I don’t presume to know anything about “seeing clearly”. All I know is that I can observe and acknowledge the thoughts and impulses and emotions that amount to me at this moment. Any one can do this if they care to know what they’re doing.
Are you still working within the framework of the conditioned self at that point (when you are observing and acknowledging)?
Of course. What else is there?
So how is this looking at the delusion from inside the delusion, any different from what everybody else (even those that have never considered the teaching) is constantly doing?
Do you know you’re deluded, or do you just assume you are? If you know how confused and delusional and desperate and depraved you are, you’re free, because the seeing is the doing. But you don’t see anything but the ideas and beliefs you have about who/what you should/should not be.
Find out who/what you are by watching every movement of thought and every surge of emotion and everything you do and say. It all reveals what you are.
2 Likes
Hi Howard. Thanks for answering the points I raised.
As I said, “Nobody got it” was what K said. I don’t think we should get too bogged down on the difference in meaning between “getting” something" and “seeing something”. “Getting something” doesn’t in my view have a purely intellectual connotation.
I am interested in language and what meaning words or sets of words convey but again, I think there’s a danger in getting bogged down if we analyse the choice of a word too closely. To address your point, we could look at the following sentence: “Presumably, you wouldn’t be interested in discussing anger.” Here, “presumably” is likely used because there is previous evidence to suggest that the recipient of the message does not want to discuss anger. However, the sentence as a whole is inviting a response and is opening a door for further communication. You wrote;
“An interesting discussion? Possibly so, but that’s generally an intellectual endeavor using the already ‘known’ isn’t it?”
That seems to me to be yoy making a judgement about discussions based on your past experience. Isn’t this closing a door on communication?
I find this interesting. Earlier, you talked about belief blocking seeing. However, is that not in itself a belief? What I would be interested to know is if Howard has closely observed his beliefs and discovered that these beliefs block him from seeing. If that’s the case, we could have an interesting discussion I think. If, however, Howard is merely repeating what someone else has discovered then the discussion will be boring and lack interest and life. Repeating second hand what has been discovered by others is not conducive to real communication in my opinion. So I ask you Howard, how did you come to discover that belief blocks seeing? I am asking this in a genuine spirit of enquiry rather than trying to catch you out.
**I’ll just pick this one of a few similar statements to address. In order to ‘inquire’ or ‘look together’, we will need to use language, to “describe” what “appears” to be occurring. And the use of language will depend on past life experience. These descriptions of what we each observe can genuinely be merely a description of “what appears to be.” To suggest that the nature of ‘discussion’ as generally being “intellectual” is not a “judgment” in the sense of saying something is good, bad, right, or wrong. But rather, simply pointing to what “appears” to be a fact. There’s no “fixed position in thought.” There’s no ‘judgment’ that an intellectual endeavor has “no value.” So, there’s really no need to get bogged down, no need to analyze, no need to agree or disagree, we’re just looking together, and using language to share what we each observe.
**Again, “Howard”, or any “thought-identity” doesn’t observe. “Howard” is a ‘thought’ that appears in awareness. There is a human being that responds to that label, but the ‘thought-identity’ doesn’t do the observing. Observation doesn’t belong to a thought label. In fact if there’s a “me” occurring in thought, it’s not observation, it’s thought. There is no observer separate from the observation. In the observation of that, the difference between “thinking the thought of me looking,” and “observation without the me,” it’s ‘seen’ that ‘belief’ and observation are completely different actions. Thinking about “me observing,” is “blocking observation” in the sense that the brain is occupied with thought, and not observing what is occurring presently. The mind occupied with belief, is not observation free of the “observer-thought-structure.” Seems rather obvious, doesn’t it?
**I would again say that “Howard,” the thought label, didn’t discover this. It’s simply revealed in observation, from ‘not knowing’. As described above.
**Hello again Sean - Let’s look at what “thought is saying.” Isn’t it creating a psychological barrier?" Ex: “If you’re doing this, we can’t inquire,” but, “if you’re doing this other thing, we can inquire.” Did ‘Sean’ “choose” to create this barrier to inquiry, or is it a conditioned thought pattern doing it? Does inquiry need to depend upon “the other” meeting conditioned thoughts requirements?
But I actually wanted to go a bit more into this suggestion that the ‘identity’ is not what’s observing. Let’s start with this pointer from K:
K: Do you understand what I am saying? You are all somebodies. You all what to be something, either professionally, or you have delusions of grandeur; you want to achieve something or become something, realize something, fulfill. Which is all respectability. We are saying that in total silence, there is nothing, you are nothing. - The Krishnamurti Reader
**These divisive self-images, of a “me” going somewhere or achieving something, are just that, “images in thought.” We’re human beings, humanity. We aren’t an imagined “me and you.” This is conditioning we all get, the idea of a “Howard separate from Sean” is the imagination. It’s a similar conditioning occurring in humanity, passed down from generation to generation. And it’s the conditioning, thought, that is saying, “I can only inquire with you if you meet my conditions.”
