Sean, if I may. Let’s try without any affirmation. For communication, relation to happen, isn’t it both have to see the same thing at the same time, together ? Otherwise, there is no relation, no communication at all, isn’t it ? Now one can ask; does he really see what he say ? Does he really live what he say. Is he just parrotting K. And then where is the relation, the communication ? We then don’t adress, challenge what is said, but we inquisition the one who said it. If one have read K. , or study his work, one will never accept any authority, isn’t it ? K. never said take my words form granted. And he also said : you are the teacher and the teach. One can see that as true or false. Aren’t we here to exchange our view on K.'s meditation ? If one see something that doesn’t talk to one, can one just leave it there ? All that is just questionning.
Hi Richard. I think I agree with everything you are saying here. As I see it, there is great skill required for there to be successful communication and successful, healthy online relationships in this forum. I’m not sure what you suggest doing when someone makes a categorical statement like, “When there is pure observation, there is no self.” Asking, “Can you tell us if you have experienced this?” is not working out too well. Maybe just not challenge this? Ignore it? Something else?
I think, though I may be wrong, that it would be best to start an inquiry without an affirmation, a conclusion. And if someone make any affirmation, clarification about what is said can be ask. If one can’t relate, seeing the same thing at the same time, there is no relation, no real communication. What do one do then ?
Yes, fascinating, the notion that thirst/desire arises from sensation itself. It reminds me of a Bohm reflex, but reflexes are afaik products of the mind, thought, memory.
Aha, makes sense. The (mostly Tibetan) Buddhists I hang out with are not very ascetic, but the Advaitins are, the world of form is seen as something to transcend, There be Monsters!
But how would you start an Inquiry with the example of the affirmation I gave?
You mean “When there is pure observation, there is no self.” ? I would probably ask for clarification, if I have an interest in it.
Yes - this is also partly why I personally prefer the Chan/Zen, Dzogchen/Mahamudra approaches (when it comes to Buddhism). They don’t endlessly preach about suppressing the senses, but instead cut to the real heart of the matter: seeing.
As one 16th century Kagyu teacher (Wangchuk Dorje) wrote:
Do not pursue the past. Do not usher in the future. Rest evenly within present awareness, clear and nonconceptual.
This is much closer in spirit to the choiceless awareness that K emphasised, which I feel has more freshness than the traditionally orthodox Buddhist approaches.
The affirmation Sean mentioned was
to which you replied by saying
Btw, I think you are completely correct in this Richard. K generally encouraged us to begin with questions, with a sensibility of ‘I don’t know’. So, in this case, the question might have been:
Does the self exist in pure observation?
Or, broken down a little further:
What is pure observation? and, Is pure observation possible?
And:
What is the self? and, Can the self come to an end?
If an affirmative statement of Krishnamurti’s is intended (as an aid to reflection, or as a starting point for a discussion), then it ought to be put in quotation marks, so as not to assume proprietorial ownership of the statement. So, for instance, one might begin a thread by saying:
“Where the self is not, beauty is”
Wouldn’t you agree?
The danger of the “insight experience” becoming another, particularly potent part of our psychological conditioning - is a common trap. Which is why enlightened monks should always be assigned extra toilet duty. 
But there is another reason why sharing experiences of psychological death might be useful : so that they appear more commonplace and less mythical.
The long distance runner whose body and mind suddenly falls away (aka second wind), the hallucinating LSD user who experiences union with the universe, and the Kensho experience of the Rinzai monk are all (probably) sharing a common psycho-electro-chemicalo brain state. Nothing supernatural nor impossible.
Maybe this is a touchy, complex subject that needs to be discussed further - but I would also like to look into what this means in relation to the difference between total and partial death (psy-death). Does total insight mean that the self never arises again, or just that there is no need for non-self? That silence is no longer dependant on lack of noise - neither dependant on this nor that?
I want to say that total insight might benefit from one’s intellectual understanding, psychological death (of the long distance runner for example) may not be enough.
