What do you know about the human brain? K said it is conditioned. Is it conditioned through evolution, genetics, culture, family or individual experience? The brain changes daily, are these changes “conditioning”?
Sure. Conditioning just means ; that which dictates our experience.
A healthy plastic brain recalibrates its world view daily (or maybe nightly in dreams) based on a mysterious interaction of it own predictions and feedback.
But most changes are about our relation to the contents of consciousness : “I used to prefer chocolate, now I prefer vanilla”
A major change would be a recalibration of our relationship to experience itself. Which would come from an understanding of what experience is.
The ‘conditioning ‘ as this brain here understands it is in the filtering of experience through an experiencer rather than directly perceiving ‘what is’? This is the ‘observer / observed’ condition. His theory is that it is illusory; that there is no observer or thinker apart.
I’m saying that seeing this clearly would cause a major change of conditioning. From someone with a partial (I am seeing truth) understanding to someone with a fuller piicture (I am projecting my conditioning/I think I am seeing truth)
There’s necessary conditioning that alerts us to danger, and there’s the conditioning caused by the brain’s ignorance of how thought operates. This conditioning begins with desire/fear stimulated by thought. Until/unless the human brain understands how and why it uses thought unintelligently, it can’t do anything else but continue until our species is extinct.
‘Clearly’ here means the ending of the illusory ‘me and mine’? A “mutation” of the brain cells? It would be ‘transformative’. Perhaps he used the term ‘speaker’,having undergone such a ‘process’, to indicate that this was a more accurate way to refer to ‘himself’ rather than the conventional ‘I’?
Also he stated that even a small number of brains having undergone such a transformation would have a great effect on humanity.
Evidently my perception is overruled by my beliefs about what I am perceiving, so I know I am conditioned to distort, deny, or dismiss what I’m aware of. The evidence convicts me of being biased, prejudiced, and too sure of myself to be silent, empty, sensitive, and vulnerable to what is actually unfolding every moment.
But knowledge obtained from evidence doesn’t stop me from continuing this way because what I’m doing has to be seen from outside the closed system I am. So I can only know the observer is the observed in the same way I know that I am incapable of direct perception and choiceless awareness. I am a system closed to everything that doesn’t comport with what I’ve concluded should or should not be.
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How do you approach the above question? Do you immediately try to answer which generally what happens.
I say live with the question, find out what you know and is that knowledge valid or not.
ChatGPT
"The brain is indeed capable of undergoing changes on a daily basis, a process known as synaptic plasticity. This involves the strengthening or weakening of connections between neurons (synapses) in response to experiences, learning, and environmental factors. These changes are not necessarily “conditioning” in the behavioral sense, but rather the brain’s way of adapting to new information and circumstances.
In summary, the human brain is conditioned through a combination of evolution, genetics, culture, family upbringing, and individual experiences. The term “conditioning” can refer to learned behaviors through associations, but the brain’s daily changes, while related to learning and adaptation, are more accurately described as forms of neuroplasticity."
That may be technical or so called practical knowledge for the psychologists but it is useless with regard to human problems. Knowledge doesn’t change man.
Hey! Looks like I might have a sort of biological LLM at work in my monkey brain!
How is it possible to see from outside the closed system, when I am myself is the closed system.
So you think that knowledge doesn’t change man?
It isn’t possible. This is why there is no choiceless awareness, no observation, no seeing things for what they are, until/unless the brain is unlimited, beyond its self-imposed closed condition.
When it is understood that anything the closed system does to bring an end to itself is futile, it is understood that everything the closed system does is futility itself; that choosing is refusing to face facts that don’t fit within its limits.
Extreme humiliation can break into the ‘system’ and if one doesn’t run too quickly away (or commit suicide!) one’s fraudulent, phony self-image can be seen. It can be seen that by ‘having’ a self-image that one considers ‘presentable’, I have to keep hidden those aspects, inclinations, desires, etc that I consider unpresentable, bad, shameful, etc. and thus when they do arise or are revealed, exposed; there is great suffering, guilt and shame. The ‘house of cards’ I’ve built is seen as the sham it is. This can bring ‘damage control’ or it can bring ‘humility’.
Yes, I can be honest, “come clean” as they say, and this is the closed system modifying itself, updating, enabling continuity. Humiliation is not humility.
No of course not. Humiliation is the pain of the revealing of your hypocrisy, your deceit, etc. But if the ‘humiliation’ is strong enough it can become humility, it can be humbling… Or as I said it can lead one to suicide.
Believing in “becoming” is humiliating, so…
“When it is understood that anything I/me/closed system does to bring an end to itself is futile …”
What understands this? The brain that created the closed system for its own security ? Will the brain do this when it is not known what will be the result- an unknown state?
Is that the reason that nearly 30 years with K teaching one is in the same state with some minor partial insight now and then but of not of much consequence - especially when one is nearing the end.
As I recall he was quite clear in saying that no ‘teaching’ especially his, could change anyone. Like a signpost points but doesn’t get you there. The ‘getting there’ ( not that there is a ‘there’ in this case) , is up to us. And our biggest problem he said is accepting someone or something as the ‘authority’ in any of this.
The desire to get to ‘the other shore’ needs to be looked at?