K: When you have gone through all the layers of the self, its inmost nature, it’s essence, is nothing. You are nothing.
Public Talk 5 in Madras (Chennai), 7 January 1978
DB: B is creating the division by saying, “I am a separate person,” but it may confuse B further when A says, “It’s not that way to me,” right?
JK: That is the whole point, isn’t it, in relationship? You feel that you are not separate and that you really have this sense of love and compassion, and I haven’t got it. I haven’t even perceived or gone into this question. What is your relationship to me? You have a relationship with me, but I haven’t any relationship with you.
DB: Well, I think one could say that the person who hasn’t seen is almost living in a world of dreams, psychologically, and therefore the world of dreams is not related to the world of being awake.
JK: That’s right.
K: Relationship between human beings is based on the image-forming, defensive mechanism. In all our relationships each one of us builds an image about the other and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves.
1 Like
One’s identity as a Howard, Sean, Dan, etc is a conditioned ‘belief’ that is held in the brain until the error of it is discovered?
**Yes, when it’s revealed by insight.
It would seem then that once that is truly seen, there would be no ‘going back’ and resuming that false identity? ‘Going back’ would be the indication that the ‘illusion’ was only ‘glimpsed’? True insight would shatter it as when seeing that the world is round, there’s no returning to see it as flat? Or that the sun is going round the earth?
**Yes Dan, that seems true. If the limited nature of thought is truly seen, including this image of a “me” in limited thought, then the word is no longer confused for what actually is. But I would suggest that the habitual nature of the system of thought, the conditioning, can ‘co-opt’ any ‘limited insight’ that occurs and turn it into another “truth” that “I” know.
I think I agree with this but I wonder if you could expand this a bit. Limited insight doesn’t see the whole illusion and as a result, it only continues the illusion…but now as if something ‘new’ was learned? Adding to the ‘self’, not undermining it?
**What I’m referring to is that ‘apparently’, many people have what are referred to as an awakening or revelation experience of “no division”. A sense that everything is perfectly in place, and sometimes this includes the sense that there’s “no me.” But this ‘occurrence’ frequently doesn’t reveal the limited nature of thought, so the habitual patterns return with new added ‘thoughts’, “It’s all One,” and “I” see it, but the “others” don’t. The experience is ‘translated’ into new psychological thoughts, that are added to the collective patterns and becomes additional abstract knowledge that thought defines as “mine.”
Or, people may have insights into certain things K says, but not really see the limited nature of all thought. Like many people will say something like, “I know the self-image isn’t real.” Perhaps falsely assuming that the self-image is merely this letter ‘I’, and not the entire collection of beliefs and opinions “I-have,” as the impulse to defend the beliefs associated with this I-image seems to continue, the ‘I’ that thought professes to know is false. And again, I’m not saying this is good or bad or right or wrong. It’s just the apparent nature of the ‘conditioning’.
It may seem obvious at an intellectual level and I can of course now go and repeat all this pointing out that “thought-identities don’t observe”. It all sounds quite impressive, after all. But is it just a theory?
We can see from Krishnamurti’s beautiful descriptions of nature, the way he sat so still, his alert demeanour and the many profound things he said, that obsevation with a silent mind allowed him some sort of direct contact with life around him. There was great humanity, passion and feeling in what he said. That’s surely proof that the teachings are more than a theory and that K really lived them.
Is this a moment to moment discovery rather than a one off discovery that changes things forever?
Hi Douglas. I see that this point has been further discussed between you and Inquiry. So can we observe the conditioned mind operate? Can we be aware of our own thoughts?
Does self-awareness involve a kind of looking at ourselves from the outside? I mean, I may be being rude and not be aware of it but I may be being rude and be able to realise this as I’m self-aware and observing myself. I might be sitting on a bus and suddenly realise that I’m lost in thought. At this point my mind becomes silent and I start observing what is going on around me with no movement of thought. What do you say Douglas?
**No, it’s something to observe directly for oneself.
**He also said the speaker isn’t important. Don’t make him an authority, observe what’s being pointed to.
That’s true, but we sometimes have a bit of a problem agreeing on what he was pointing to. Still, it’s interesting to explore the teachings here and listen to what we all understand.
lol
( 20 character limit )