You need to look into this kind of statement for your own good. It strikes me as pretty vile.
No offense.
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Am I missing something here? There is nothing vile or offensive about asking if there might be something we are not seeing.
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Is it understood that when the self casts images of another, those images are only of oneself, not of the other at all; that when one is looking at another psychologically, one is blind to the other, to reality, and to oneself?
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What’s “vile” about it?
I’m not sure that I can see anything ‘vile’ in what has been written here? You will have to explain.
What is potentially vile, however - and I’m sure you are not really doing this - is to assert one’s partial insights as if they were total insights.
Anyone can have a partial insight - and K was generally scathing of people who dressed up their partial insights as dramatic tales of ‘enlightenment’. It is an innocent enough mistake as far as it goes (almost everyone in ‘spiritual’ circles does this in moments of enthusiasm), but some people take the next step and set-up shop with their experiences.
This leads to all kinds of misunderstanding and abuse: to the division between those who ‘know’ and those who don’t ‘know’, to guru-dom, pretending to have an understanding of absolute truth when one hasn’t actually perceived the whole, pretending to have ended the self when one hasn’t dissolved the self at its very roots; to spiritual pride essentially (the very worst form of egotism).
As the poet T.S. Eliot wrote,
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
So too with our partial insights.
Insights & humility,
- "P1: We need to understand this. What is full insight? Is it an experience?
K: No, I doubt if it is an experience. It is not an experience.”
…
“K: You cannot lay down laws about it. You cannot say, “It is experience”; it is not.”
K: The Future Is Now, Ch. 1, 7 Nov. 1985, 1st Discussion with Buddhists, Varanasi
Someone who has never had an insight would naturally just ask what an insight is, or what a full insight is… without concluding that it is an experience, etc… right?
-
“Humility is unaware of the division of the superior and the inferior, of the master and the pupil. As long as there is a division between the master and the pupil, between reality and yourself, understanding is not possible. In the understanding of truth, there is no master or pupil, neither the advanced nor the lowly.”
K: Commentaries on Living, Series I, Ch. 6, ‘Pupil and master’ -
“Whether the master exists or not is so trivial. It is important to the exploiter, to the secret schools and societies; but to the man who is seeking truth, which brings supreme happiness, surely this question is utterly irrelevant. The rich man and the coolie are as important as the master and the pupil. Whether the masters exist or do not exist, whether there are the distinctions of Initiates, pupils and so on, is not important, but what is important is to understand yourself. Without self-knowledge, your thought, that which you reason out, has no basis. Without first knowing yourself, how can you know what is true? Illusion is inevitable without self-knowledge. It is childish to be told and to accept that you are this or that.”
K: Commentaries on Living, Series I, Ch. 6, ‘Pupil and master’
The one who forms an image of another has never had an insight (whatever kind of insight it is), let alone the capacity to dialogue with another in true humility. It is within the nature of conversation between two human beings to just have a curiosity to explore, to discover whether or not there is truth in the content of a post, truth in the nature of a question that is posed. The violence, vileness, is an expression of arrogance, which chooses to decide/judge even what is spirituality, who is or who is not someone one can talk with… yes, just talk with… over the content of a post, all with a view to understand oneself, and so discover truth for oneself… right?
(One is quite delighted that when one was copying out all the talks, discussions, etc. from the CD that one purchased from the UK so many years ago into one single quite large rtf document (yes, an rtf at that time, prior to moving all of them into a single large docx), one began noticing interesting parts of these talks, etc., and began copying and pasting them into separate files, all the while allowing these words to work their magic within one - and so compiling an incredible file of many excerpts.)
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Is being critical of WHO says whatever, while assuming to know where they are at in their personal inquiry, simply a vehicle for the self to hide the fact that it has not understood and ended its own disorder?
All the while never addressing where any inquiry may lead - rather constantly usurping the inquiry by bringing personal petty judgements and remarks into it?
Step number one in any forum: End the sniping and personal comments. The only self anyone is responsible for destructing is oneself.
And K never - in all his many years of speaking - attacked anyone.
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You know, it is perhaps revealing who gets the most outraged by having their statements of certitude questioned.
For some people, merely to question these stated assertions - whether it be a claim to have undergone the mutation that K said, at the end of his life, no-one else had had; or to ask from another whether it makes sense to preach about the evils of the self when that person has not actually negated the self - is sufficient to be called ‘vile’, ‘arrogant’, ‘violent’, a ‘bully’.
One finds oneself accused of making images of others, when it may be that those doing the accusing are projecting their own content of images while refusing to own up to it.
