How many times must one beat one’s head against a wall before it’s clear that one’s head is not a sledge hammer?
A brain that can’t quit trying to end its misery destroys itself. But what about a brain that can quit abusing itself? Is there, or has there ever, been such a brain?
Many brains would say Yes because they believe this or that brain is/was free of self. These believing brains assume that some brains have freed themselves from self-centered existence, and they look up to and follow these allegedly free brains in the hope of awakening to selflessness. But the truth is that they don’t really know if any human brain is or has ever been free of its imagined self.
So what does it mean to be serious about finding out if freedom is possible? Wouldn’t freedom be a brain that makes no attempt to solve the problem of self because the would-be solver is the problem?
Your brain is perfectly natural and healthy. It probably just needs a break to discover some space. The outer might not allow for complete freedom, but we can still do a few things so that the mind has more space. Getting proper sleep, exercise, connect with nature, stop unnecessary digital consumption
What the brain knows is conflict and confusion because much of its knowledge is accurate and essential, and much of it is false and misleading, which makes its thinking incoherent.
Why doesn’t the brain know the difference between what it actually knows and what it presumes to know? Isn’t it lack of self-knowledge, what it does not know about what it is doing? Why isn’t the brain more concerned with what it is actually doing than with persisting in what it has always done?
If our technique for determining what is accurate and true (eg. faith, divination, knowledge, roll of the dice etc) is sometimes accurate and sometimes false, but we are unable to determine which is which - is our technique a dependable or useful method for arriving at truth?
Our problem isn’t that we can’t always know what is “accurate and true”, but that we are so uncomfortable with not knowing that we choose to believe what is true or not true. Or to put it bluntly, we are more inclined to dissemble, prevaricate, deny and distort, than to be honest.
So can the ‘discomfort’ be seen, not as something to be run away from, to be calmed, but as the inevitable reaction to seeing any of the conditioned ‘reflexes’ (the ‘contents of consciousness’)?
The difficult thing is that my feelings, and what I know ie. my experience of the world, seems so real and important. Even if we have been intellectually conditioned by K’s words - this is not enough to choose death over reality.
My experience feels very much like the only really real thing - this theoretical stuff that K or Buddha tells me about clarity, love and freedom from fear, even if I find it compelling, is still a bit of a faith based thing - based on the words of dead guys I’ve never met.
I must have a very strong reason to take such a leap of faith.
Yes, in the parlance of Evolutionary Psychology : what we feel and perceive is geared towards survival.
The bio organisms that survived were those that moved away from danger and towards sustenance, we are the complex psychological evolution of that succesful good/bad reaction.
In K or Buddhist theory we say that intelligence is capable of seeing the whole movement of good/bad suffering, and thus not live as some mechanical puppet.
Hello, macdougdoug!
I wouldn’t say we - human beings- are the result of whatsoever, I simply don’t know, but that we can act out of intelligence and take responsibility for what we do, yes, we can. That is, as you said, we don’t have to behave as mechanical puppets, and that makes a big difference.
What do you know about intelligence if you remain self-centered?
we don’t have to behave as mechanical puppets
How do you know you’re not behaving as a mechanical puppet?
Krishnamurti stressed the importance of self-knowledge, but clearly, you prefer self-confidence. What’s your interest in Krishnamurti when you’re obviously more interested in feeling good about yourself?
Do you agree that this is what Krishnamurti teaches? That we are the result of billions of years of conditioning.
Agreed - and in my opinion the source of this movement is also in our conditioning. Namely that we are social animals, which very much encourages compassion.
However it is very rare that love for the whole outweighs fear for myself.
Well, Macdougdoug, ‘conditioning’ is just a word which takes a special connotation in Krishnamurti discussions. The truth is we, human beings, are born if you want ‘conditioned’… it’s the human condition and all our lives we want to understand this human condition. I agree that compassion is a feature, that is, we can be compassionate and we can operate in attunement with intelligence in order to realize this human condition… all very difficult to do, probably. Now, Krishnamurti says that the human brain is a very old brain, but I understand that Krishnamurti never claimed to know all about the human condition, he simply said he was a religious man.
Hello, Inquiry! I didn’t say whether I feel good or bad about myself and I’m not planning to tell it to you. Then how do I know this and that…? If you don’t understand anything why do you keep asking? I think it’s quite pointless to ask the sort of things you are asking, it doesn’t make sense to me, at least considering we - a couple of people here - have been studying Krishnamurti for a long time.
Could you say that there isn’t anything to ‘do’ …and there is no one to do it anyway?
If this is a kind of darkness we live in, perhaps it was caused by thought? And if so any effort by thought to find ‘the light’ only can perpetuate that darkness. It is thought’s assessment that something else is possible…but in ‘time’, which it has invented. Maybe it trapped itself inadvertently when it created a psychological ‘future’? Isn’t that what K called ‘becoming’?