The self

Kinfonet Discussion
81

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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82

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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83

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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84

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.

85

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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86

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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87

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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88

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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89

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.

90

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?

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DanMcD, it may just be a matter of temperament, or we have simply misread each others intended meanings (in which case, I sincerely apologise), but in the environments I have grown up in no-one gets to say totalising things without being at least called on it once or twice. This is not meant as a mortal attack on your person or an absence of respect, but just a free-play of sensible scepticism, passionate doubt, in the service of finding out what is true.

I don’t know if you’ve spent much time in any of the K-places? There are always people who make claim to great insights, and there are always (or usually!) some people to push back and question. This dance between the claimants and the skeptics is an ongoing one that you find at Brockwood, in Ojai, in Switzerland (when the gatherings happen), and - to a lesser extent - at the Indian centres (which tend to be a little more on the conservative side).

So when you say

for me it is quite reasonable (and not mere rudeness) to ask whether the person stating this is actually free from the “phoney individual”, or are they only on a temporary holiday from him - not in order to throw sand at your insight, not to undermine what you have said (which may be the outcome of some genuine ‘awakening’, bodhi), but to critically examine it so that it doesn’t fall into being a new spiritual self-image, a new belief.

Because - as you must be aware - there are a great many people in the so-called ‘spiritual’ milieu who have made a new identity for themselves precisely out of such temporary ‘awakenings’, and who look down from those heights at all the ‘phoney individuals’ who remain, without seeing that they are still in the trap of the phoney self. - Do you see what I’m driving at?

Anyway, aside from all this, I think that this topic you mention - of You are the World, and what it means - is a genuinely fascinating and critical enquiry to explore, but really requires its own thread (maybe you have already participated in such thread?) - so I will leave it there for now.

I hope there are no hard feelings.

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Well, this is part of the question, isn’t it? K has stated that genuine insight causes an actual physical mutation in the brain, so that the configuration of synapses etc are completely altered, rewired - one can never ‘go back’. This is also perhaps the difference between a partial insight and total insight: although every perception effects our brains in some way, and even the most passing perceptions are not completely negligible, partial insights do not fundamentally alter the physical neurochemistry of the brain in the same way that a total insight does. Partial insights permit relapse - but when a deep physical mutation occurs (according to K), there is no way back.

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Yes. Good questions. To be reflected on…

94

Isn’t it obvious, I’m … I’m … I’m … MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

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95

I’m the same as Emile here - I didn’t understand what upset you here Dan.

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96

If K had mutated, he would have known that only those who knew him would notice the change, so he would have expected others to question whether he had changed.

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As long as it isn’t identical to yours, it’s mine!

What makes me feel I’m special?

There’s no one exactly like me!

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98

Is it what you call a partial insight, if I may ask? You have experience that insight ?

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On the contrary Richard - this is what I have understand K to have meant by total insight. I am not claiming to have had such an insight.

By partial insight I meant simply the occasional ruptures (in the brain’s identification with its thought-process) which happen to many of us in the course of our lives - maybe when hear someone speaking words of undeniable veracity, or when we see something exceptionally beautiful in nature, or when we are shocked by some unusual and unprepared-for incident, or when we are simply sitting quietly observing our thoughts without any particular plan or motive.

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100

So this is what K. meant by total insight you say ? Though it seems only theory for you. Is it ?

What about the self ? In my quote of K. (Awareness-the Urgency of Change) somewhere up in this thread, K. describe his insight about the birth of the self. How do you see this ?