On radical change

Kinfonet Discussion
224

Just look in order to see (not see something we think we know eg silence) - Sit down (or stand up) quietly with a curious and innocent (as if we weren’t sure that all our knowledge was correct) mind, and without any hope of attaining something other, just observe what comes up - without reacting (we tend to react as if everything that appears within our consciousness was the truth) just being aware of the movement. Is this possible?

PS Paul says “turn off” above - that might give the impression of effort - I turn myself off - which would be continuation of conflict - what we are experimenting with is the possibility of acceptance and choiceless curiosity.

225

I’m quite certain no one will abandon thought unless there’s the insight that thought is a faulty tool. We can’t take it on your authority, obviously, which would be meaningless. Therefore, we need to understand the workings of thought. I put the two words you are denying the importance of in bold to point out where we part in our view here. Others are free to agree or disagree of course.

226

How is this achieved?

227

“Go into it, sirs.” (K). I think that’s an accurate quote from one or likely from several, of K’s discussions.

228

“Go into it” what does that mean to you? Think about it? Or observe without suppositions nor conclusions? Or something else?

229

One more excerpt from K and then I’ll try to answer for myself:

K: I say to myself, I must understand myself - myself is the world, and the world is me. And I mean that; not just words. And in understanding myself I understand the world - the world about me, nature, the structure of human relationship, the divisions, the quarrels, the antagonisms, the wars, the violence and all that, it is all buried in me because I am the world. So I must start with myself. Right?

Q: If you are the world and the world is you, how can you start with yourself?

K: If you are the world and the world is you, how can you start with yourself. I start with what I have sir. Shall I go on. Do please move, let’s move. It is a hot morning, rather lovely. Let’s get going.

I know nothing about myself. I don’t start with a conclusion - I am god, I am not a god, I am the state, I am not the state, I am the world, I am not the world, or I am the world - I know nothing. Right? So I begin there. I know nothing. What I know is what other people have told me. Propaganda. What I know, what I am is the result of what others have made me. Or in reaction to the world I am. So I really don’t know anything. Right? So I can begin to learn. Right? May I go on? No please, share together. It is not just I go on talking. As I know nothing I begin to learn. So I must find out what it means to learn. What does it mean to learn, not knowing anything, what does it mean to learn? I know, I have to learn a language - Italian, Greek, French or whatever it is. And I store up the words, the meaning of the words, the verbs, the irregular verbs, and so on. So I know a language. I know how to ride a bicycle, drive a car, dig in the garden, or run a machine. I know all that, but actually beyond the technological knowledge I know absolutely nothing about myself. Can we start from there? Can you honestly say, ‘I really don’t know anything about myself’ - not out of despair, not out of a sense of frustration: not knowing myself I am going to commit suicide! You follow?

Q: Excuse me, what do you mean by saying that you know nothing about yourself?

K: What do you mean by saying you know nothing about myself. What I am. Why I do this. Why I think that. What are the motives, the impressions, the… you understand? I know nothing about myself except the technological knowledge, the information, the activity in that field. So I know nothing about myself. I only know what people have said to me about myself - the philosophers, the analysts, the psychoanalysts, the mothers, the fathers, the books - I put all that aside. So I am going to learn - learn about myself. And so before I use that word, I must find out what it means to learn. Sept.6, 1973 Brockwood Park

1 Like
230

I have to share some more from the same talk as it’s relevant to what we’re discussing:

Q: To learn you have to have observation.

K: To learn you have to have observation. So how do I learn and observe? Right? Observe myself and in the act of observation learn? Now what does observation mean? Can I watch myself, all the movements of myself, without any distortion, without any previous conclusion, which will bring about the distortion - that I am good, that I am bad, that I am divine, that I am marvellous, that I am the most beautiful, lovely person, etc., etc., etc. Can I observe myself without any shadow of distortion?

Q: If I don’t try to change myself.

K: Sir, please do hold… Look at it sir. Can you look at yourself without any opinion about yourself?

Q: (Inaudible) (Sound of aeroplane)

Q: Is learning not practising, I think she’s saying.

K: Is learning not practising.

