Is it enough to know and acknowledge that I am conditioned, or must I be so aware of my conditioning every moment that there is no doubt that I am my chosen response to the society I find myself in? I am who/what I choose to be at this moment because choosing is what I am.
But what if I put myself in a Robinson Crusoe situation where the only pressure to conform comes from the natural environment - not the human social environment? What if my survival does not depend on who/what others think or do, but whether I can find enough water, food, and shelter to survive?
Who/what am I when survival has everything to do with the necessities of actual life, and nothing to do with the necessities of a sustainable/respectable social/professional life?
Many people have taken this question seriously enough to put themselves in situations where their survival depended entirely on how well or how poorly they could keep living in nature without calling for help. Those who knew they could do it, just went about doing itâŚuntil/unless, that is, they had to speak up about how all the rest of us are destroying the natural world in our efforts to make it more to our liking.
Krisnamurti, however, took it a step further by talking about how weâre all killing the natural world (including our own species) when we choose to believe we know what weâre doing instead of seeing believing for what it is. .
But what if I put myself in a Robinson Crusoe situation where the only pressure to conform comes from the natural environment - not the human social environment? What if my survival does not depend on who/what others think or do, but whether I can find enough water, food, and shelter to survive?
What is the point in speculating? We are not that? We are heavily conditioned. We have to find out what to do about it. Is that not so?
Is it enough to acknowledge that I am âheavily conditionedâ? Isnât that like being honest enough to admit that I am a liar; that I canât tell the truth because I am dishonest?
If I know I am heavily conditioned, why am I not so acutely aware of my every thought and reaction that âIâ is clearly nothing but conditioned response?
Because thatâs what âconditioningâ is. Like a hypnotized subject, you donât âknowââŚyouâre not aware that youâre hypnotizedâŚintellectually maybe, but not enough to break the spell.
For us conflict, fear, suffering etc is inevitable when we take ourselves to be âindividualsâ because each of us with our differing beliefs, experiences, education puts us in a sort of opposition to each other. Some of us are rewarded by our societies and most not. We are in competition to get the easiest most comfortable lifestyles and the society condones this. But with 8 billion of us and counting itâs âincoherentâ to think / believe that this wonât lead to disaster.
I think we may safely assume that virtually everything we think, feel, and do is determined and guided to some extent (subtly perhaps) by our conditioning. Should this be right, then whenever we are aware of what we think, feel, and do we are aware of our conditioning (though we may not realize this). Itâs like the old saying: Open your mouth and youâre wrong.
Then appears this guy Krishnamurti and tells us (explicitly or implicitly) that it is possible to be free from our conditioning. We ask âHow?â and he just smiles, because he knows any attempt to free ourselves is another form of conditioning!
Thatâs not my picture of him Rick. He to me seemed very concerned about how he could get his âmessageâ across and why he couldnât. As he said, maybe he was a âfreakâ.
Personally I find it altogether possible he was a freak, a kind of mutation of the human brain and spirit. Brings up the question: Can a freak communicate with non-freaks? And more importantly for people in this forum, can a freak nudge us non-freaks towards the light? Would be an interesting issue to explore: What can we learn from Krishnamurti, what parts of his worldview can be transmitted and received? I lean towards: Find out for yourself. Thatâs why Iâm not always so interested in exactly what he said, the real message doesnât have much to do with words, ideas, teachings.
Well Bohm came up with something from his connection with K that was a description of our âcontents of consciousnessâ as being similar to âreflexesâ, the kind of reflex action our leg has when the knee is tapped in the right place. The leg kicks whether âweâ want it to or not. The brain is filled with reflexes and they work together as a âSystemâ. Our efforts to âsee the lightâ become part of the system, part of the reflexes. He doesnât say that the situation is hopeless and there is possibility of change but he doesnât minimize the difficulty. He describes his idea quite well in a seminar that was later published as a book âThought as a Systemâ after his death in 1992.
Our conditioning is âapparentâ by our continuous stream of consciousness. If, as Krishnamurti said, âconsciousness is its contentâ, our content is constantly reacting to awareness that doesnât support oneâs content.
Being aware of the brainâs conditioning is being aware of and interested in the brainâs identification with its content and its reactions to awareness.
When the brain uses the words, I, me, mine, it is identifying with its psychological content, the core of which is its imagined self. The brain is confused enough by its conditioning to believe it is a person who has a brain.
Even after the misunderstanding is dispelled, the reflexes may persist. But knowing they are reflexes, knee-jerk habits, affords you the possibility to let them come and go without having your reaction snowball. You still see red when someone cuts you off driving, but the red dissipates quite quickly, and your road rage doesnât blossom. Understanding whatâs really going on is the cure. Seeing the whole of the process.
Seeing the whole without judgement seems to be what is called for. But the whole âsystemâ seems to resist that possibility?
Or is it that the âoneâ trying to see the whole without judgement is just another of the reflexes? That seems likely doesnât it?
This seeing then that he is pointing to would be from âbeyondâ the system, outside of it, a âpureâ awareness, Choiceless as well as non-judgemental?
Hi Fraggle
What we are: mind, body, feelings. Itâs all connected
and itâs all conditioned. I think the Bohm book I mentioned makes a good case for this: Thought as a System. See what you think.
Reason and experimentation (in the good old Lab of Self) show us conditioned thought is able to see/fathom parts of itself but not the whole of itself. Even if thought gets extremely skillful, there will likely always be blindspots, artifacts of the deeply conditioned nature of thought that distort the âtruthâ of the whole. You suggest the possibility of seeing from beyond the system. What would this mean? Practically, given the limits of the human brain-mind-body.
Itâs not âpracticalâ, itâs a âradical revolutionâ. Itâs being ânothing, (not-a-thing)ââŚthe brain is limited because it is conditioned by the past. It canât âparticipate in the immensityâ (Kâs words) because it has trapped itself in the mundanity of the past. It has in Christian esotericism traded its âbirthright for a mess of potageâ. We donât know the limits of the human brainâŚand may never.
Honestly the notion of a radical revolution doesnât really do it for me. It probably did when I was a young Rick and baby steps felt boring, but Iâve become more evolutionary than revolutionary in my dotage. (Radical evolution? Bring it on!) As for the great quote about the human brain trading its birthright for a mess of potage (!) I must admit to enjoying the occasional tureen of potage, itâs yummy and comforting.