Hello, Inquiry!
All you’re saying is ‘your belief’ so that’s what you should have stated at the beginning. As well, you should say it’s your conditioned brain that behaves like that because I don’t see that brains behave all the same way in a particular situation. We’re born conditioned alright and our conditioning keeps changing according to many different factors, I’m sure you can understand this.
I don’t know if we’re born conditioned, but we grow up conforming to the values and beliefs we’re expected to identify with and practice.
and our conditioning keeps changing according to many different factors
Yes, superficially, but fundamentally we are conditioned to put thought and content over silence and emptiness; to choose what awareness is revealing instead of being choicelessly aware.
This is why K stressed even early on that there has to be a ‘death and rebirth’ each moment. That makes sense. That is how all life here lives. Otherwise we are always meeting the present with the ‘ossified’ past. We are ‘conditioned’ to believe that that is an okay way to live until we die. But it isn’t. And the state of human affairs demonstrates that it is not an ‘okay’ way to live and die.
Can you find the exact quote where he said that? I’m not disputing that he said something to that effect, but I’d like to review the actual statement.
We know that what was true a minutes ago is not necessarily true now, so one must be nothing but choiceless awareness - not my awareness - lest one be always clinging to and identifying with something that is no longer true.
Calling this mode of operation “death and rebirth every moment” may be an accurate way of putting it, but the conditioned brain is too afraid of dying to operate that way.
The point I previously made was about images and the capacity to imagine, not about conditioning and believing. But I can say that I see that when we’re born we have inherited some features which we may become aware of and then either conform to, or change or rebel against. It happens as we grow. Some of this conditioning may be more or less superficial, but what you say is not superficial, maybe it is still superficial. At some point in the discussions with Bohm (Limits of Thought) Krishnamurti says that awareness and attention are not enough in order to have a real perception of truth.
Can you provide a link to this dialogue?
Since all we have is awareness and attention, by what miracle does one “have a real perception of truth”?
Yes, Inquiry, maybe it is some sort of miracle, but both D Bohm and Dr Parchure apparently believed Krishnamurti. I remember it is in Part l and the chapter is ‘Beyond attention and awareness’. I don’t have the book with me just now
A persistently recurring thought is like that unyielding toddler who chases the mother around the house all day long, pulling on her skirt from behind, and tirelessly cries out at her, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”—but mommy cannot listen or give her attention to the child because she is too busy thinking about her own problems.
Self is the gift that keeps giving, the ultimate food for inquiry. Self probably finds all this attention delightful. They’re obsessed with me, me, me! There’s no bad publicity for the self. Even its most passionate critics feed its need for passionate attention!
Perhaps when the perception is not through the eyes of the ‘self’?
You would have to ask yourself why, when it has created such havoc in the world, why would you find that fact, if it is a fact, ‘delightful’?
But it can’t ‘operate’ any other way, can it? It operates as does everything in the moment, the only moment there is. Life / Death is not separate in this moment, it is one, no separation between them, no time, no line between them. We have separated them but in the moment they are one: death/rebirth…the fear comes from the mistake of transferring practical time into the psyche realm where there is only ever ‘now’.
The conditioned brain is capable of direct perception sometimes, but most times distorts perception?
If ‘conditioning’ is persistent patterns of neural pathways, they can change…as beliefs can dissolve. One of the most persistent is the ‘reflex’ pattern of the ‘center’ or ‘self-image’ as being an actuality.
The self seems to need attention, praise, and certification to keep up the ruse. It needs external propping up like an insecure person. It may suspect it’s ultimately smoke and mirrors.
It starts in childhood with wanting the mother’s attention. Society getting across the message’ be somebody’ or you’ll get kicked around. “Hey look at me everybody, I’m somebody!”
I often think of self as a little kid hungry for approval from mommy and daddy. A little kid who is sat in the driver’s seat driving the organism’s thoughts and actions!
One suspects that one is just smoke and mirrors, but not knowing how to act on this suspicion, turns to someone they assume/hope has awakened from self-deception.
And if they’re lucky, don’t wind up in the clutches of a charlatan!
Seekers get what they expect or hope for until they are beyond hope
and don’t know what to expect.