“Then what will make us anew? Do you perceive the vital necessity of being renewed, of being reborn? To understand life, with all its complex problems, and reality, the unknown, there must be a constant death and a new birth. Otherwise you meet new problems, new experiences, with dead accumulations, which only bind, causing confusion and suffering.”
“The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti”, Vol. 3, Fourth Talk at Ommen, 1938.
Tolle treasures the power of now, Krishnamurti the power of new. What do we value?
You’re using K-quotes from the nineteen thirties when K’s use of the language had not undergone the change that more accurately expresses what we was trying to get across. I take quotes from this era with a grain of salt.
Tolle doesn’t look like somebody worth listening to.
What is the issue with Tolle, what about him doesn’t work for you?
Sense of falseness. To me, of course
I think he believes everything he says…
Tolle is sincere? Maybe, I can’t read thoughts… But then is the question: how a person can speak to millions, if he’s not 100% sure of what he is saying…
I like him. He’s Krishnamurti-lite Advaita-lite nondual-lite kind of. But I get the feeling he is being these knowingly to help reach his audience. Though commercialization and New Age naivete are present to some extent in his work, I think he’s for real.
K. has something he says about: try this, do this, now. Who else have something like this to suggest?
Believers are 100% sure of everything they believe.
When/if a believer has reason to doubt their belief, they just find a more believable belief to identify with. No problem.
“Of everything they believe”, you say. But there may be very, very different things. Let’s take that Tolle. What is it, he is talking about? Just mundane things or smth much more? If the latter, then, how he can be sure? And here you see Maheshji with what he says, like Love. And you seem not to believe him. And, indeed, why should you?..
You don’t read carefully. I’ve made it abundantly clear that Maheshi (aka Paul DImmock) is deeply dishonest and will say anything.
how can he (Tolle) be sure?
Believers are sure about what they believe until/unless they begin to doubt and have to modify their belief to keep on believing.
There are two different things: theoretical knowledge, and real understanding, seeing things if you want
I realize English isn’t your language, but are you saying that you can see things if you want to see things? Or are you saying you can see images of what you desire?
The point I’m making is that we can’t imagine what we don’t know, what we have no experience of, so we can’t imagine what Krishnamurti was talking about, pointing to. We can only try to grasp what he was pointing to.
Until/unless the brain undergoes the transformation Krishnamurti was talking about, the actual effect of that transformation is unimaginable by the conditioned brain.
It’s like someone telling you that you need a latter or a shovel to do a particular job, but having never seen or used either of these things, you can’t imagine what they are. Nevertheless, you believe what he’s telling you and want to acquire the unimaginable thing he’s pointing to.
Then, I’m talking of experiencing things, if I use this word you use
I still don’t know what you’re saying.
I’ve tried to explain why we can’t imagine anything about the transformed brain because it is beyond what we know. But we can feel the need for transformation of the brain because our behavior is and has been making life on earth worse for all living things, including ourselves.
Conveying this feeling of urgent need to abandon our self-centered mode of operation, regardless of what it means for oneself, is what Krishnamurti devoted his life to. He attempted to do this by talking about things that are beyond our knowledge and understanding.
It seems that I failed to make my point clear. From the very beginning there was no need for you to explain to me that all we have are just images not matching their objects. I just tried to point to the very fact of existence of these images in our conscience and what this means in our lives
If we identify images as images they are perfectly alright and we can imagine all we want. Imagination may help people get free of the meanness and mediocrity of lazy people. ‘I have a dream’ speech by Luther King and ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon just as Gandhi’s words about Truth have brought people together, they have been beacons of humanity for people in general. Fact is they have been killed as well, that is the grim side of the story.
We can’t always identify things as what they actually are because we have chosen belief over choiceless awareness, and we’ve been doing this for millennia.
When what we’re aware of doesn’t conflict with what we believe, we’re seeing somewhat clearly. But when we’re aware of what doesn’t support our beliefs, our conditioned brain reacts and distorts what its aware of.
When I’m imagining the future, for instance, I’m imagining a future I want or don’t want, so I’m not seeing my images dispassionately - I’m reacting to them viscerally.
The conditioned brain can be honest when its beliefs are not undermined or debunked by awareness, but is incapable of honesty when it’s beliefs are challenged or threatened by awareness. The conditioned brain chooses to censor and distort what awareness reveals instead of being choicelessly aware.