Q: (Inaudible)

K: Now do start now. Don’t let’s talk about the baby, but do start. Do start learning now. Please listen to this. Can the mind observe its activity without prejudice? Prejudice being judgement, evaluation which has already been made and through those eyes I look at myself. Can I observe the movement of myself in daily life, cooking, washing, all that, the activity of the mind, observe without any conclusion, prejudice. You say that is not possible. Wait. Do it, sir, please sir, do these things.

Q: How do you do it?

K: I am showing it to you, not ‘how’ sir.

Q: How are you showing it?

K: I am showing it to you. Watch your mind without prejudice. Can you watch it?

Q: Can I watch my mind prejudicing, can I watch that with prejudice?

K: Can you watch your mind without a judgement?

Q: Making judgement.

K: Not making judgement, sir. Look sir…

Q: Excuse me. Please excuse me - I find as I walk about here doing this and that and so on, there is a movement, a momentum of making judgements, prejudicing, that caresses my perception. I can feel its quality almost. (Inaudible) Can I observe all that without judging?

K: That is what I am asking you sir. Can the mind watch its activity without any prejudice - prejudice, conclusion, judgement, evaluation, all that - the past. Can it watch? So, until it does it is not capable of learning. Right?

Q: Do you mean observation without thought?

K: Right. Observation without thought. I didn’t want to put it that way - then you will go off into: how am I to prevent thought from interfering.

Q: Isn’t that what you have to consider?

K: What sir?

Q: How am I to look at thought interfering without prejudice, without judging it?

K: Now there is nobody to answer that question, what will you do?

Q: Squirm!

K: Squirm? Then squirm! (Laughter) But you have to answer that question, it is no good merely squirming, you have got to answer it. Life challenges you. You can’t say, ‘Well I squirm’ and leave it at that. Life says, answer it, you are a man, grown up.

Q: What does squirm mean? (Laughter)

K: What does squirm mean? You have seen a worm squirm!

Q: Sir…

K: No, sir please, just a minute sir. You see, sir, it becomes really quite impossible when your mind isn’t giving complete attention to something that demands attention. I want to learn about myself, not through somebody else’s eyes - whether it is Christ, Buddha, or the latest guru - I want to learn, the mind must learn about itself. So it says, ‘How am I to learn?’, which means I must observe. How can I observe when there is so much prejudice? There are thousands of prejudices I have, how can I observe? Then the next thing is, there is nobody to answer, how is the mind to be free of prejudice? You follow? Otherwise I can’t observe, the mind can’t observe and therefore can’t learn. You follow? So how is the mind to be free of prejudice?

Q: When I see something in myself I don’t like, that is a fact, not a prejudice.

K: I am asking madame: you have a prejudice, haven’t you? All of us have some kind of pre-judgement - that’s what it means, prejudice, prejudging something. So how is the mind to be free of prejudice, bigotry, conclusion, how is it? Nobody is going to answer me, because I have got to find out. I can’t just squirm, lie under the question, I have got to answer it to myself. Life demands it.

Q: When you see the falseness of it.

K: You see the falseness of prejudice, don’t you - but you are still prejudiced aren’t you?

Q: I don’t know, I can’t answer it.

Q: (Inaudible)

K: You are not answering sir. Answer that question for yourself sir. How is the mind to be free of prejudice? You understand? A conclusion, an image which I have built about you. Do listen sir, I have built an image about you because you are a Christian, I am a Hindu, or I am a Communist or you are something else. Now how is that mind to be free of the image it has built, or the culture has built, or the society has built, which has been implanted in the mind? How is that image to be put away? It is a question sir, you understand, don’t answer something else. The image is there, how is it to break down? To be free of it.

1 Like
231

This is what I found myself looking at this morning. The ‘movement’. Can the movement of thought be seen? When there is observation of the movement, that is one thing. The other is that we take the movement of thought to be ‘me’. Me thinking. The question that arises is what is ‘before’ the movement? If I take myself to be the movement of my thoughts and you yours, there is inevitably conflict. Your thoughts are conditioned one way and mine another. So if we ‘believe’ that we are what we think, there will be a clashing i.e. the state of Humanity. But if what we are is that ‘silence’ before the movement, then that division of opinions, predjudices, knowledge, etc, does not stand between us.

So the important question you bring up: can we be aware of the movement of thought without any judgement or reaction to it?