A very simple answer is yes. For any inquiry, we have to make the journey together, whether we are two or many. And if one see that a statement is false , or don’t see it as a fact, he of course has to honestly say so. But beside arguments and opinions,don’t we have to establish the facts first ? If one doesn’t see a fact together , whatever the fact in question is, what happen to the journey, the inquiry ?
James, what is your take on this?
Series I - Chapter 85 - ‘Sensation and Happiness’ | J. Krishnamurti
Interesting thoughts. Of course it depends a little bit on terminology here, as ‘total insight’ and ‘psychological death’ sound very similar unless one qualifies them in the way you seem to do here.
If one takes the example of the long-distance runner
then it is clear that the self (usually!) returns. There is a kind of apex of capacity that one’s body reaches, a breaking-point in which one momentarily loses all sense of self, before the ‘second-wind’ kicks in and carries one like a wave (apparently without volition). - But a few seconds (or minutes) later, the self is back, checking to see how close one is to the finish line!
This is a momentary psychological death for sure, and maybe gives us a clue to what real psychological death is - but it probably isn’t exactly the same thing as psychological death, right? Because the self comes back.
Similarly, the partial insights we all have, the moments of genuine seeing - whether this be seeing something externally, as in nature, or seeing something inwardly about our own conditioning - might give us a clue to what total insight is, without themselves being total insight (because the self comes back).
Does that make sense? Is this what you were meaning?
I agree. If someone says that something is a fact, and others do not see it as a fact, we have to go into that until everyone (or those interested) can see the thing as a fact for themselves.
‘Absolute attention’, for example, may have been a fact for K, but it is not a fact for me. So I would need to begin by asking what is attention, what is awareness, what does it mean to be aware, actually, factually, for me? - etc.
Yes, I think that would be the best way to inquire into about anything James. Without accepting anything that we don’t see by ourselves, to paraphrase K. , which make a lot of sense.
Yes. as I’ve been saying…
The idea of “the self never coming back” seems to be the core issue.
Someone said “we can never go back” - I agree, whether it be from trauma or the (necessarily partial at best) memory of the “insight experience”.
It seems to me that “psychological death” (the falling away of self) is total insight in the moment it happens - insight of whatever is presented in that moment is total. If clarity continues, for some minutes, hours or days, each “successive” moment is also seen clearly.
When the self arises again, it interprets, conceptualises, and reifies for itself, a model of what happened - thats its job, the job of the human brain. This is of course a delusion, a partial understanding.
But self’s vision of itself has changed. The long distance runner has seen that the self and its suffering is not inevitable, nor a fundamental part of reality. They may not express/conceptualise it in the way that I just have (due to my conditioning) but for a moment, it really happened. They are forever changed, slightly less of a slave to self.
As a student of Zen, I also have some doubts about the idea of “levels” of freedom from self - or advancement along the path. Any advancement would only be in terms of our normal human relation to self, not a comparison of special states of non-self consciousness.
Your question isn’t clear, but I am assuming that the part of the text you are principally referring to here is the way Krishnamurti is using the word sensation?
There was a discussion on a recent thread you might have seen about the way that Krishnamurti uses words - and that one always has to be aware, when reading a text by Krishnamurti (or by anybody for that matter!) that the language he used often changed over time, the way he used particular words differed in different contexts, was sometimes idiosyncratic (out of the ordinary), and sometimes merely poetic. All this depends on the decade he was writing/speaking in, the audience he was speaking to, and the immediate cultural context for his talk (or writing).
In this case - series one of his Commentaries on Living (edited by Rajagopal) - one has to be aware that the actual writing took place in the 1930s and 1940s (even though it was published in 1956).
