The mind and its power of imagination is limited, and the way of living Krishnamurti talked about is not limited. He talked about freedom and what happens when the mind, thought, realizes its limit.
This mind, admittedly, has not realized its limit. Is it because this mind isn’t interested enough in its limit to find it? How difficult can it be to find the limit of what you can do? That is, If the mind wants to find its innate limitation, it can’t take time because time is the limiting factor.
So since everything the mind can do takes time, can it stop, do nothing, and realize what timelessness is? If it can, does it realize how much it has done to create and sustain an imaginary reality?
And ‘time’ is a kind of ‘bondage’…K. has spoken about a ‘point’ where we get in all this and can’t go forward, can’t “blossom” Is this the point? The mind/brain is conditioned to the idea of ‘time’ to ‘progress’. But without that, the ‘freedom’ that is sought, has to be ‘already’ here, doesn’t it. Only ‘Now’? So any movement of thought brings in time. Thought is time (as well as ‘fear’). Sorry if this is not making sense. Late here.
There is no thought without time, so thought isn’t bound by time, but made possible by it. Thought is as free as it can be when it has all the time it needs.
It isn’t bound - it’s a timely process. But when it hears about absolute freedom, timelessness, it wants that, too…but it’s off limits, beyond boundaries, another dimension altogether.
So what is thought to do knowing that its need for time prohibits it from being absolutely free? Can it stop being what it is to find out what it is not?
What is time? Is it different from thought? Krishnamurti said that thought is time. Can you explain this? Thought to me has to do with thinking. And time is the ticking of the clock.
Yes, as in the case when kids on a road trip asks “are we there yet?” They have been watching the changing landscape for hours on a journey through Kansas. Of course, thought is made possible by time. It takes time to think.
Considering this. The thinking process isn’t “limited” in itself, it can operate effectively in its own sphere, calculating, planning, etc. What it does by having taken over the ‘psyche’ is to create an illusion of ‘individuality’. With memory it has formed a ‘bubble’ or a cluster that has ‘overshadowed’ the moment or the now with a ‘reality’ of past, present and future…It did it because as Bohm said “because it could". This is the ‘self-image’ bubble we live inside of , unaware of for the most part. We even do ‘geneology’, tracing our ancestors back in time… Funny to think of a tree or a plant or a bird doing the same even if it could…
So if this is the case, then “freedom from the known” is the dissolution of this ‘bubble’, isn’t it? Otherwise all that can be done is rearrange the furniture. The ‘Now’ that is continuously obscured by our individual realities is the unknown. These ‘assembled’ realities are the ‘walls’ that separate us from each other and from the ‘what is’…They are maintained and strengthened by our inattention.
But the limited cannot possibly reach the unlimited. Seeing that though is totally limited, one relegates thought to its proper place in caring for the physical needs alone. In everything else, thought creates total disorder. The ‘now’ that you talk of is obscured by thought…by thought alone, right?
Because what it’s trying to “reach” is an image of its own creation. It’s greed isn’t it? I want to be ‘free’, free from all this mess, all the cruelty, strife, fear, confusion, etc. But I am all that. There’s no ‘separation’ between me, and all that I’d like to end or change in myself. The conflict is there, in that notion, that I am separate from what is seen in myself. The anger, the violence, the sadness… We have been ‘conditioned’ …or the brain has been conditioned to approach the world through that illusion. The illusion that what is seen is separate from me, right? But, if we see through that, then the struggle in ourself ends. There can be a looking that is not dual, not a me looking at something separate from myself… because ‘I’ am that. As k. puts it the “quality” of anger, greed, fear, etc. is me!
And also something we touched on in the past. This “staying with”…it’s not about ‘me’ staying with’ some particular event taking place in myself but staying with the realization that there is no separation between whatever is being seen and me. That is the important realization that the observer, me, is what is being observed. There is no separation. Then the ‘seeing’ is different, it has a choiceless, non-judgemental quality that disappears when the duality of a me separate from ‘that’ is present.
It is limited by what it hasn’t yet discovered or learned to do. It can be testing and expanding its limits constantly until the brain begins deteriorating. But its innate limitation is that it takes time, or as Krishnamurti said, it is time.
What it does by having taken over the ‘psyche’ is to create an illusion of ‘individuality’.
If by the “psyche” we mean choiceless awareness, thought plays a critical part in survival and creativity, and if it seems to have taken over, it’s because it is operating dysfunctionally, or as Bohm described it, incoherently.
With memory it has formed a ‘bubble’ or a cluster that has ‘overshadowed’ the moment or the now with a ‘reality’ of past, present and future
I would say it’s more like the elephant in the room than the room itself.
Yes, I concur with Thomas-Paine; this is a good post. Not just the words alone, but the intensity of your attempt to communicate what you wanted to share.
So, how does one (or you) who has that “realization that there is no separation” between the observer and the observed, live his daily life? I live in a country that is divided over many social issues, my family is divided by these issues, and nobody relate harmoniously anymore. I observe all that. And being the observed, what happens? Don’t make a stand, don’t go vote, and stay away from the fray?
Yes, thought knows this and can expound eloquently on it without ever realizing it. For thought, the ultimate is to have knowledge of the truth without being changed by it.
Its innate limitation is memory which is experience which is obviously limited…limited by my experience which is different from yours and everyone else’s. And limited by time, place, circumstance, physiology, climate…everything in me is limited which is thought and experrience and memory all being limited. I am the limitation.
Does it really matter? You will do what you do. That is a fact. Can there be no ‘taking of sides’? Watch yourself as someone who is ‘window shopping’.? (not stopping to buy? ) Not “minding what happens”? If the insight that you and what is observed are the same then that choiceless observation is possible. When there is inattention and the duality of a separate you or me is present, then the ‘problems’ and conflicts return.
) Not “minding what happens”? If the insight that you and what is observed are the same then that choiceless observation is possible. When there is inattention and the duality of a separate you or me is present, then the ‘problems’ and conflicts return.