How can one take serious,one who takes themselves serious.
After all the self is a figment of one’s imagination,just an illusion for the deluded.
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Being serious,
I wonder how you take K who was a serious person? Why even bother with K? So, why are you here?
Just for the fun of it.
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You can’t / shouldn’t take anyone seriously, who takes themselves seriously. But isn’t it quite common that when someone appears confident and serious (committed, passionate, important, critical etc) we react to it? We can admire and identify with such presence, or we might get angry how someone dares to impose such arrogance over us. Such reaction indicates that we take them seriously.
Now, when we are seriously investigating or asking questions, it does not imply seriousness about oneself. For me it implies investment of one’s energy and attention to find out what is. It is not possible to inquire and find what is, without serious (significant, earnest, sincere, acute, considerable, etc) intention, because the inquirer is so conditioned to take charge at any moment.
What do you think about this perspective?
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“So why are you here?” is a wrong question. The person who asked it may go away but will the question? The seriousness of the question should not be confounded with the personality of the person asking the question - a huge mistake made by followers of K when he was alive which resulted in his deification. This took away the intensity of the enquiry, turned off people of the ordinary kind and populated the K trusts with merely clever political victors.
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Seriously,
This is definitely a good question, as its intention is to make one aware of who one is… and I am not the only one who has asked this question on this site.
K asked this question, and here are some examples…
“Why are you here listening to me? Have you ever considered why you listen to people at all? And what does listening to somebody mean? All of you here are sitting in front of one who is speaking. Are you listening to hear something that will confirm, tally with your own thoughts or are you listening to find out? Do you see the difference?..”
K, This Matter of Culture, Chapter 4
“Why are you here, sirs? What is the drive, what is the thing that makes you get up early and go through all this inconvenience, sitting in a very uncomfortable position for an hour or so, and being questioned by the speaker, being driven to discuss things which most of us have not even thought about? Why?”
K, Bombay, 4th Public Talk, 26 Feb. 1961, Collected Works Vol. 12, There Is No Thinker Only Thought
“K: What are you doing here? – all right? What are you doing here? Would you kindly tell me, what you’re all doing here?”…
"K: No. I’m asking: “Why are you here?” Absolute silence.”
K, Brockwood Park, 5th Seminar Meeting, 17 Sept. 1978
“That means, why are you here? What is your intention? What is it you want? Are you here to be stimulated? To identify with a large group?..”
K, Saanen, 2nd Public Question & Answer Meeting, 24 July 1984
“If I may most respectfully ask you, I am putting a question to you, why are you here? This is a serious question as you have put to the speaker several other questions.”
K, Brockwood Park, 1st Public Question & Answer Meeting, 27 Aug. 1985, ‘To be Psychologically Simple’
“I am not turning the tables on you. But precisely, why are you here? Why do you listen? Why do you attend these meetings?”
K, London, 3rd Public Talk, 1 Apr, 1953
“After all, why are you here? Obviously, some are merely curious, so we won’t concern ourselves with those. But others must be very serious; and if you are serious, what is the intention behind that seriousness?”
K, Ojai, 5th Public Talk, 4 July 1953
“I don’t know why you are here, sir. But why are you here, any of you? Why are you here?”
K, 5th Public Dialogue, 4 Aug. 1974
“If one may ask, why are you here? Why are you all sitting there and listening to the speaker? What for?”
K, Ojai, 4th Public Talk, 20 Apr. 1975
“Why are you here, sir? Why are you here? Would you kindly answer me, it’s simple enough.”
K, Madras, 1st Public Dialogue, 27 Dec. 1977
“I hope you will not think me rude or impolite if I ask you with due courtesy, why you are here. What is the reason?..
“So, one asks, if I may, with courtesy: “Why are you here?” I think you should know why you are here.”
K, Madras, 2nd Public Talk, 1 Jan. 1979
“If I may ask, why are you here?”
K, Ojai, 2nd Public Dialogue, 12 Apr. 1979
Edit: There is actually an entire thread called: Why we are here, which I just noticed, and which I haven’t read…
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Learning,
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of learning about oneself. So, yes, there is such a thing as learning. And there is quite a difference in using thought to tell someone who one is, and learning about oneself. The downside to “thinking together” is that there is a danger to evade listening to what is going on inside (passive awareness), while feeling pressured and encouraged to verbalize what one thinks about oneself.
So, learning entails discovering who one is, learning that one may be:
here only for entertainment, pleasure, because all that one is interested in oneself
here, because, “I” am greedy
here, because, “I” am ambitious
here, because, “I” feel a need to compare what I think with what someone else thinks, to justify (end even rationalize), and find meaning for one’s way of thinking and living
here, because, “I” am lonely, and so run off to find others for so many various reasons: friendship, attachment, acceptance, belonging, dependence, etc.
here, because, “I” have a specific problem which haunts me, which I want someone else to shed light on, so as to resolve it
here, because, “I” am curious
here, because, “I” want to use what others say to maximize my life experience (success, etc.)
here, because, “I” am bored
here, because, “I” like to lead, and am into power, and like to be the center of attention, and have others follow “my” thoughts; or conversely, because “I” like to follow…
here, because, “I” want to help, or be helped (psychologically speaking)
here, because, “I” want to become better, to improve “myself”
here, because, “I” have an agenda, and think others can benefit from it…
and one could go on and on.