So in this relatively early piece of writing we can see that the way he uses the word sensation is ambiguous. On the one hand he is apparently using it to mean the body’s organs of sense-perception - as when he says
To destroy sensation is to be insensitive, dead; not to see, not to smell, not to touch is to be dead
But on the other hand he is using the word sensation to mean thought:
Thought can never bring happiness; it can only recall sensations, for thought is sensation
And he is also using the word sensation to mean pleasure and desire:
Sensation is always seeking further sensation…. There is no end to the pleasures of sensation… Sensation is the desire for more and also the desire for less…. One may clothe sensation in religious garb, but it is still what it is: a thing of the mind…. Physical sensations are always crying for more; and when they are thwarted, there is anger, jealousy, hatred
So, you see, that one word, sensation is being used to cover a lot of ground: it is both our organs of sense-perception, it is thought itself, and it is the movement of pleasure and desire. Contrasted with ‘sensation’ is what Krishnamurti here calls happiness, something uncaused and beyond capture by thought (as memory and recognition).
Now, when asked (I think by Pupul Jayakar) where one ought to begin reading the long library of Krishnamurti’s teachings, he answered by saying that one should start at the chronological end and work one’s way backwards. The implication being that his language was more fully worked out and precise by the end of his life (he died in 1986).
So, if one begins at the end of Krishnamurti’s teaching career, you can see that his language on this matter has become much more precise. He clearly distinguishes between sensation and thought, between sensation and pleasure, between sensation and desire (and even between pleasure and desire!), with desire and pleasure both being understood as the products of our thinking. And he no longer talks of happiness, but of beauty and love (and sometimes joy).
So, if we turn to K’s last talks at Saanen (in 1985), we can see how he tackles sensation and desire at the end of his life:
What relationship has sensation to desire? Is desire something separate from sensation? Go into this, please. It is important to understand this thing. I am not explaining it. We are looking at it together. What is the relationship of desire to sensation? When does sensation become desire? Or are they inseparable? You follow? Do they always go together - right?
Our life is based on sensation and desire, and we are asking: what is the actual relationship between the two? When does sensation become desire? You are following this? At what second does desire become dominant? I see a beautiful camera, with all the latest improvements. I lift it and look at it, and there is sensation of observation - seeing the beautifully made, very complex camera of great value as a pleasure of possession, a pleasure of taking photos. Then what is that sensation to do with desire? When does that desire begin to flower into action, and say, ‘I must have it’?
Have you observed the movement of sensation, whether it is sexual, whether it is walking in the valleys or climbing the hills, overlooking all the world from a great height, or seeing a lovely garden when you have only a little lawn around your place? You see this; then what takes place that turns the sensation into desire? You are following all this? Please don’t go to sleep. It is too lovely a morning. Stay with this question: what is the relationship of sensation to desire? Stay with it, do not try and find an answer, but look at it, observe it, see the implications of it; then you will discover that sensation, which is natural, is transformed into desire when thought creates the image out of that sensation. That is, there is a sensation of seeing that very expensive, beautiful camera; then thought comes along and says, ‘I wish I had that camera.’ So thought creates the image out of that sensation and at that moment desire is born. Look at it yourself, go into it. You don’t need any book, any philosopher, anybody - just look at it, patiently, tentatively, then you will come upon it very quickly.
