Why should thought do this? K. has asked the question “Can thought be aware of itself?” Not the thinker / ‘me’ be aware of thought, but the process of thinking itself become aware that it is creating this duality of thinker / thought. It seems that if we remove the thinker as the one who could possibly control thought, (since it is a projection of thought…) then the only other factor that could ‘deal’ with thought is thought itself. If the duality of thinker / thought, observer / observed is to cease it will have to be brought about by thought itself ‘awakening’ to the fact that it is creating it. And that it is ‘unnecessary’. An unnecessary waste of precious energy.
But what then is thought without the thinker? Thought is fragmentation, is duality, and the thinker has no special status as such, being but one fragment like any other.
This is one possibility, but it may also go back to what Krishnamurti outlined about thought and knowledge and memory.
Are you saying that thought must be accompanied by the ‘thinker’? That the ‘observed’ must have an ‘observer’? Isn’t this duality in the brain the source of our conflict?
That’s how I’m seeing it as well. There is practical thought without the thinker, yes…thinking how to cook a potato or a pizza…but psychological thought always includes the thinker. It IS the duality of thinker./thought, isn’t it? Just inquiring…
Doesn’t ‘thinking’ have a role as one of the senses? With the other senses, it guides the organism through the environment. It sees and remembers what is beneficial and what is harmful. It manipulates the environment to insure the organism’s survival…Did it go ‘wrong’ when it created the ‘thinker’ as an entity apart from itself?
Also can thought be aware of itself playing this ‘trick’ of creating a separate ‘thinker’? Can it see itself doing it?
As I see it, there is ordinarily a thinker or observer separate from what is observed which does not see itself as just another fragment. Thought manufactures the thinker as a seeming independent whole, which neither the thinker nor the thought generating it actually is. So the thinker unaware of itself as a fragment is a highly successful strategy of thought.
In considering the notion of thought having an existence without the thinker, as in the question, can thought observe itself? that would require thought to be observation, which being fragmentary, it cannot be. So the observation of thought or thinking, caught in the very act of making the thinker, has to be performed by something which is not thought?
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Exactly! Thought cannot see. Thought is blindness. Useful blindness in practical daily living. We couldn’t have our world of technology without it. No electric light, phone, tv, radio, computer, automobile, and so on. Not even iron age tools, I don’t think.
Technology, and everything forming our reality, including self, exists in the space that is an observer separate from what is observed, but the actual observation of its working, is not in that space. The reality being generated from that space is experienced as both immediate and compelling, in a way that most do not question, or even conceive there being a question about. Is there then anything in that space which can challenge the immediacy of it as an experience?
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Probably our pain and suffering leads us to question. If we lose a beloved child or other loved one due to war or disease for instance. But that questioning doesn’t take us far enough to question the space of the ‘me’ in its entirety, I don’t think…to question the observer or inquirer. Only listening to someone like K…if there indeed others ‘like’ him…would lead to the questioning of the totality of the self/me.
Obviously death of loved ones has never cut it, and bizarrely humankind has gone to war time and time again rather than face itself, and the self in the form of society it forms, is so highly reactive and defensive of its citadel that it rails against those who so much as question its notion of reality. Krishnamurti tried for many years, and has been gone some time now, during which time the destruction of the environment has accelerated, while the psyche grows ever more unstable. No one is riding to the rescue here I feel, so it really is down to us.
If we say, we have identified a factor at work here, in the observer’s reality being an immediate and compelling one, and we take the view that the suite of tools Krishnamurti left, which are now part if the human reality, are sufficient if used to the full, to perform an actual difference, then can the questioning of ourselves here go further than it has done to date?
It has to go further than questioning I think. Questioning is a movement of thinking. Which is still a movement of the conditioned ‘me’/observer who is obviously limited by said conditioning. Thinking is conditioned. But I may be mistaken here. We should explore this issue further, imo.
Yes, the questioning is occurring in the space which is the observed separate from the observer, which in and of itself may not be all that is needed, but it is the thing which is in front of us, and there are other aspects of it which need clarifying if you are willling.
Right…the questioner is separate from what he is questioning…analyzer separate from analyzed. Is that the point you are making as well? You are saying that other aspects of the problem need clarification? If so, feel free to share your inquiry.
When it comes up, the observer is the observed, the usual way of thinking maintains the separate concepts and tries to resolve it with the usual approach . But we have to consider, completely, the brain, the mind, in all of this. Now we are seeing there is no division at all. It is all a living vision.
I feel there is a need to talk here about space, because the sense we are of it being, is a component of what is felt to be immediate and compelling about our reality, along with the observer or thinker.
Krishnamurti spoke of observation, which is without an observer or thinker as seeing without a centre, and so immeasurable. He saw the observer separate from the observer, as seeing from a centre whose periphery however wide, is still the centre, and so space which is limited. This is space as distance or time between observer and the observed. So there is observation, actual, and immeasurable, as set against the brain with its conditioned movement, which is time and space.
It seems to me that whenever Krishnamurti drew attention to anything about the natural world, or the universe, he was doing so as observation, without any centre, and so actual and immeasurable. And of course the use of language, such as in the word immeasurable, is not the actual.
The conditioned brain with its movement and its seeing from a centre to what is only ever its own periphery, however vast seeming, is not seeing this immeasurable.
So this forms another aspect of the observer’s experience of what is both immediate and compelling to itself, in that its notion of its world as vast space, is not the immeasurable of which Krishnamurti spoke, but is only the limited space brought about by the movement of the conditioned brain.
This brings into focus the fact the furthest reaches of the physical and material universe as seen by the observer, and recorded by thought through its instrumentation, is only as the centre of itself, which is an all together different quality to immeasurable.
For the observer to be in touch with immeasurable, the brain would have to be in observation, but that observation has no observer to it, so no observer ever is.
So is there an awareness right now of the space I experience taking place as coming from a centre?
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Seeing as words cannot show us the immeasurable. Is it possible to explore without words?
If I don’t react to the thoughts that arise, what happens?
Well I would not seek to explore the immeasurable, I would look at the space I know as my reality, and at the fact it comes only from a centre, and consider are there things at work, certain fears, certain anxieties, that block the awareness of that being. One question I would ask concerning this whole affair is: am I fearful of loosing my mind, of loosing touch with my reality, or loosing myself, the psyche, my self-image? Am I a fear of anything of the kind? If I am, then I will not be free to examine this matter in a way that is necessary. Krishnamurti has placed mind outside of the brain, so I can’t loose my mind, because I haven’t got it, but I can lose my reality, as myself.
Maybe there are already too many words - or presuppositions, as they say in the theist/atheist debate.
Is the point to have a discussion (with myself?), to describe (and compare?) or to see whether the self is really necessary? (or what happens when the self is not in total control - when the self is not the tamer and the tiger - when we are not addicted to thought )
Or is reaction to our own knowledge just inevitable?
Is this just a verbal thing or is it seen, felt, that there is a ‘you’ that is separate and “addicted” to ‘your’ thought…and a ‘reactor’ separate from ‘your’ knowledge? Or is it that it’s really just all thought creating the illusion of a separate and ‘continuous you’?
Yes - one thing is for sure : it very definitely isn’t quite one thing, nor the other. But neither is the contrary true.
So to be clear : believing it is thus (whatever that may be) is not correct (nor useful in terms of freedom from the known) - neither is holding on to conclusions of the contrary.
Descriptions of reality can only (at best) fall well short of what is.
To put it simply : freedom from the known does not depend on knowing stuff (whether it be totally delusional or simply vaguely off the mark)