The wind and the waves were too strong and threatened to capsize the boat. I had no choice but to stay at the helm and face the gusts and the waves steering in order to avoid to be crushed. No distraction was allowed, any mistake in steering the boat could lead to catastrophe. Contrary to my temperament I didn’t feel any fear. I was extremely alert, aware of everything going on in the boat and in the sea/air. After four hours I managed to reach a port safely. I think awareness of danger (and so adrenalin) and the absence of thinking - I had not time for thinking: every action had to be done instantly - saved me. Once I was safe in the harbour I started to think about the whole experience and about what it could have happened. At that moment fear (panic) arrived. Had I had those thoughts when sailing I would have been lost! So, the first is the good kind of fear (which produces alertenss and intelligent action) the second was the “bad” kind of fear which puts us in trouble.
I had read the eposode of K. and the tiger and to me it didn’t seem a mistery. K. could read the mind of people, it’s something well known, so I think he knew that the tiger had no intention of harming him.
P. S.
To go back to the snake example: one can react with good physical fear and so act intelligently to save his life (either run away or kill the snake) or can react with panic (probabily produced by thought) and so being paralized and so being bitten by the snake.
Dominic (re: your post #134 or 133, I have a hard time telling which posts the numbers belong to), the brain has many functions and remembering, thinking, reasoning, imagining, are some of them. The brain also has many other functions. In essence, as I understand it, the brain regulates not only itself but all the other bodily functions, processes and organs. So personally, I don’t see self and consciousness as the TOTAL content, function or activity (I don’t know which word is better) of the brain.
K and Bohm had the following exchange about awareness:
The Future of Humanity - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Bohm: ….is awareness part of the function of the brain?
JK: As long as it is awareness in which there is no choice.
K also said:
The awareness of which I have been talking is a choiceless state in which you can see things as they are and not as you wish them to be, in which you can know exactly what you are, without any choice; and that awareness is intelligence.
And in looking inwardly, it is clear to me (I may be mistaken) that awareness is not something I can deliberately “do”, love is not something I can deliberately “choose” to feel or not feel, and intelligence is not something I can deliberately “acquire” in the same way that I can acquire knowledge.
So a question which arises for me in this regard (not that I’m trying to answer it) is whether awareness somehow extends beyond the brain (or includes the whole that is beyond and within the brain). And I must not (cannot) wait for a life-and-death moment to start questioning self, the illusory divisions, psychological fear, and so on. When it is life-and-death, one acts immediately. There is no pausing the situation whatever it is.
And it is clear to me that intelligence is not limited to the brain. As I see it, intelligence and order can be seen in the cosmos, including the brain. Clearly “I” have nothing to do with this intelligence, order, energy, creation, and so on. And there is naturally a connection or relationship between that and the brain. This connection or relationship is blocked by “self”, isn’t it? So yes, I also see it that the two perspectives or aspects are part of a whole which has been divided by the illusion of the imaginary self.
Am I understanding what you have said?
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I’d be curious to know how you arrived to that, pratically. Because I’ve discovered the same thing about physical awareness. My job dealt with sensor-motor awareness, which is awareness of the internal body movements. Both experimenting with myself and with others, I understood one basic thing: the moment you think you are aware you are not.
This leads us to the question if awareness can exist without the body.
In another thread DanMcD quoted an interesting passage of K. which seems to confirm this thesis:
"The unadorned naked awareness that is always there, rarely heeded, is what you always have been, always will be. "
Strange concidence, I posted an experience of “life-and-death” I had just above in this thread.
But fear itself is not just an idea, is it? We are intimately aware of fear. Even when we pretend we are not afraid, fear IS there and, if we are honest with ourselves, we see it there. And I’m not sure that K is (was) free of fear in the sense that he never ever felt fear. I think that he understood fear thoroughly - its genesis and the processses which keep fear alive. And understanding it thoroughly, the understanding freed him of it when it did arise. He did not carry fear over in time, he did not cling to it or TRY to be free of it. He observed it, understood it, and still observed it.
When K. asks: “Can you be free of fear?”, it is a pointer yes. But the pointer can be approached in 2 different ways that I can see.
Either that pointer awakens the hope, desire or will that there is a way to be “forever” free of fear and can K please tell me what is the way to be free of fear — in which case it is self/fear itself trying to find a way out and there can be no understanding. No?
Or the question awakes within me and truly becomes my own question, a questioning without hope or direction. That is, observing what a dark force fear is in my life, observing that fear rules my actions and relationships, that fear is confusion and ignorance, I am truly asking the question “can I be free of fear”, and learning about fear - not just waiting for K to answer it for me.
I stick to what I said, that framing the question of freedom on how the mind that is free of fear responds is necessarily going off into abstractions and speculation. We/I can only observe what the fearful mind - my mind - does. As for me, I don’t feel that Dominic and I are opposed in this but it’s not for me to say.
Yes. This quote by K that T Stamp published has been questioned coincidentally by Huguette and others a while back. As I recall a problem she had with the above quote was with the words “rarely heeded”. … Unless Stamp is given a lie-detector test or something, a truth serum maybe, as to the ‘verbatim’ accuracy of what K said, we have to look at it as it stands. I don’t know if it was recorded. The video I posted of him speaking about his relationship to K, recently at Brockwood, is a testament I think, of how important he felt, that connection was in his life. I don’t think he would be careless in quoting him.