I mean seeing is a process and like all processes is subject to causality, dependent on the past.
I have been thinking that one thing we haven’t touched on in this discussion about memory is the role self-interest plays. Memory and self are closely tied (and who knows, may even be one and the same thing).
I think we can all agree that whenever desire and will - that is, self-interest - are operational, memory is triggered and indeed is what informs those actions. So, to ask if it is possible for memory to be absent is equivalent to asking if the sense of self can be absent.
Most of us familiar with K, myself included, tend to gravitate towards our understanding of awareness (listening) as our go to answer to this question of presence of absence of self.
The thing is, can awareness be willed into being? Is it a matter of desire and will? My own attempts at maintaining some forced state of what I imagine to be awareness or listening have been what can only be described as abject failure. Awareness as a deliberate experiment is very difficult to sustain for any length of time. I am aware that there are an awful lot of people who feel that awareness is less of a contrived action for them but frankly I beginning to suspect they are confusing mindfulness or witnessing or guided meditation with the non-self-centered awareness of K’s teaching. My opinion obviously. I cannot know what another is actually experiencing.
But what if, for the sake of argument, awareness is not something that can be first understood and then willed into being, then what? I went looking at K’s works again just to remind myself how he talks about this subject and I came across this passage where he makes a distinction between a spontaneous discovery and a mechanical one. I hope it isn’t too long.
So what is it - to be oneself? And can we be ourselves at all times? One can be oneself at all times only if one is doing something that one really loves; and if one loves completely. When you are doing something which you cannot help doing with your whole being, you are being yourself. Or when you love another completely, in that state you are yourself, without any fear, without any hindrance. In these two states one is completely oneself.
So one has to find out what it is that one loves to do. I am using the word “love” deliberately. What is it that with your whole being you love to do? You do not know. We do not know what it is wise to do, and what is foolish, and the discovery of what is wise and what is foolish is the whole process of living. You are not going to discover this in the twinkling of an eye.
But how is one to discover it? Is it to be discovered - what is wise and what is foolish - mechanically, or spontaneously? When you do something with your whole being, in which there is no sense of frustration or fear, no limitation, in this state of action you are yourself, irrespective of any outward condition. I say, if you can come to that state, when you are yourself in action, then you will find out the ecstasy of reality, God.
Is this state to be mechanically achieved, cultivated, or does it come into being spontaneously? I will explain what I mean by the mechanical process. All action imposed from without must be habit-forming, must be mechanical, and therefore not spontaneous. Can you discover what it is to be yourself through tradition?
This is from 1938 so the language style is a bit different from his later works. What I found interesting is his description of (what I interpret to be) a state of freedom from grasping - and therefore by default memory is absent - comes into being only when you are fully engaged, when you are really, genuinely interested in something, as you are, for example, when in the early stages of being in love. You lose yourself, the inner, in such situations, naturally, seamlessly as the outer is all beguiling.
Going back to our original question then as to whether memory can be absent, it seems to me that the only way we would be able to consider that question without resorting to memory is if we were really serious about the question itself, fully engaged in it. Not as some philosophical plaything, or because we happened to have stumbled on some spiritual path, but because we have feel the problem of memory, acutely, personally. If we don’t have that intense interest in the problem itself, if it isn’t my problem, one which I take super seriously and at the same time am utterly unable to solve, memory will kick in and do what it is designed to do with any self-centered desire and come up with its memory-based answers, for or against. And then carry on to the next problem.
It is the rare individual that can say they are in truly in love with the problem of what if anything lies beyond memory. Essentially, to be fascinated by life. I can only guess, but it seems to me that to such a person awareness, attention or intense interest, whatever you want to call it, would come unbidden rather than them having to go about looking for it.
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Emile,
This really resonated - so one can ask: does one love what one does in life, as to how one earns a living, work? And how can one tell if that is so? I consider that one would do that even if one didn’t make any money from such an activity, and would even have to hold down another job just to pay the bills so that one could continue to find some time to do what one really loves to do… and that would mean, that one would really know oneself well. Adding K to the mix would only have the added benefit of ensuring that one was not only one with oneself but with others as well. Of course, it would also mean that one is in conflict with those who don’t know who they are.
