Maybe you should explain then how a non-defective brain with such achievements can be ‘hacked’? If it can be in your own words, let’s leave Krishnamurti aside for the time being.
Yes, you are right, every day they learn that they lack the basics, the understanding of the fundamentals of how it works. In their own words, it would be like this…
In the 1970s, we had a pretty good understanding of how the kidney serves as a filter, how the heart serves as a pump, what lungs do and how they do it; but today, in 2015, I can’t tell you — nor can anyone else — how the brain functions as an information processing organ. How does it do it?
Dr. Thomas Insel – Director of the National Institute of Mental Health
“It may well be possible that while in principle we can sort of understand how the brain works, given its vast complexity, humans may never fully understand”
Christof Koch 2022 –
Ph.D., Chief Scientist of the Allen Institute’s MindScope Program
Despite the tremendous progress that has been made in understanding the brain, its staggering complexity means that we are still a long way off from fully understanding its structure and even further away from fully understanding the way it functions.
Damian K. F. Pang, M.Sc. (researcher) – Psychology Today, Sep’2023
And here is a quote that you will probably all like.
Nearly 100 years ago, physicist Emerson Pugh famously said, “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
Could it be that the brain is not to blame for anything, but is merely a receiver that adapts to what it receives?
because I agree that “subservience to suffering is my full potential” is a cheesy pick up line - and that I wont be able to use it in any poems.
But I’d like to protest the French existentialist accusation : I’ve never managed to read more than a couple of pages of Sartre or Camus.
I may be an existentialist in the sense that I do not think that any particular school of philosophy, or dogma should be considered an authority, or the “truth” - that it is our own personal relationship with experience that is the key to clarity.
But the idea that “existence preceeds essence” is not one I share. (which doesn’t mean I ascribe to the contrary)
What I like about existentialism is Camus’ absurdity: though the universe is inherently meaningless we keep yearning and searching for inherent meaning. Sisyphus!
Maybe that was the ‘wrong turn’: the search for ‘meaning’ when there is no such thing?
Early man’s searches were inline with Nature: the search for food, for a safe place to sleep, for sex…but then somewhere along the line the questions arose: what am I? Why am I here? Where did all this come from? What will happen to me?…And the search for meaning was on!
The questions, “What am I, Why am I here, Where did all this come from, What will happen to me?”, can’t arise without a psychological sense of self, so the question is Why and when did the human brain develop what cognitive scientists call a “mind”?
Animals don’t have the problem of self-image, don’t imagine their future, review their past, or think about what others may think of them, so can we see why our brains are worse off for doing what animal brains don’t do?
Can we understand why the human animal chose to use thought the way it does? Was this development a “wrong turn” or was it inevitable? Do we relate to animals the way we do because our greater capacity for thought gives us an advantage over other animals and (unfortunately as it turned out), over other humans less inclined to use that advantage?
It was thought that gave early man the edge in hunting, foraging…they could see that the other animals weren’t as manipulative as they were. So when this new complex brain started to wonder about it all, why not employ thinking to figure out what was going on? But the problem was that physical, technical problems could be solved over ‘time’; time was needed to make a table, a livable hut, etc. but psychological questions aren’t suited for that approach. Not realizing that the questions arising might not be answerable, thought invented angry gods, demons, angels and such. Complicated ‘religions’ arose like the Egyptian, Muslim, Mayan, Christian…
All inventions of thought to satisfy this new brain which for some reason could not accept that it is all without ‘meaning’.
What was “new” about this brain was that it could pose questions for which the only honest answer is, “Is this a good question, or a question leading to an acceptable dishonest answer?”
Life has meaning, but do we need to know the meaning of life?
Isn’t it enough to live without confusion, conflict, dread, and ambition?
Obviously not. The self has tried but has failed all these thousands of years. Divisions of nations, races, religions, classes have created conflict, hatred, and wars.
When I ask myself if it would be enough to live without confusion, conflict, dread, and ambition, I’m thinking it would be enough to put me out of my misery. But because I can’t imagine me without my misery, I ask myself why I ask
My question should have been, “Would it be enough to live without confusion, conflict, dread, and ambition?”
I posed the question because I had the answer, which is, to be honest, I don’t know what I’d do without those emotions.
You are those emotions. It’s not as it has always seemed, that there’s a ‘you’ having, suffering, enjoying the emotions but with the false center gone the ‘emotions’ no longer seen through the framework
of the self would become as someone called them: ‘misplaced sensations’. In any case, as I understand it, the self / thought can’t accurately imagine life after ‘death’!
You say thought invented angels. But in the day to day diary kept by Madam Zimbalist, she often mentions about K telling do not worry I am protected by angels and also hints she too.
So was K ( or that matter madam Zimbalist lying) - which I see no reason to .
This is one of the dielama one faces: I come across K saying something which is not a fact for me but at the same time I do not find any justification to say he is lying. So may be that’s how brain developed the belief system leading to conditioning and consequent corruption as pointed by Inquiry.
‘Lying’ to me means knowing something to not be true and saying that it is. Believing in angels isn’t lying… it’s…believing in angels! Angel is a word used to describe what is unseen. Like God or the Devil; unseen forces beyond our manifest world. If you say you have an angel protecting you, that’s your belief, it may ‘actually’ be so or not…in either case it can’t be ‘proven’.
Who knows why K said that? For all we know he may have been protected by angels, or he may have believed he was, or he may have said it to make Madam feel safe.
It seems may be questioning in the past lead to creation of a sense of “I”.
For example thousands of years ego, I as a one of member of human species, walking on a road and behind me at far away another man is coming and I see he is struck by lightning. I am terrified and question how come I escaped and he was killed. I am not only terrified but also uncertain leading to insecurity. Now brain looking for security for survival comes up with belief of rain Gods etc punishing and consequently concept of reward etc and which in course of time leads to development of concept of me as different from you.
So was this the wrong turn humanity took, instead of accepting actuality as it is, it started questioning ?
As you’ve explained, the wrong turn humanity took was learning to make stuff up and believe it’s true.
I see a man twenty feet away from me get killed by a lightning strike. I’m alive and well and he’s dead. If I have a belief about what lightning is and why it kills some people and spares others, I draw a false conclusion about why it happened.
But if I honestly don’t know why lightning does what it does, and I’d rather live with what I honestly don’t know than make stuff up or believe stuff someone else has made up, I have not taken a wrong turn.
When it’s clear that the wrong turn is the path of presumption, pretending to know what one does not really know, i.e., lying, dissembling, prevaricating, etc., one steps off the path and finds oneself in the weeds where one is, at last, relieved of the known.
K says he is protected by angels. It must have been a fact for him ,not a belief otherwise his statement that he has no belief becomes a lie.
Now reading about K ( had never met him) from what many had said, I do not find logically/rationally any reason for him to lie as he was not after name,fame, money etc.
So when I say I accept what K told about him being protected by angels as true even though I have not seen the fact of it, is it a belief in K developed based on logic and rational thinking ?
So not actually seeing the truth of K’s statements, but logically and rationally seeing it to be correct, is it a type of conditioning of brain by K and hence itscorruption ?
I was referring to the crafty cleverness of the brain (@tnp’s brain in this case) that comes up with the idea about what (if I am following you correctly) is happening in an awakened brain.
Is it in order that we might do the same?
If so thats what I’m afraid is potentially the continued authority and reinforcement of the known - the continued struggle to progress - which is the issue/problem, not the awakening.