In his conversations with Pupul Jayakar from the 1970s and 1980s Krishnamurti also began to talk of the importance of observing with all one’s senses:
I am just asking - is there a movement of all the senses, total senses, without the interference of thought? Just look at the question first before we throw it out or accept it. That is, have you ever looked at the movement of the sea - movement of the sea, not the movement of trees, the vast movement of tide, the beauty of the waves, the enormous power of the waves, with all your senses alive, looking? … When the senses are observing completely, heightened senses… (Rishi Valley Group Discussion, 1982)
And
if he attends completely, which means with all his nerves, with all his heightened senses - not destroying the senses as the religions throughout the world advocate - with all the senses fully awake. (Rishi Valley Group Discussion 1, 1984)
Perhaps also relevant here are several discussions Krishnamurti had in 1978 with some Buddhists - including the Buddhist scholar and monk Walpola Rahula - where Krishnamurti states that the problem is not with sensations themselves, but with the identification of thought with sensation:
Some people have said, Suppress it, identify the self with the highest, which is still the movement of thought. Some people have said, Burn out all the senses. They have done it, they fast, do everything for this thing…. There are all the bodily demands, sex, to put in their right place. Who will tell me to put them in the right place? My guru, the Pope, a scripture? If they do, I identify myself with them because they are helping me to put things in the right place, which is sheer nonsense. Right, sir? The Pope can’t tell me sex has its right place. He says: Marry, don’t divorce, your marriage is with God, all that. And I am stuck. Why should I obey the Pope, or the guru, or scripture…. How shall I find out what is the right place for sex, which is one of the most powerful, urgent, physical demands, which the religious people say cut out, destroy, suppress, take a vow against it, and all the rest of it? I say, sorry, that doesn’t mean a thing to me. So I want to find out what is its right place. How shall I find out? I have got the key to it. The key is nonidentification with sensation. Right, sir? … So is it possible not to identify with sensation? There are sensations, I am hungry, but sex is a little more powerful. So I have got the key to it, the truth of it. So, I feel sexual, all right. Nonidentification, that is the truth of it. If I really see that truth, then sex, money, everything has its right place. (Second Conversation with the Buddhist Scholars Walpola Rahula and Irmgard Schloegl, and with Professor David Bohm and Others)
And
Why does thought identify with sensations? … When there is no identification, the senses are senses. But why does thought identify itself with senses? … There is perceiving—seeing—a pleasurable, beautiful lake. What takes place in that seeing? There is not only optical nerve seeing by the eye, but also the senses are awakened, the smell of the water, the trees by the lake…. The next step is thought comes in: How beautiful that is, I wish I could remain here…. Seeing and the delight of seeing, then thought comes into operation and says, “I must have more, I must build a house here, it is mine.” … There is the perceiving of a beautiful lake with all the color, glory, and beauty of it, that is enough. Not the cultivating of memory, which is developed through the identification process. Right? … (Third Conversation with the Buddhist Scholars Walpola Rahula and Irmgard Schloegl, and with Professor David Bohm and Others)
Similarly, in one of Krishnamurti’s public talks from the same year (Talk 4, Ojai, 1978) - bringing all these threads touched on above together - he explores in great detail the nature of desire, asking:
what is desire? … What is the relationship of thought to desire? Are they related, or are they interrelated? … what is desire, and what is its place in life, and what value has it, and so on. If you have observed most of the religions have said deny desire, control desire, subjugate desire, deny desire in the service of god. The monks throughout the world, of different colours, have said, don’t have desire. But when you deny desire, suppress desire it has greater strength, greater vitality, and so inwardly burning with desire, outwardly have a calm face, read the book, don’t look at a woman, don’t look at the beauty of the world, nature, the marvellous earth, because that might awaken desire, so don’t concern yourself, you are a monk, don’t look at anything but the book. And when you do look at a woman, consider her as your sister, your mother, anything but what she is. This has been the way of the monks throughout the world. But we are not saying suppress, control, deny, run away from desire, on the contrary, we are trying to understand the nature of it. And when we have comprehended fully its structure, and its nature, then it has its right place, then it doesn’t fill the horizon, your whole life, therefore there is neither denying it nor suppressing it…. So desire arises through perception, seeing - please observe it for yourself, it is not because I say so - through seeing, then contact, then sensation, then thought creates out of that sensation the image, and that very creation of that image is desire. Right? … the