[quote=“rickScott, post:39, topic:1616, full:true”]
Sounds like the ends justify the means then - doing bad to obtain good - although I hear also that you reap what you sow - that self motivated action only reinforces the center.
Unless of course its a case of semantics - of imprecise description - maybe you are not really trying to connect with some image during your meditation
Memory,
Recently, one met someone who one had the most casual of friendships, meeting once a year to celebrate the holidays, to feast together and laugh (pre-Covid days). So leaving the cash-out at a supermarket, one’s eyes fell upon someone in a walker, who said at that exact moment of eye contact, “I love you”. And one wondered who on earth this person was, absolutely no recognition. So, one asked, who are you? And it took some time before one realized yes, there had been this person one knew years ago, a vague memory; but to this day, even after exchanging names, email addys, phone numbers, one still can’t place the name with that face, so one stares at the slip of paper with the name… and shrugs…no memory whatsoever of their name… this person had used up all their space inside, and they had mentioned several times in that one chat how they were there to have picked up their “medication”… the only things one recalls of that encounter… I won’t be calling “her”, just another stalker type… In real time, one has quite a few of these, both male and female…
What list? As far as I can see, (open) awareness is the only credible possibility that anyone has so far mentioned (the story of ‘Self’ being a dogma, and so necessarily tied to memory).
Emile points out that if such an awareness is forced, willed, or the mechanical product of self-interest, then it is not genuinely awareness.
So if such spontaneously open awareness exists, it cannot be divorced from the implications of total attention, which means a spontaneous or free attention with all our heart, all our body, all our “being”:
So maybe open awareness is love after all.
If it involves memory up to the connection, it is implied that the connection itself is not memory, and so there can be no associations or impositions of dogma (projected from memory) from that point on(wards).
So calling that non-recognisable order of perception ‘Self’ has no meaning (except to maintain the dogma of tradition, which is memory).
Yes. Memory and thought are mediums for our self-interested motives.
So when self-interest is active (through “desire and will”)
Of course, there may be some motives that are purely practical, and needn’t be problematic. Memory and thought, after all, have evolved to aid our animal organism in surviving and thriving. So they are not intrinsically evil or bad (as some ‘spiritual’ enthusiasts want to claim).
But where memory and thought are the servants of egotism - such as desire, fear, hatred, greed, hurt - our thinking becomes perverted.
Yes. And by self we mean all the contents of consciousness, right? For memory to be completely absent, it is implied that all the contents of consciousness are emptied.
But can the contents of consciousness be emptied (which is the same thing as total attention) through will, through desire, through determination or effort?
As you say, no:
So,
As you say, the only thing we have left is an interest in observing ourselves (the contents of consciousness) for its own sake. We must ‘fall in love’ with the looking.
A clue to this, you write, is our degree of interest in the content itself.
But, of course, we cannot manufacture love anymore than we can manufacture the state of awareness (which are perhaps the same thing).
So we can only ask ourselves: are we genuinely interested in finding out about ourselves? Do we care about being unhappy, hurt, frightened, aggressive, insensitive, lonely? Are we honestly interested in finding out whether the contents of consciousness can be emptied? Are we willing to live with ourselves as we are (until we are not)?
As you say,
But we can’t force this love, this awareness.
So, perhaps it is when the content becomes all consuming - like sorrow, like suffering (which is, in essence, pure memory) - that there is an opportunity to live choicelessly with something which exists whether one loves it or not. And then to find out if it is possible to love that thing (without the separation of the observer and the observed) - which means to not judge or reject the content, to live with the content effortlessly, with care, with interest, with love… ?
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In the moment of felt connection there are no names. Thinking of it as Self afterwards is a way of demystifying the mystery. In that process is the comfort, security, and deception of tradition.
In the Kinfonet dialogues (e.g. today at 2 pm ET) we often spend half (or all!) the session trying to come up with a question that we can all sink our teeth in. Every so often someone will bring up the point that if we lack passion for exploring the question, if it doesn’t really MATTER for us, chances are the dialogue will suffer for it.
We all have passion for ourselves, right? (Come on, admit it! 
) And if self is largely the fruit of memory, by extension, know it like it or not, we have passion for memory. Find that passion and let it energize the exploration?
I dunno. The Buddha was self motivated when he sat under the bodhi tree and vowed not to stop meditating until he was fully enlightened. (Or if that doesn’t work for you, he was certainly motivated by self when he began his spiritual journey.) And yet the result was anything but a reinforcement of the center.