By simply refusing to accede to dogmatism, by pointing out problematic implications in what someone has written, or by frankly requesting further explanation, one becomes (apparently) a devil to those with more ‘secret gnosis’.
My question is: why can’t everyone on this forum get off their damned pedestals and start from the ground, the floor, where we each of us are? Self-centredness is not going to dissolve through moralistic hectoring, Delphic pronouncements, or contemptuous put-downs of anyone who questions our authority. A true dialogue about the self begins where we are, not where we ‘should be’. But if people continually insist on claiming that they have already negated the self, or are mere telephones for universal truth, where is the enquiry in that?
I am particularly surprised to find this kind of thing on a K forum, seeing as he was so ruthless (without being personal) in this regard himself? K rejected all claims to spiritual authority, no matter who said it. - Is that vile?
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I don’t know what “total insight” is - what are we expecting? There is knowledge, belief, deduction analysis, conclusions etc and there is the unexpected insight, which in my mind points to a totality in that it reveals the source of the question, not just where the question leads.
What if “where we are” is on our pedestal? And unconscious of it? To be shown this, with merciless kindness might be a good way to learn about what makes us tick.
Of course we don’t. That’s what I found odious in James’ assessment of the insight that I (probably mistakenly) wanted to share here. He used words like “mere” …questioned whether it was complete or total, have I ended suffering? etc He was comparing what I was trying to communicate with some image he had of what he had read was the ‘real thing’. And when it didn’t in his eyes ‘measure up’, he dismissed it with the word “mere”. Quite a show.
Odious, in the sense the writer Wilde called it: “Comparisons are odious”.
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What action would K. take if his mutation was questioned?
Would it not have been that he was not important, but whether you have come to that realisation or not and that nobody can determine that?
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Perhaps the following extract might help to indicate some of the issues around insight that I have been dumbly attempting to articulate above.
It is taken from an audio discussion involving Krishnamurti, Asit Chandmal, Bohm, and P. Krishna at Brockwood Park in 1977 (on Youtube you can find it under the title What is preventing change?).
K: To have an insight, we must understand first, what we mean by insight. Before perception, before actual clarity, how does insight take place? It is a glimpse, a sudden flash of perception - hmm? Either that insight, as with the scientists, is partial, or we are talking of total insight: an insight into the whole movement of consciousness, which is the ego and so on. With the scientists and so on, it is partial, intermittent. It happens and they don’t know ho wit happens…. So I’m asking: when there is an insight, isn’t there at that moment a total cessation of all consciousness as we know it?… If you have an insight into the movement of consciousness, wouldn’t that insight wipe away the self, because insight is much stronger than the other?
A. Chandmal: Sir, that statement to me is a speculation. To you it might be a fact.
K: Yes. It is speculative to you, I understand that. So what shall we do?… why is the insight of a professor or scientist or a business man or even an artist so limited? … His insight is limited because of his conditioning, obviously….
Bohm: Let’s see. A man who wants to dissolve the ego is also conditioned.
K: Of course, of course! So his insight is also partial. So what shall we do? …
P. Krishna: We do have limited insight. So our problem is not the absence of insight, but that it is not total.
K: Yes, it is not total. It is not whole….
A. Chandmal: So it is not insight, sir.
P. Krishna: Well, that’s just a question of words. It is partial.
K: One can have an insight into one’s consciousness, a partial insight.
A. Chandmal: I question that. Is there such a thing as partial insight?
K: I question it too! Either I see the whole movement, or I do not see it. If I see the part, if I’ve partial insight, then it is not insight….
A. Chandmal: Insight which you talk about cannot exist, Sir, if there is self.
K: Yes.
A. Chandmal: There is self.
K: Yes.
A. Chandmal: Therefore insight cannot come in.
K: It cannot come in; and partial insight is no insight, right? Insight can only take place when there is no self; but the self is so dominant that there is no insight. So what is the problem now?… The ego is built through time, right? And when we say the ego must end before there is insight, you are still in the process of time, thinking in terms of time…. Or when you say there must be insight first and the dissolution afterwards, it includes time also….
A. Chandmal: Are you saying that time is ego?
K: Of course…. So when you are still thinking in terms of time, there is no insight. That means, if you are still occupied with time, in the sense thought and so on, you can’t have the other.
A. Chandmal: So talking about the other is speculation.
K: It is meaningless!
P. Krishna: But we are occupied with time.
K: So, if you are occupied with time, find out if time can stop…. Can you observe without time, without the ego? … When there is insight there is complete security. Time is not secure, doesn’t give security….
