Physical fear for survival is necessary, it is in our genes,a part of evolution. But is not the psychological fear a problem- as K put it - fear of losing job in future or if my wife runs away tomorrow, what will happen to me etc.
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Yes - can we say its more the complete authority of experience (eg.fear ruminating in this case) that is the problem?
Experience that leads to effects on the brain, body, worldview and action in the world.
What has done this hacking? Something outside the brain, or the brain itself?
Thought is necessary and safe when it can’t be mistaken for anything more or other than what it is. But when thought is constant, continuous streaming of its contents, it’s omniscient and omnipresent, and the brain’s ability to see/understand thought’s proper relationship with actuality is not obvious.
In other words, the conditioned brain is determined to remain conditioned until/unless its reign is undermined by silence.
Rick’s answer was: Given our mental and physical reality what else is the brain to do but posit an individual semi-autonomous entity?
The new brain could ask questions that had never been asked…and the answers were gods and demons and all kinds of explanations that in their time made sense so if Rick is right, it made sense to believe that there was an ‘entity’ me who was more or less in charge. Now, that ‘me’ has come into question, its actuality as well as its possible destructiveness in the relationships with others and the world.
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So the “new” brain suspects that I may be a character/role it identifies with because it doesn’t know how to be a brain with no illusions, i.e., nobody?
If this is its problem, can the brain learn how to be nothing but a brain, or must it awaken to be what it actually is?
The distinction/frontier between inside/outside is conceptual - which is useful for manipulation and communication.
But there is no thing called a brain that has any independant existence or intrinsic, isolated power or effect.
Quite a statement. Care to translate?
I changed a couple of words for clarity.
There is no such thing as a brain absent the rest of the universe.
Brains do not form in isolation - I’m addressing your question below :
Okay, but my question is whether the brain’s conditioning is the effect of its inadequate response to actuality. Had intelligence never awakened, limiting the brain to its intellect, thought? Or had intelligence awakened for only a few brains who did what they could to awaken other brains?
If intelligence must awaken for the brain to be free of its conditioning, clearly only a few (if any) human brains are awake. Our sleeping, dreaming, content streaming brains can’t stop wasting energy.
Would this be a similar problem as trying to let a hypnotized person know that he has been hypnotized though he/she is convinced that they’re not?
It could be that the brain hypnotizes itself by expending energy constantly reminding itself of who/what/where/how one is, and this ongoing activity is either hiding in plain sight or too established to stop.
I go with this possibility…it’s (the self) a reflex action that is automatic like our leg kicking when the knee is tapped.
Try this out as a pickup line in a smoky after-hours existentialist French bar?
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Interesting and fresh view of the distinction between right and un-right thought. It’s subtler than Krishnamurti’s practical-psychological divide. But it begs the question: What is thought? Knowing this is required for not mistaking it for what it’s not.
Rick: Excuse me, mademoiselle, allow me to introduce myself. My name means nothing because I am subservient to suffering, and as I’m sure you know, mademoiselle, the identities of other people is Hell.
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I usually deploy this to seal the deal: Shall we go somewhere quiet and compare worldviews?
Who knows, maybe the brain has never been ‘hacked’, but simply came defective from factory. In fact, to this day the human being still doesn’t know how it works. So what do you think?
Given its accomplishments, I dont think it’s defective. And scientists’ brains are learning more about it each day. K. says that the brain wnen it’s empty can resonate with Mind, and then that it is Mind. Then it can “participate in the immensity”. The petty self-image is an impediment to the brain’s ‘blossoming’ as I read it.
If that so-called ‘wrong turn’ is a theory (i.e. simply an idea, speculation, or hunch according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary), how can we so emphatically claim that…
Could someone explain it to me in a few words?