My take is that intention can take you to the edge of the cliff, but it can’t help you leap. If I intend to be openly aware, and perhaps perform a ritual to realize this intention, everything up to the moment of open awareness is thought-memory driven, but when the open awareness ‘kicks in’ it’s a different mode of being, memory and thought have no place there.
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Actually, Rick, this is not the entire truth, is it?
Half the group believe themselves to be already completely free from the contents of consciousness, and so promote “contentless listening” as a prescriptive demand. These people are not interested in formulating a question because - for them - all questions have to do with content; whereas they are (in their own self-estimation) free from content.
While the rest of the group are largely anti-intellectual and so have an instinctive and reactive fear of clarifying anything they say. They apparently wish to blindly assert their views without questioning any of the assumptions implicit in those assertions - and so actively resist asking any genuine question. - They may say “I don’t know, I really don’t know”, but they apparently do know, and will use any statement as a smoke-screen to conceal their active assumptions.
Asking questions is an art that, like awareness, like love, cannot be forced. A question must emerge naturally from (the individual or group) consciousness - so I am not surprised that it takes much of a dialogue to come up with, and clarify a question.
As K says: the answer to the question lies in the question itself, like the scent of a flower lies in the flower.
So getting the question right, clear, distinct, is the whole of the problem, it seems to me. A dialogue without a question is like a garden without flowers.
The contents of consciousness are put there by memory. So it is not so much that we have to find some extrinsic “passion” for these contents (which are memory), but that we have to contact, connect with these contents - through awareness, sensitivity, perception.
When we are in direct contact with any content of consciousness, there is activity, energy, feeling taking place. We do not need to search for a “passion” beyond that.
Our problem is that we are not actively aware of - or sensitive to - our own contents. Or, if we are, we do not trust the group enough to communicate the implications of this awareness through shared dialogue.
The trustability of the group matters - and this can no more be forced than one’s own awareness of oneself.
Freedom,
One can never know one is free, and that is but one reason why the mind-heart said no to Charley from entering into the Kinfonet zoom meeting one year ago. The few comments from some of the die-hards of that group who deigned to post here (the bull-pen) showed incredible arrogance (cough!!!), and selfishness (getting a straight answer from one of them was worse than pulling teeth!). So much for being free from the contents of their consciousness…!
It is not surprising that such is the nature of the other part of that group. It falls entirely on the shoulders of the one who is facilitating such a group to unmask the fakes, and shake up the group…
One is well aware that the Queen has retained much of her power by remaining silent as to sharing her true thoughts, feelings, opinions, etc…
Ha, yes - (I suppose you know that the UK, or at least England, is going a little crazy over this Jubilee celebration). It’s all quite silly - but, for what it’s worth, it has humanised Elizabeth the person a little bit. In her old age she is revealing herself to be more vulnerable and fallible (in the ordinary, human sense) than heretofore. It is surely a matter of time until the monarchy loses its power in England, and Elizabeth may be the last monarch who genuinely holds such unquestioning authority in the eyes of the “people”.
I don’t know if you are aware, but as part of the Jubilee festivities there was a staged meeting between the Queen and a well-known (animated) cartoon bear (called Paddington). Paddington bear famously keeps a marmalade sandwich in his hat, in case he gets hungry. And the Queen was shown to take a marmalade sandwich from her handbag, to show that she keeps one on her person just like Paddington. Silly, I know - but it was a humanising touch.
Paddington bear (according to the children’s story) was originally a refugee from Peru. So for the Queen to be meeting with the UK’s most famous child refugee - at a time when the politics of the UK right is so antagonistic towards refugees - was something positive.
Also, in the Ukrainian version of the film “Paddington”, the now President Zelensky voiced the role of the bear, so it has a particular resonance at this time for this reason too.
I am not a monarchist, I hasten to add!
I must admit to not understanding this approach to questioning. It sounds a bit precious to me, or at least something that can slouch towards preciousness quite easily.
For me, all questions are good questions, opportunities to explore and learn. When the dialogue group is flailing about ‘looking for the right question’ I often think: Dudes and dudesses, relax, whatever question happens to be on the table is the perfect question for discovery!
