I find it bizarre that we are even discussing this whole business. Have we gone so mad in the K world that we have lost touch with basic reality?
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Well, Trump has a huge following, so yes, it would seem that being out of touch with basic reality is the thing to be.
The problem is that, whether it is a kind of insanity or not, claiming to have insight, to be free, or to be without ego, is - apparently - a much more widespread phenomenon in the K world than I had previously imagined. I don’t understand how people can accept it in themselves, but they do. Repeatedly. And they are defended in doing so by others who one would have expected to at least question or push back a little.
Perhaps it is the psychology of religion, where some people become accepted as saints or mystics, and there is a traditional religious conditioning which kicks in to defend and uphold these saints. I don’t know how to explain it otherwise.
The saints meanwhile seem to be completely sure of their sainthood. So it is left to a few ordinary people to push back a little, introduce a little doubt, a little questioning. But this is interpreted as rudeness, or is completely ignored, and so the problem continues until someone pushes back a bit more strongly and “creates conflict”. Someone like me, for instance. The conflict, I would argue, is already there. But until one pushes back a bit the conflict is hidden.
But it takes a lot of energy to do this, and one has to accept that most people will not appreciate the pushing back. So I’m wondering if there is a different way of approaching it?
Personally I cannot stand people who think they know it all. I find it gross. Which may sound strange to some people because they accuse people like me of being an intellectual (which is canon fodder for the saints). But I have learnt through using my brain, my reasoning capacity, that part of using one’s intellect means seeing how limited our understanding always is. It makes one skeptical of even the sincerest conviction people may have of possessing privileged access to the truth. Using one’s reason makes one skeptical of mystical claims, except where a certain threshold of clarity has been reached - as one feels intuitively with someone like Krishnamurti.
But I do not feel this when I read X, Y, or Z. I only feel preached at - as Sean was saying. I do not feel as though they had something to teach me - or at least, not so long as they communicate themselves with the conviction of their own sanctity. As I said, I find it disgusting, repulsive. It is an aesthetic thing.
But others may find the things that X, Y and Z say helpful. So I don’t want to ignore that. I don’t want to impose my aesthetic onto others. So it is a challenge.
We have to live together in this crazy world somehow.
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Of course I agree completely with the above. As long as there is mutual respect, disagreement is inevitable and healthy when discussing what K said. Re-writing the guidelines to make things crystal clear as to why we are all here seems like a very good idea.
I think this sums it up. Kinfonet is a place for students, for people who are learning, for people who do not see themselves as experts. If we feel we have graduated from understanding Krishnamurti’s teachings, then there is obviously no meaning to participating here.
This is a quote from you, James.
For me, there is a high bar to having insight on K’s terms, because for me by insight I mean someone who has no longer a sense of egoism in any form, who has ended psychological suffering, who feels from their heart that they represent all human beings, and they have great love and compassion. - That does not describe me. Why don’t you ask if anyone would describe themselves that way?
Dev - We already have one living expert - the teachings, in pure unadulterated form - we have no need of another. - That does not describe me. Why don’t you ask if anyone would describe themselves that way? And really!!! Who is this expert that you refer to. It can’t be K, as he explicitly said countless times. But it is K that you are referring to, isn’t it? I put the question - Do you have K on a pedestal? I had him on a pedestal many decades ago, until I learned how to listen to him and to myself. Then I stopped destroying him and me.
If it’s not okay to share an insight (as it is defined in the dictionary and how I use it) then this is not the place for me. I’m not interested in pretending that I am perpetually not learning anything.
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Bob, surely there is nothing wrong with sharing an insight here. I would say that was a very positive thing. We get back to the two kinds of insight we’ve spoken about before - a partial insight and some kind of complete/total insight which K appears to have had. The problem is when someone claims or implies that they have had this complete insight and that they are here to teach those of us who haven’t.
Would you agree that we are all students of K’s teachings and that none of us is some kind of expert with the authority to teach others?
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Who has ever made that claim? I’ve never heard anyone make that claim. What I have heard is the claim that someone other than themselves is making that claim. What utter nonsense!!!
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It’s so clear, isn’t it?
We all have insights into different aspects of life and thought, into different aspects of K’s teachings, and part of learning and exploring together involves sharing these insights. Not imposing our insights, or pretending to be superior, etc. But sharing as part of living. There is obviously nothing wrong with this.
But, as you say, one must be clear that these insights are only partial insights. Unless one has truly been transformed in the way that K was pointing to, one ought to be clear about this - about the fact that one does not have total insight (if this is the case, which it almost always is) - and then there’s no problem.
I think this is what needs to be emphasised again and again, until we are all clear about it.
However, there does seem to be a feeling for some people that they have learned all they want to learn from K, and have moved on. For them, those of us who are still interested in enquiring into what K had to say are putting “K on a pedestal”, as Bob says:
This, for me, misunderstands what enquiring into K’s teachings means to other people. It is not a matter of putting him on a pedestal but of learning, exploring, what he said. We each tend to grasp one fragment of what K talked about, and unwittingly neglect the rest. This leads to various kinds of distortions.
K said that his teachings are a mirror: we can break the mirror when we have seen the whole of ourselves reflected back, and have had an insight into the whole.
This is my understanding of it.
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Several people have explicitly made this claim (most of them have left already), and others do so implicitly or by refusing to clarify the nature of what they consider to be their purported transformation or insight.
The danger of partial insight - as we have discussed before - is that it subtly inflates the ego, can become a vehicle for preachiness and self righteous vanity, and is often conflated for total insight either by those who claim to have it, or by other people who hear about it and are confused by this, or who want to claim to have fundamental insight too.
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An interesting choice of words. The word “nonsense” is in itself strong, but by using the intensifier “utter”, the degree of nonsense is amplified.
The problem with being so categorical is that one person’s nonsense is sometimes another person’s truth. It’s often difficult to be sure. If we look at the example of listening, I’d say there’s a big difference between saying “I can’t hear a sound” and “There is no sound”. There may be a sound, but the person who made the second utterance might not have had the sensitivity of hearing to pick it up.
So the person accused of speaking nonsense might just have a point.
Let us not to define the purpose of this forum other than having people of the same interest (specially interest of the teachings ) together…
You know, unless you hesitate you can’t inquire. Inquiry means hesitating, finding out for yourself, discovering step by step; and when you do that, then you need not follow anybody, you need not ask for correction or for confirmation of your discovery. But all this demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity
~J Krishnamurti Public Talk 10 Saanen, Switzerland - 01 August 1965
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We need to identify the root cause of human problems which is fear. Fear degrades . Fear is fraction .
Fear is always new. And a new challenge needs a new mind and heart…