232

“This silence comes about when the mind has completely understood itself.” Understanding Thanks, mac, for the link that you shared in another thread.

233

Which means you continue to wait. So one is caught in time. Do you see this? In other words, in seeing it there is immediate insight into it because you are understanding all the ramifications of it. Or are you still waiting for the insight as though it is something separate from the statement that one is caught in time?

Thought is a faulty tool. How much proof do we want? The moment it is pointed out, that’s the whole proof right there. But when we are listening for something else, we miss how obvious all this is.

I am not asking anyone to abandon thought after the insight about it; that’s meaningless. I am asking: can thought be abandoned right from the start? (After all, this whole thread is about radical change, not about just accepting what others have recommended or advised.) Thought abandoned, put aside, not in order to achieve insight, gain understanding or for any other motive; just to find out if thought actually can stop. It’s a simple enough question. I don’t know why we are making it all so complicated.

234
235

From the QOTD above : “That is, by discovering and eradicating the cause of existing chaos, of human suffering, of spiritual and economic exploitation, each one will truly fulfil.”

236

Sure doesn’t sound 'fundamentally simple" when put that way, does it, Thomas?

237

Well, we have been continually commenting on this for years (some complain that we keep going round in circles) - so we must at least have some idea what the cause of suffering is? At least at an intellectual level. Which means we only need to see the truth of what we know in our day to day life - or in relationship as we usually say. (Relationship of whom with what, I don’t know)

238

Yes, Hi, I do, it’s psychological thought with time: Thought / Time.

1 Like
239

“psychological time” as we usually say - which is a description of the “self”. ie being a slave to desire and the ensuing reaction of mental and physical effort for the imagined futur goal.

So we could also point to the concept of “self” and say “there’s the culprit!” kill it!
But of course that is just the movement of self again.

The insight (as in seeing the truth of it in our day to day life) that self is suffering would be great - but if I look at my description of “psy time” above - the main problem is twofold :

The absolute power of desire - we are slaves, reaction is instinctive - we believe totally in the truth of what we think.
And the disregard for the others - injustice is not getting what I want - as if we were alone in the world, or separate from it.

240

If we were to somehow abruptly switch our ‘thought streams’, mine in your head and yours in mine would I “believe” in yours and would you believe in mine? The answer is yes. Because the ‘believer’ is part and parcel of the thought stream. The ‘thinker’ is the thought…It is only, then, in a choice-less sort of awareness that we find ourselves as ‘one’ and not ‘me’ and the ‘other’?

1 Like
241

Could we go into this a bit for the sake of clarity. It is intellectually ‘understood’ that ‘time’ as becoming has no place in all of this. As in; Okay I see that whatever is supposed to ‘happen’ hasn’t happened. I’m here now and I’m still the same old me…and if I think maybe I don’t understand enough about thought, self, silence, etc and if I did then this something might happen. But if I think that then I’m again in this web of time: that with time this or that may happen. How does this process of ‘becoming’ dissolve, break down? So one is completely free of it?

242

Thought is apparently doing two things at the same time. First, it is saying, ‘I see it,’ and, second, it is saying, ‘I want to possess what I see.’ In the desire for possession - in the form of proof, enlightenment, insight or what you will - it has immediately lost what it has already seen. For example, I think it is fairly easy to see quickly and simply the truth that there is no psychological evolution. But almost at the very next second, thought wants something more than what it has just seen, thus undermining its own truth. In other words, it says, ‘No psychological evolution’ and ‘How do I evolve?’ both at the same time. So it is still separating itself from what it sees as the problem.

Thought is at the heart of all our problems, however large or small those problems may appear. But thought cannot get at itself, see itself, without creating further division and complication. So can thought have a stop, a total cessation of its activity? In the ending of the division and separation brought about by thought there may be a new energy which transcends all the phoney attempts of thought to put right the ills of the world. Or thought may be unable to stop. But in order to find out we have to first put the question so that it is beyond the reaches of thought. This means that our question is not just a casual question formed out of passing curiosity or playfulness, or as a form of amusement; it is not just one question among a possible half dozen other valid questions. Instead, it is our only question; and therefore it has the energy to bring about an answer that is never separate from the question.

1 Like
243

Much of thought is psychological thought, and because it sustains the illusion of self, it is compulsive. For the ego, silence is death.