At some point Rick, it would be good to have an understanding about what it is that you consider dialogue to be. What you consider “precious” in the pejorative sense may in fact be actually precious!
To me a dialogue, stripped of all it has become (through tradition, habit, Krishnamurtian or Bohmian dialogue, etc), is simply a conversation between friends - who are ‘wandering down a sunny lane shuttered with branches, or sitting on a park bench’ (in K’s description!) - talking over the problems of life together.
Friends who do not claim to have emptied their consciousness of all content (unless this is an irrevocable fact), and so who share the basic human condition, are in the same boat, and are interested in inquiring into it together.
There is no argument, no resistance, no ‘one-upmanship’, no competition, no pressure of authority. And so freedom to look, to feel, to be vulnerable.
In this spirit, a question, a content, an interest, a proto-insight, may appear (and does appear). And so in this spirit, you are entirely correct to say that
But when the group are not friends - i.e. when they are speaking totally different languages (I don’t mean literally different languages, but rather different emotional languages), are claiming authority, are claiming to be free from all content (and so not admitting to being in the same boat), are resisting each other, competing with each other, etc - how can there be a simple unfolding of the question?
In such a group, there is insufficient patience for a question to arise and unfold. There is constant friction and an absence of co-operation, and so constant misunderstanding. There is no fluidity, vulnerability, clarity. It is just a mess of ornery egos in constant need of being placated.
In such a context, the appeal for a simple question may appear “precious”, and it probably is. There is just so much basic interference in the way which needs to be dealt with first.
But a question is simply a verbalised communication of a state of mind that does not know (as opposed to an assertion, which is the claim to knowledge of a thing) - and it is only then that a dialogue can be a movement of meditative inquiry (which is what you raised in a previous meeting).
You say “seeing is a process”. Is it…according to Krishnamurti? Didn’t K use “seeing” in reference to actual seeing, i.e., direct perception?
If seeing is a process, it takes time. But if what K called “seeing” takes no time, is immediate, how speculative can we be about what takes no time? I don’t know what timelessness is because I can’t imagine it, much less speculate about how it works.
James,
I saw the “meeting” between the Queen and Paddington, though haven’t seen the films themselves. Cute. Was unaware of Paddington’s origins. Was also unaware of Zelensky’s voice-over in the Ukrainian version of the film(s). [While both grandfathers hailed from that region in Europe, both were “travellers” (musicians), and originally and genetically both of them hailed from parts far away from that area - one inherited a strong genetic tendency to be an outlier from what society stands for from them, not from K - even having been “accused” of being an Indian by a French-Canadian… lol].
EDIT: One did have some question re: this animation. As a matter of fact, while watching this, one spent some time wondering whether the Queen was for real or some animated clone of her. Apparently, the technology is such that ABBA did something like that. It was just that … this fake weird smile of hers, so cheesy; when younger, she actually had a kind of spontaneous smile, but now it is so “fixed”… Her mouth slightly open and she has the same moronic “smile” whether she is on the balcony or in this animation. It was like some Mme Tussaud image. I wonder whether when they embalm her, whether they will keep this “smile” on her as well… Too weird, almost scary. It is odd, but one has the impression that she actually has “become” the myth she has embodied.
Re: Dialogue - Life is always challenge and response - K. The dead cannot challenge, and most importantly - nor respond, eh? Nor are the dead able to “dialogue”… or even have a friendly convo …. The dead are immured in their “likes and dislikes”, they cannot respond to “intensity” - it frightens them - their need to control psychologically…, (walking on eggshells 'round 'em) - lol. And, as one has stated previously, life is indifferent to the likes and dislikes of anyone. And, oooh - discovery here - *g - they daren’t challenge/respond to the contents of a post (which they react against), because it would mean they don’t challenge/respond their own contents of their consciousness (which aren’t emptied!). One reminds everyone that freedom is at the beginning, not at the end! When they do seem to “challenge”, it’s always on the form of the contents, not the contents themselves!
That’s an ideal boat. I’d probably be thrown overboard.
In this boat, it seems to me, are people (like myself) who take the teaching seriously enough to think about it and discuss it, but not seriously enough to be profoundly affected by it.
When I read this, rather than inviting me to explore something together, it pretty much pushes me away. It’s as if I’m saying: Hey, let’s play! And you’re saying: Nah, the game is fixed.