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Yes, this is what K meant by being serious. If I think I’m serious, I’m a fool. It may not even be possible to know when I’m serious because it means being completely attentive, single-minded, no allowance for “me”.
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I’m not sure whether you’re saying that K asked a “wrong question”, or that his listeners answered it the wrong way. Please clarify.
You seem to have completely lost the thread. I was responding to YOUR question to JohnT. It has no connection with the same question that K asked on different occasions which you have laboured so well to extract! Perhaps you have integrated yourself so seamlessly with K’s being that mere distinctions about who asked what question have become irrevelant!
This is very true, the importance of learning is evident and urgent. And it is different from verbalizing who one is to anyone else, which is not important or urgent at all.
The way I personally use “thinking together” is indeed serious attentive inquiry, where everyone is present in the same field of understanding what we are all concerned about. The dangers are obvious that at any point anyone could bring in their ego and corrupt the inquiry. So first should we learn to inquire?
Hi jmsaario,
Since you have posed this statement in the form of a question, I will respond. Good luck… with your inquiry. For my own part, quite early after discovering K, I died to the intellectual side of myself (which really wasn’t a major part of “me” at that time - in other words, it wasn’t an entire layer of consciousness, which one has witnessed afterwards in so many) as well as the entire idealistic layer of consciousness. I even went to one of those idiotic psychic fairs, and had a photo taken of my aura to check if this was true (that the idealistic layer of oneself was really gone), and having done this before, one compared the two pics, and saw that the entire green layer was gone!! These parts of “me” left my body through the belly button, and I had to accept responsibility at that time for any “acting out” of those aspects. I understood afterwards that because the earth and this solar system is a closed system, Newton’s third law of motion applies - for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Interesting, eh? One does things within and it is only afterwards that the words come - that there is understanding. So, perhaps you can see and understand that intellectual inquiry did not interest me at all after that. So, what I am saying is that having realized that those things had to go because one had realized that thought (intellectual inquiry) was and would be useless in order to understand, not only useless but would actually hamper the journey within. I must say here, that having used thought to analyze prior to discovering the existence of K, one had already come to the point that I was really fed up with the results of thought that I had seen in the world, and in my own personal interactions in the world. There were some interesting side effects, some quite amusing. For one, I discovered that some previous interests had completely disappeared. So, I really don’t know what to say to you. I trust you realize that K said that intellectual understanding (even intellectual insight) is meaningless! If you really feel you need to do inquiry, to learn what that is, go for it. All I can say is that it is your life, not mine.
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Thank you for sharing @charleycannuck,
intellectual inquiry (thought) is indeed not much of use in the matters we are concerned here. That is also what I referred to above; there was no analysis or intellectual understanding implied. We are aligned.
Would you be willing to go more into your “dying to the intellectual side of myself”? What took place?
Hi again jmsaario,
It all happened really fast. The idealist layer of consciousness was due to a lack of love (compassion) being shown to me by the father. So, when I filled my heart with what was lacking… I quit my job, and after over a year of looking outside - to authority - what a disaster that was btw!!!, I discovered K… so, I had let what he said - to allow his words to saturate deeply within as he suggested; so it (the idea of dying to a part of myself, etc.) must have gotten itself lodged deep within - in the unconscious. It really happened very fast, once I had decided to myself that it all had to go. Um, trying to recall… I just wanted it gone, and all of sudden there was this voice inside that said to me, which said that I must accept responsibility for whatever I had done in the past (i.e. because of that “conditioning” - didn’t use those particular words then, but those words came later, but…), just accept what I had done in the past. So, I said, yes, and the voice inside repeated, say the whole thing (i.e. I accept responsibility), so I did, and then again, the voice said, no, say it like you mean it, so really strongly, I said aloud to myself, yes, I accept responsibility and in an instant the whole layer left my body - just like that. It just felt like a large part of me split off from me and went god knows where (out there somewhere lol). That’s all. Btw, I am quite aware of what schizophrenia is as I have a friend who is that way. He split off from a part of him that his gf didn’t like, so he cut himself in two - having both parts remain inside of himself. (As an aside, I found someone, an old Asian healer, who was quite willing to help him bring those two parts together, but he refused. Go figure!!) So, same thing for the smaller intellectual part of me which was due to the rather stupid imposition of my mother’s desire for me to conform to what she thought and believed how others should be as a teenager - could have been round the age of 11 or 12… I began reading a lot then to stave off the boredom. Both took less than a minute or two. Did them both the same day. And gone. It was really incredibly simple.
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