A. Chandmal: The brain creates thought and time.
K: Sir, would you say the brain is in constant movement? … And it has never appreciated a quiet, still, non-movement, non-registration.
P. Krishna: Would you say never? … It has sir, it has.
K: Occasionally.
P. Krishna: Yes. Occasionally.
K: Therefore it is partial.
A. Chandmal: Yes.
K: Therefore it is back again…. It is a partial movement. When it is partial, it must go back; because it has lived partially all its life.
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Quite. But each of us must first be willing to ask ourselves if we are sitting on a pedestal, and be interested in finding out. Cynicism and bluff are also pedestals! There are no privileged places to sit when we are all seated on the floor of human consciousness.
Will those whose self has fallen away, never to return, please stand up - I know not of this total insight - Do the texts state that Buddha attained this total insight (parinirvana?) before his body died?
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Are we seriously wanting to create a safe space for people who can claim to have had insight (a term that has significant meaning for people who have read Krishnamurti) - while at the same time rejecting any questioning by others on this site who have their doubts about the veracity of these stated insights?
Why isn’t this generosity to others’ insights extended to the possible insights of those who are questioning the others’ insights?! Or has the club already selected who its insightful members can be, meaning that those who have doubts about these ‘insights’ must sit outside the circle of friends?
If someone claims to have undergone a mutation, ended the self, etc, are you seriously saying that we should just let it go at that and listen to them as though they were speaking with the voice of truth? Do you not see how ridiculous this all sounds?
To brush off as ‘odious’, ‘vile’, etc the simple questioning of statements that are implicitly making claims to fundamental truth, is not a serious way to enquire. But if that’s the culture you wish to create here, then go ahead. No-one is stopping you. - But I hope that others (aside form myself) will challenge you, because it needs to be challenged. Dogmatism serves only the foolish.
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Putting my academic cap on for a moment, Buddhism - as you may know - is a complex of multiple perspectives, multiple schools and multiple phases of interpretation. So my own view of this is not by any means a universally accepted one. But one might say that there are three distinct aspects to this:
First, bodhicitta, for Buddhists, is an awakening to the religious life, to the life of someone who wishes to help all humanity (and every sentient thing). Before his illumination under the Bodhi Tree, the Buddha was not a Buddha, but a Bodhisattva - a person in whom this bodhicitta has been nourished to the highest degree.
Second, nirvana (or complete bodhicitta), which is supposed to be the insight that the Buddha had into the nature of existence, which wholly ended psychological suffering, conditioning, and any trace of egotism. This is regarded as a total insight by Buddhists.
And thirdly, parinirvana, the nirvana-without-remainder (coinciding with the Buddha’s physical death), which is thought by Buddhists to be the full flowering of the unconditioned mind as it is freed from the last vestiges of limitation (created by the physical body).
In this context you may have read about how K would sometimes go off on long, wandering strolls involving deep meditation, and later report back that he had almost ‘gone off’ - meaning that he consciously had to force himself to return to earth, as it were, or else he would have simply died. This was also an issue for him when he underwent operations in hospital - he said that he was often very close to death in such situations, and needed to be physically reminded (by Mary Zimbalist, for instance) of his earthly reality.
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The way I see it is that K went through something in himself that he wanted to pass on. He thought it was of value and that humanity was headed down the wrong road and sharing what he saw might have some effect on that wrong direction. In a nutshell people thought they were ‘individuals’ but they’re not, they’re the “world”. Big difference between being an isolated, fearful, conflicted phony ‘individual’ and being the “world”. Insight into the situation could only come about through observation of the phony individual that people thought they were. He pointed it out and left. So it is a marvelous thing to discover for oneself that one is not that phony individual with all that conflict but is actually something quite ‘unknown’. K did not want his ‘pointing out’ to become a religion with the ridiculous hierarchies that organized religions inevitably bring about. That is toxic and those of us who appreciate his work should try to keep it from coming to pass.
The point is the ending of conflict in oneself…and since one IS the world…
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From my understanding of biology, brain cells last a long time (many years), the pathways they form can be viewed as self-reinforcing mental habits. As far as I can tell , insight into the self may reveal and free us from our delusions, but will not stop the synapses from firing.
I may realise that I am a fool, and be freed from being dependant on, or ashamed of, my foolishness, but I am still a fool.
I think it’s safe to assume we are all sitting on a pedestal (sense of other-than better-than superiority). So the question is not: “Do I see myself as sitting on a pedestal?” rather “What is the nature of the pedestal I am sitting on?” What makes me feel I’m special?