You cannot perceive if you do not ask the right question - and a right question has no answer, because it needs no answer. It is wrong questions that invariably have answers.
Bombay, India | 1st Public Talk 23rd December 1959
If perceiving what-is entails asking the right question, the mind identified by its beliefs, values, and self-esteem can not perceive what-is because it is not a freely inquiring mind. It is a mind that is bound by its fabricated identity and imagined reality, and cannot ask a question that threatens or undermines these illusions. It is a mind that is not interested in what-is because it is committed to what-should-be. For all intents and purposes it is a blind mind, stumbling and lurching through life, experiencing only what it knows, what it expects, what it recognizes.
But can the blind mind can be aware of itself as it goes about its self-deception, or is self-awareness impossible for such a mind? Self-awareness is always possible, but for the blind mind it isnât permitted for fear of losing its way; for fear of realizing it is lost, and of its own accord
Its not like we donât know what were doing. Itâs not like we donât have a conscience. This puzzle is what we might assume is what to examine, but we are not talking about life as a concept, we are looking at ourselves. What we do is manipulate thought to our own purposes. Or to put it another way, we selectively follow thought to our own ends. We make it conceptual to bypass looking directly, immediately at ourselves. Look at oneself, and you see where you are, what you are doing, and what you are thinking. See there is thought occupying the mind. Not, what is the content of my thoughts, not what are the ins and outs of my ideas, but carefully, attentively, see this movement of thought for oneself. Questions will be obviously caught up in thought. Then you can see the fundamental nature of questioning is not in the field of thought.
Asking a question can come from the questioning, and this is not knowing, not a process. Or it can come from knowledge, and there are categories of the known derived from a process of thought.
So - the âhouse is burningââŚbut you are going to get to the bottom of the âtrueâ meaning of the word, ârhetoricalâ?.. Are you serious?
K âDonât think this is imagination, or some flight of fancy, or some desired mystical experience; it is not. It is as actual as the bee on that flower or the little girl on her bicycle or the man going up a ladder to paint the houseâthe whole conflict of the mind in its separation has come to an end. You look without the look of the observer, you look without the value of the word and the measurement of yesterday. The look of love is different from the look of thought. The one leads in a direction where thought cannot follow, and the other leads to separation, conflict, and sorrow. From this sorrow, you cannot go to the other. The distance between the two is made by thought, and thought cannot by any stride reach the other.â
Isnât it a ârightâ question to ask, how can I never be hurt psychologically again? Important not only for myself but important, because if I can be hurt, I will hurt others? K addressed this in a short video someone put up in another thread. He addressed it very forcefully. Not with a method but with a change in relation to oneself as an insult is received? A total awareness or âattentionâ brought to that moment. It occurred to me that this also applies to psychological thinking in general as thought serves up one image after another, that they have to be met with this awarenessâŚor contain this awareness / attention in themselves?
That is how I understand the process of âemptyingâ the âcontents of consciousnessâ. âTimeâ is a factor in the process of accumulation but canât be a factor in dying psychologically.
Yes, if we are looking at this in the same way, there is no direction. There must be a âdroppingâ
of everything. No accumulation. The description isnât the described. Thought/time wants to âhold onâ probably for security. I may be wrong here but the description of the eagleâs flight, âleaving no traceâ seems as good a way as any to describe the movement of âlifeâ and the freedom from the knownâŚ
It stops asking that when it sees that the only way to not be hurt is to be nothing that can be hurt. To not be attached to anything. That only the mind that is innocent cannot be hurt. The mind that is âemptyâ can meet the new with the new. If there is a self-image, it will get hurt. (And it will hurt others)âŚHow can I become âinnocentâ?, how can the âcontents of consciousnessâ be emptied? There canât be preparation can there? Preparation like analysis prolongs the hurt and the suffering. Nothing can be done.
A really interesting question. However, if one looks at that so-called society, one sees that this society has been asking itself questions all the time to supposedly undermine itself looking for a change that doesnât need any more changes (which we all know have caused multiple wars and conflicts century upon century).
Now when one asks âwhat question would society ask that would undermine itself?â, What does this question actually ask? What is the actual meaning of âundermining itselfâ?
And on the other hand, if we take the well-known concept of âRising from the Ashesâ it can be seen that the term âashesâ refers to the past, so what arises from those ashes is never new.
So the mind is always stuck in the past: âthat didnât work, but now that weâve learned from our mistakes this is going to work for sureâ ⌠only to find that âthisâ didnât work either, so we go back to activate the cycle.
Now is there really a question capable of stopping once and for all the incessant cycle of âerror / change based on that error / error againâ? Or is the societyâs mind trapped in that pattern and there is no way out of it no matter how many questions it asks to itself to undermine itself and bring about some eternal change?
Therefore if I can ask, is there actually a question for that so-called society capable of generating a non-cumulative answer that changes everything once and for all without changing anything?
âSocietyâ isnât interested in what Krishnamurti is talking about as far as I can see. Society is interested in invention, in progress, in getting ahead, in entertainment, in sports, in politics, becoming rich, successful, âenlightenedâ, an expert in something, class, status, sex, drugs, etc. Krishnamurti is talking about âsilenceâ, dying psychologically to oneâs past and to not accumulating in the presentâŚFor âsocietyâ to become at all interested in that, they would first have to at least hear about it, and then hearing about it become passionately interested in itâŚand not for any reward.
If the absolute freedom K spoke of isnât possible without knowledge of K and his teachings, then K is God. But K said not to make an authority of him and that truth is a pathless land, so the awakening of intelligence, freedom from the known, selflessness, wholeness, etc., cannot depend on knowledge of Kâs teaching.
