Thought is transient, changing, impermanent, and it is seeking permanency. So thought creates the thinker, who then becomes the permanent.
– Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
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Seems to describe our whole way of living so concisely
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Is the self-centered brain driven by the desire to think so brilliantly that its thoughts outlive the brain that generates them? Is it living to outlive itself by having its thoughts survive its death?
If intelligence is beyond the brain, the brain is no more than the means by which a human communes with intelligence, thereby freeing itself to live entirely in the present with no ambition whatsoever.
Parents find deep comfort and solace in the belief that they live on through their children. Does the brain feel the same about its thoughts, its children?
The seeking of “shelter from the struggles and turmoils of life”, or of whatever comfort life may give, that seeking comes to an end once the illusions created by thought have been deeply understood.
Practical knowledge is acquired through experience (much of which is muscle memory). It’s the kind of content the brain must keep, until/unless it is updated by new developments or discoveries.
Psychological knowledge comes with choosing to be somebody, a person among persons, defined/known by one’s chosen beliefs and preferences.
Practical knowledge isn’t chosen. One must know certain things to survive and thrive, and that knowledge isn’t chosen but allowed for by being empty, open, vulnerable.
Really like considering thoughts as progeny.
I am trying to figure out how to participate here, I would like to. I see it working at times, other times… Text forum dialogue is very difficult it seems, anyone else grapple with this?
Talking face to face, and writing are indeed very different - we are also dependant on the people we are talking to.
Kinfonet does offer meetups via zoom Krishnamurti Information Network
I participate in a couple of those.
Small impromptu groups have also managed to meet on zoom in the past - in the rare cases when a sufficient number of people so inclined are actually participating here.
I am willing to chat on zoom with you if you like - just message me.
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Thinker is the thought. It would mean there is no separate thinker. We feel there is a thinker that is separate and real. This thinker feels it is real acts in the area of thought, but thinker is the thought, there is no separate thinker. Thinker being thus an illusion. If thinker is an illusion, it stops acting for who is to act. Then there is choiceless awareness without observer as choice of observer has ended, the observer has ended. If we see thinker is an illusion, that has ended it’s validity, it’s action, it’s existence.
Like story of Buddha and Mara. Mara is ego, the thinker. It has created a psychological structure, a house through it’s actions which are reactions of ego. But ego is an illusion. If that is seen, it stops acting in the house of ego thought, in it’s own thought. Or may be ego as illusion has existence only as it’s illusory activity. Once ego is seen as illusion, there is no point in it’s activity. The activity stops, the ego or thinker ceases.
I like to say “I am not the thinker of the thoughts” or “there is no thinker of the thought” - as in thoughts just pop up from some unconscious process, sometimes the thoughts are really stupid and nasty.
And the feeling that I am the thinker of the thought is just that : a feeling. Or an image. We think we are the thinker of the thought.
I get the gist of this, but am skeptical. Illusion or not, ego is often a source of comfort, meaning, even joy, and therein is its point. Reification of ego may lessen when it’s seen for what it really is, but I doubt it would simply stop. Guess I’ll have to try it and see! 
Say you sit down with the intention of thinking about the nature of thinking. You think “I am not the thinker.” You will the thought into existence. Aren’t you its creator? If not, who or what is?
Who is the “we” that thinks “we are the thinker”?
If there is no thinker but only thought, why isn’t it obvious? Is it because the brain isn’t aware of which thoughts are practical and which are psychological?
Isn’t it for lack of self-knowledge that the conditioned brain doesn’t discern the difference and “we” are too confused and conflicted to see how our imagined selves are created, recreated, and perpetuated, by incoherent thought?
Liking pleasant stuff (which includes a pleasant feeling of pride for example) and not liking unpleasant stuff is the role of the ego/self - its raison d’etre. The ego (ie. the center, the subject) is necessary for pleasant/unpleasant.
Pleasant/unpleasant is a spectrum - they are not different things - they cannot be separated and it is their complete authority over our psyche which makes them so real and powerful.
Me trying is just the movement of conditioning - whereas we are asking whether we must be the puppets of conditioning, mechanically, primitively - or whether our brains can participate more fully with the intelligence running through us.
Has biological evolution arrived at a stage where buddhas are a possibility?
I, meaning conditioning in the form of me, am the thinker. I create my thoughts, but this “I” is a bio-mechanical process. We can say that thoughts are determined by me, I am the thinker, but we must admit that I am not an independant entity, I do no have agency.
Please explain further, M. le DougDoug. What do you mean by ‘determining’ rather than creating thoughts? And how is it possible that the thinker (s/he who thinks) be a non-agent?
Some thoughts are “determined by me” (psychological content), and we call these “psychological thoughts”. Other thoughts are of practical necessity. But if the so-called thinker can’t discern the difference, one might be better of with no thoughts at all.
I wasn’t opposing “determining” vs “creating”… but now that you mention it - should we re-hash the K teaching on how reiterating the past (ie. conditioning, memory, knowledge) is less creation than recreation (ie. more craft than art 
)
Anyway we can say that I (the mind/brain made of conditioned knowledge) can produce thoughts - I can even choose to repeat certain thoughts.
But I have no agency. I do not decide what thoughts are available to me.
Robert Sapolsky makes a solid case for why there is no space to fit in agency (freewill he calls it) between now and a billion years ago. within reason interview (you can skip through the menu of the interview)
Anyway the teaching that it is not “me” (ie. the feeling of being this center) that produces thought is hard to counter : feelings don’t produce thoughts (though thoughts appear as a reaction to feelings), the ego doesn’t produce thought (though thoughts are mainly self centered) , neurology says its probably the brain that produces thought (I am not my brain)
PS. Sorry sometimes I am using “I/self” to mean the sense of self, and sometimes to mean the conditioned brain.
I think we have a degree of agency with a framework of constraints, similarly to how a prisoner has the ability to move freely around their cell. The thinker-process (whatever that is) can to an extent initiate, manage, transform, build upon, deconstruct, and end their thoughts. There are those that are better at this, and those that are worse. Thinking skills are learnable, we should have been taught early on how to use our brains-minds, how to ‘master’ thinking.
You’re saying that I is both the mechanical reaction of “conditioned knowledge”, and the capacity for practical, reasonable response.
If I is both the mechanical reaction of psychological content and the reasonableness of practical thought, then the agency I has is to be reasonable and practical when I isn’t being reactive, confused, and conflicted.
Or like the freedom of a prisoner in a maze following the object of desire (their only freedom is in not having to follow what glitters)
Its a great loss - that we do not learn to understand how we function when young - to notice the pitfalls of the human experience.
How would the prisoner in the maze learn to “master” (if thats the right word?) their experience? They cannot desire not to follow their desires (that would be missing the point), Freedom from desire is obviously all about seeing clearly what a mess we are - we (ie. self) being part and parcel of this process of exigent need.