It’s not a ‘you’ that sees through the illusion of observer / observed. It is what we are calling ‘awareness’ or ‘intelligence’ or ‘love’. In that seeing, the thinker and thought are one, the me and the other are one. It is ‘insight’…we can report it here because it is recorded in memory but we are also aware of the ‘trap’ of trying to relive it. A hallmark of the self / ego is its search for ‘enlightenment’, pleasure, entertainment etc.
What the consciousness/insight sees is never recorded in memory, what is recorded is the thought’s interpretation of what (supposedly for the thought) the insight has seen. That is why what the consciousness/insight sees is always new.
Of course, the description is not the described.
But it is important to describe it as accurately as possible.
However accurate the description may be it will never be the thing itself, so no one can expect to see it through the description. Once the book has been read to the last page, one closes the book, which means that one never returns to it, but begins to walk through the questions and doubts that the book has raised in one’s head to find for oneself the truth or falsity of what one has read (in attention).
Now, why do we go back to the book again and again, is it because once we have started to walk through our doubts and questions the conditioned brain does not trust what the awareness/insight shows it crystal clear?
The brain is conditioned totally. It acts and reacts reflexively. Insight can reveal the effect of the conditioning, the false reality it has created and that it operates in…In a flash. But that does not dispel the reflexes which are not only psychological habits in the brain but also chemically protected. Insight is not sufficient to explode the whole situation, to ‘mutate’ the brain cells themselves.
One thing that can be done is to experiment with not reflexively escaping from states we find ourselves in. It is sane to move toward what is beneficial for the body. But psychologically, to move away from an ‘unpleasant’ state to one more pleasant, is a trap that only fortifies the reflex of escape and denies self-knowledge. ( I’m reminded of K speaking of his experience with ‘anger’… referring to it as a “jewel”!)
And then I have to remember ‘why’ I’m doing such an experiment!
This is your translation of what Krishnamurti said. He used the word “mechanical” because that’s the word for what he was describing.
If you wish, Inquiry, what he was ‘describing’ was a behaviour, the behaviour of people repeating what they see other people doing or just told to repeat something. A synonym for mechanical in this sense is dull, which he often uses as well.
No, that’s “conformity”. It’s not mechanical because it isn’t by design, but is a reflexive reaction to fear of being punished or banished for thinking reasonably.
Thought is a problem solving mechanism that is not a problem when it is not incoherent, as it is presently. The conditioned human brain is confused and conflicted by psychological thought, which is not based on actuality, but on the illusion of self and the practice of belief.
The problem is that the conditioned brain can’t discern the difference between psychological and practical thought, and its thinking is incoherent, confused and conflicted.
Perhaps you haven’t noticed this in yourself, but if you are interested, you can be aware of your reactions as they occur and see how psychological thought is a problem that can’t be solved by thought because it corrupts thought.
This is why the brain needs silence, no-thought, for psychological thought to end so that the mechanism of rational, practical thought can operate properly as need arises.
All the different beliefs, in the religions, the gods, the philosophies, the superstitions, the misinformation eventually puts us at each other’s throats. And they all accumulate around the central image: the ‘me’. The Sacred is not found in any of this. This is all the past. The brain is trapped in the ‘mechanics’ of it all?
Yes, but to be more specific, it’s the mechanism of chronology, the measure of time that we’re trapped in when we mistake measurement for actuality.
When thought is coherent, there is no thought when there is no need for it, and since “thought is time”, its absence allows for the clarity to perceive the unimaginable/immeasurable, i.e., timelessness.
Inquiry, you say your brain is confused, but you keep trying to convince others of endless theories of your own creation on what thought and the brain do or don’t do, what they are or what they aren’t, I find it quite amazing. Just with what I said about behaviour, you decided to mix it up with the reason why there’s this repetitive way of behaving, and I sense you understood what I said was right, but you are deliberately trying to mix up things. We may say that thought may function mechanically, but it isn’t right to say it is a mechanism, and even worse come with mechanics and machinery, they’re different concepts. If we want to say that we use thought for this or that, we can say for convenience of expression that it is a tool and we stop there. If you know about Bohm’s discussions with Krishnamurti you will find Krishnamurti stating that thought doesn’t have to be mechanical. Anyway, I wanted to intervene just to say… well, I don’t have to say it again, I said it above: ‘pattern’ is ok for me, ‘mechanics’ or ‘machinery’, no way!
I’m sorry you’ve concluded that I’m “trying to mix things up”. That’s quite an accusation, so you need to make your case with credible evidence, with more than your suspicion.
If we want to say that we use thought for this or that, we can say for convenience of expression that it is a tool and we stop there.
A mechanism is not a tool? Do you not have any power tools? Do you not drive or make use of an automobile?
If you know about Bohm’s discussions with Krishnamurti you will find Krishnamurti stating that thought doesn’t have to be mechanical.
I don’t recall. Please provide us with the quote.
I don’t have to say it again, I said it above: ‘pattern’ is ok for me, ‘mechanics’ or ‘machinery’, no way!
Is a pattern not repetitive? Are you not being a hairsplitting mechanism?
Pattern: an artistic, musical, literary, or mechanical design or form.
The conditioned brain trusts what it chooses to trust. Insight reveals trust for what it is.
If we take take the ‘me’ out of the picture, as K is suggesting: “you don’t exist”! Then how could it not be ‘mechanical’…thought is running the show. Yes thought can be guided by intelligence but isn’t that rare? Usually thought is talking to itself: the thinker. ((And the thinker ‘me’ doesn’t exist, it’s a projection of thought) so whether it’s ‘mechanical’ or ‘ patterning’ seems irrelevant, no?
Well, Inquiry, I said what I felt I should say. I know enough about your theories and I don’t agree with most of them. I don’t have the books with me for the moment, if I remember well The Network of Thought must be where Bohm points it out and Krishnamurti then states clearly that thought doesn’t have to be mechanical. For me, anyway, it is clear.That is all. I’ve made my point.
P. S.: Sorry, I’ve checked briefly on internet and maybe it’s in The Limits of Thought that there is the discussion I refer above between Bohm and Krishnamurti, but I can’t say for sure.
I, me, the thinker, are illusions created and recreated by a brain that operates mechanically according to what it believes to be true. Until it begins questioning its own operation, it is effectively a machine.
Me too …I think….no?
Congratulations…
I’m not sure what you mean here. Do you mean me in relation to machinery? Are you separating the idea of me from thought? Anyway, my point here is that mechanical as Krishnamurti uses it in the sense of repetitive cannot be extrapolated to the concept of machinery. Thought and brain are living, they come from the ‘source’ they are not machines made by man, they obey the laws of nature.
Please do not think that the word “mechanical” is only used to refer to non-biological apparatus eg. 19th century clockwork or motors
This would be in conflict with the word as defined in English language dictionaries as being something done by habit or instinctively or automatically or repetitively.
Native English speakers do not necessarily mean clockwork machines made of inorganic materials when they use the word.
It means “like a machine” or “like an algorithm” as in conditioned to act in a certain manner. It is about how our mental or neural pathways have been laid out over time and the actions they dictate - not what material the entity is made of eg. wood, metal, flesh, bones etc
Actually the real debate you are bringing up might be about the difference between humans and the rest of the universe - is this to do with gods and souls and stuff like that? Because machines, plants, animals, minerals and humans all obey the laws of nature - are all related to the same source.
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