But you drew a conclusion from the hypothetical insight so the insight is terminated. This is what K pointed out in the insight quote I posted. Dan also had it in his post which you misunderstood, naturally, and made an erroneous response to.
Excuse me, can you prove that mine was a hypothetical insight?
We can see this coming to a “conclusion” in the way we read what someone writes. The words and ideas are giving us a meaning, an inference, and if I see it, and let it resound, without thinking about it verbally, then the original is what it is, and I am aware of this original meaning. When i take the word, idea, sentence, and then think about it as what someone wrote, and I want to comment about what was written, looking at the words, again, from my own perspective, then that is a conclusion.
It doesn’t matter if it’s hypothetical. Try to concentrate. I know it’s difficult for you. Any conclusion terminates the insight. I quote directly from K. Take it or leave I couldn’t care less.
Hi Jack. Thanks for posting this quote which you rightly describe as fascinating. Krishnamurti throws some light here on to how he was able to discover things over and over again as if for the first time. This sense of freshness and newness came over very strongly in his talks and writing. It’s interesting how he points out that drawing a conclusion terminates an insight. I feel that insight is always very communicative whereas mechanical conclusions are the opposite. Sometimes you can be talking to an old friend and the conversation can be alive, creative and new but at other times it can be mechanical and very much in the field of “the known”. Why is this the case?
Let’s say, I am very sure I know how to respond to anything, anyone, in various situations. I have a superior ability to maintain a position, whatever. This is basically what is called ego, isn’t it? I am using a self center and interacting with what I see as other self centers. I always see the outcome from a perspective of a self center, that is, there are various judgements, good or bad, which can be attributed to the other selves, and how I see it for myself.
This was a good post Peter. Thanks. That’s how we relate to the world and to our wife, our child, our neighbors and friends and enemies. Always from the self center. And it’s total limitation…totally conditioned by other self centers…and their beliefs, conclusions, knowledge, desires and fears. thought is responsible for this mess, isn’t it? Thought being totally conditioned and limited?
I have to confess that this point here baffles me. What kind of conclusion K. is talking about?
I can conclude – after having seen that a religious organization is false – that it’s better for me to quit it. Actually, it is something I have done. Is that a conclusion? Or is it the only right action I could take as a consequence of my insight?
I can understand that one must not stop observing one’s own reactions and psychological disturbances without drawing a conclusion because otherwise the observation will stop and I’m back in the realm of thought, of conjecture. But in the case of religious organizations when I have discovered they are false, corrupt and so on, what else is there to discover? I can’t live perpetually in the state of “insight” and insight will inevitably and naturally ends once I’ve seen all there was to be seen.
May it be the case K. chose a wrong example?
My insight is better than your insight. (
This is how we all function. And you are reacting as if the speech was about a personal case of yours. Nobody is doubting about your own insight but you’d do better doubt yourself.
I know it’s confusing and I’m not saying I understand it perfectly myself. I have been reading a book, a dialogue between Krishnamurti and Dr David Bohm. It’s entitled; The Limits of Thought. They talk extensively about insight. Insight is outside of thought. It is based in truth. Thought cannot touch truth but truth can touch thought. It looks like they are saying that when thought tries to interact with insight, by drawing a conclusion, then that insight is terminated because thought has made it a part of it’s conditioning, it’s limited understanding.
I think that it is hard to describe because thought can’t grasp what insight is. Thought is material, this ‘seeing into’ or insight is not. The example that comes to me is that insight is a kind of energy without form, it has no motive, no aim, no direction…like light it illuminates whatever it strikes. It doesn’t ‘accumulate’ whereas that is what thought / knowledge does. Like water flowing ceases to flow when it turns to ice. I think K. is pointing out that living with insight is our possibility. And our freedom. Thought’s conclusions are necessary in the practical world. But in the psyche, they become an impediment to the light of insight which can shine freely and move with ‘what is’.
Thank you for mentioning that book, it’s one of the few I have not read. It’s always very interesting to listen to the dilogues between K. And Bohm because often comes up something new we dont’ find in his talks. I’ve found just now the PDF version of it and in the next days I’ll have a look at it.
Yes, what you say about insight makes sense. Actually just after I had posted my previous post the answer came to my mind. Reality or actuality is always new so we can stay in a continuous state of insight, that is continuously exploring “what is”. The example of religious organizations mislead me because it referred to a single case. While K. was referring to a whole variety of things we can explore or have insight of. I. e. once we had an insight about religion, we can go on and have insight about the fallacy of nationalism and so on.
I understand what you are saying and I tend to agree with it. I’ll admit that I am having some difficulty understanding what K and Bohm are saying about insight.
True, yet it’s the fact that thought’s conclusions are responsible for division which leads to conflict and tremendous suffering which is the point that I think must be emphasized. Seeing/understanding the total mess/chaos that is caused by thought’s conclusions, beliefs, ideals, etc. is the major factor that might lead us to change.
I’m not sure that thought can’t grasp what an insight is. Thought can remember what an insight was surely, can’t it? The problem as I see it is that the freshness of the insight is lost as thought turns insight into a mechanical process. For example, I was cooking a bechamel sauce. Through paying careful attention one day, I discovered that by adding slightly too much flour it was difficult to get the sauce to be smooth. I observed carefully, understood and had some insight into how the suace was cooked. The next time I make the sauce, and every time from then on, thought dictates what I should do. I add less flour mechanically so the making of the sauce becomes a mechanical, automatic process where I don’t really pay much attention.
Yes it doesn’t matter the type of conclusions or belief though some are less divisive than others …it’s the presence of thought/time itself that is the polluting factor, isn’t it?
There so many things I don’t understand and I want to solve, right? How to get a boyfriend or girlfriend. How to deal with the neigbours noisy dog. How to get a good result in my work. And the media is endlessly talking about health, happiness, wealth, and success. Even when someone is talking about a completely radical change in our being, we are thinking about how, what, why and when, etc. We are looking at a method, a system to be able to come to a completely clear understanding of something, when it is actually the whole being who is free from all this.
How did you come to this understanding Peter? Did it come to you out of the blue with no inquiring…no questioning…no reading books or listening to talks? K spoke often of the need to ‘go into it, sirs’…to question…to inquire. Is all that a wrong approach in your view?
Who is this “whole being” to whom you refer?