sensation, whether it be sexual, whether it be any kind of sensation, arises through seeing, the optical seeing, the observation, the contact, the sensation… Now the problem is, where does thought come in and make it into a desire, into that desire demanding fulfilment? … You see a beautiful car - I am taking the car, may be a woman, may be a man, may be a marvellous picture, piece of furniture, piece of jewellery, whatever it is. You see a car. Then the contact with it, the sensation to own it, the sensation, and thought creates the image - you sitting in the car and driving it… You see the car; sensation, and desire, you sitting in the car, driving it. And if you haven’t got enough money to buy a car you are jealous, you are anxious, you want to… you do all kinds of things, you steal cars…. So the problem arises when desire demands fulfilment. Right? You see a beautiful woman, or a beautiful man, sex, urge, all the rest of it. The desire always wanting its fulfilment. The desire is constant, the objects of desire may vary, but desire is constant. I don’t know if you follow this. And then the struggle begins: I must not desire, I must desire, the edict of religions…. So the monks have said, don’t waste that energy, therefore withhold desire, that energy is necessary to serve god, whatever it is, Jesus Christ, and all the rest of it…. We are asking, where does conflict arise in desire? Observation, sensation, contact, sensation. If that stops there then there is no conflict. Right? I wonder if you see that. You see the car: contact, sensation. That’s normal, natural, you see a beautiful thing, a beautiful mountain, beautiful trees, lovely morning - sensation. But thought says, I wish such a beautiful day could continue tomorrow, without rain. So is it possible - please listen - is it possible to be so alertly aware for sensation to stop and not let thought interfere with it? Right? That is, have you ever observed the sea, or the mountains, or your friend, or your boy, or girl, with total awakening of all the senses, not just the eyes, or the ears, with all your senses to observe? I wonder if you have ever done it…. That is, when you observe totally, with your heart, with your mind, with your eyes, with your ears, with all the senses awakened, with all the senses observing, then there is no desire as thought interfering with sensation. I wonder if you see this. Do try now, as you are sitting there, to observe, doesn’t matter what, the tree, with all your senses, not only with your eyes. If you do, the sensation of seeing the colours, the sparkling leaves in the sun, the clarity of the blue sky, the sensation, if you so completely observe there is no centre from which you desire.
I hope these extracts prove useful.
Yes, I would agree with this. But, as you say -
If the sense of self returns (and by ‘self’ here I don’t mean the peripheral sense of oneself that K certainly had, but rather the habitual identification of the brain with its thought-created centre, the ‘me’), then was it really a fundamental change?
It was a modification, a momentary rupture in an ongoing movement of identification - but it wasn’t a complete, irreversible transformation. That’s clear, right?
From our perspective there was definitely a momentary shift; the habitual movement of identification (with our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, reactions, etc) was momentarily broken. But at what depth? How holistic, how comprehensive was this ego-death? You see, the test is always: did the strong, definite psychological sense of self come back (with its fears, its suffering, its longings)? If it has done, then we know that the change was not a fundamental change.
This doesn’t invalidate the experience of break-through (the kensho moment), it just means that it wasn’t total insight.
It’s just a factual thing, not an ideological thing. Of course, if we make ‘total insight’ into an image or a goal to strive towards - something requiring “advancement” - then we are as far away from it as we will ever be. So - to me at least - it’s simply a matter of being honest and truthful with ourselves: are we, right now, this second, self-centred or not? - Right? Does it need to be more complicated than this?
I’m sure you have Inquiry, and me too very probably. However, can we be in a dialogue where we discover this as if for the first time? One of the most striking features for me about K’s dialogues was this quality of freshness and newness. He spoke many times about, say, attachment, but in each dialogue it was as if he was discovering about attachment for the first time and sharing this discovery with the audience.
Do you think it’s possible to have something of this quality of constant discovery in our discussions here?
It never seemed that way to me. Every talk was so much like the previous ones that one doesn’t need to read or listen to every one. He always went over the same points, sometimes elaborating, and at other times, not elaborating at all…like when he said “the brain must have complete security”, and never made it clear what that means.
Do you think it’s possible to have something of this quality of constant discovery in our discussions here?
I’m always discovering things in these discussions and I usually express them, but it’s more for my own edification because most folks here are more inclined to stand and defend their ground than feel how squishy it is.