Got it, thanks. Yes, views distort our apprehension of reality.
Isnât it sad that the logic of finding out firsthand has so quickly degenerated into point-scoring?
Has inquiry become - without Kâs guiding hand - just a game - with winners and losers?
Is it nothing more than just another image of K, and of what he said, that is driving much of forum inquiry? Has the ability to find anything out firsthand disappeared from human capacity?
And how quickly does the âtricky monkeyâ of the self manage to divert the inquiry away from what really matters - ie. the self - and into tired old theories about âpedestalsâ - âpersonal philosophiesâ - âpartial insightsâ - and ârules of what someone else should be, and what they are allowed to say?â Why is it always about someone else?
Is it that, as the self regards the self as its own very best and precious invention, it is to be protected at any cost against serious scrutiny of any kind by the self?
Isnât the answer - always - in asking the right question?
Can the self observe only the movement of itself - and not everybody else?
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This would be a good guide for avoiding conflict.
Question: What is the difference between my self and yours?
And is it easier to see my self or yours?
Yes it can, i recently discovered some movement of the self and after 70 years of visual handicap, 4 eye- operations and becoming invalid at 50 now at 74 year within 3 weeks have a much better sight throught one visual-traing exercise.
If I remember your story correctly @WimOpdam - you had a belief about yourself, ie âI have a physical problemâ and discovered that it was in fact due to a âbad habitâ which you were able to correct (?)
This would highlight the possible delusion we sometimes have regarding the separation between the physical (eg. pain or cannot) and the mental (eg.fear or will not)
It is worth briefly (or at length) dwelling on this question of partial and total insight (and the pedestals they place us on), because it still seems to me that people are unclear as to why confusion in this area can create real problems between us on a forum like this.
Above it was asked (by you)
You then proceeded to answer this question with complete confidence, even going so far as to call the whole process of insight âsimpleâ - implying thereby (to the ordinary reader at least) that you are in fact speaking from insight.
When someone else then asked you whether this is what K meant by insight (or words to that effect), you responded by saying
To the ordinary reader this again implies that the insight you are writing about here is not materially different from Kâs, and so we donât actually need to know what K had to say about it (insight) because we can just listen to someone who has had it themselves (you).
I donât mean to be personal about this, but you have said similar things before (that is, made personal claims of having insight).
At the end of a recent thread (Direct Perception) - in which you and another participant took umbrage against another longtime contributor to the forum - you discussed between the two of you what you took to be your distinct claims to insight (apparently disagreeing with each other at the level of details).
On that thread you were asked
You have had a real insight (not an intellectual insight), but an insight that caused âmutationâ in the âbrain cellsâ (as per K)?
(the person who asked this question had already claimed previously on the forum to have had this mutation, so they were perhaps in a good place to judge these things).
You replied by saying
there is no âyouâ or âmeâ when the self ends
implying again (to the ordinary reader) that, yes, you too have had the mutation that K talked about, and the self has truly ended (for you).
The other participant wasnât entirely convinced, expressly pointing out that insight (for them) involves
mutation in the brain cells themselves, which the body feels (not change as it is normally referred to)
In your answer to this you evaded the explicitly physical implications of what the other person was calling mutation/insight, reframing it instead as something a little less tangible:
it is through insight that technical thought finds its right place - that is the underlying mutation in the brain
So the mutation, for you, is apparently not exactly the same phenomenon as it was for the other participant. Nevertheless, what is clear is that you were both claiming to have had this mutation - a claim that has been questioned repeatedly on other recent threads, and which you have repeatedly declined to answer in the negative.
However, we know that when K was actually living, surrounded as he was at various times by people claiming to have had perfect insight, mutation events and the like - he never accepted their claims. This is clear throughout all his discussions and writings, with almost no exceptions (I can only think of one time in his journals when he describes walking past a man in India who greeted him with eyes, with a face, of deep comprehension and translucency; he also seems to have been ambivalent about Ramana Maharishi and Anandmai Ma). In private, we know he dismissed the purported awakenings of people like Vimala Thakar, UG Krishnamurti, and pretty much every guru he ever met. And at the end of his life he stated unequivocally that
Nobody, unless the body has been prepared, very carefully, protected and so onânobody can understand what went through this body. Nobody. Donât anybody pretend. Nobody. I repeat this: nobody amongst us or the public, know what went on. I know they donâtâŚ. You wonât find another body like this, or that supreme intelligence operating in a body for many hundred years. You wonât see it again. When he goes, it goes. There is no consciousness left behind of that consciousness, of that state. Theyâll all pretend or try to imagine they can get into touch with that. Perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings. But nobody has done it. Nobody. And so thatâs that.
So when someone on this forum claims to have had this mutation/insight of Kâs, one has every right to be skeptical, to call it out, to doubt it. Because even if it is a product of some genuine occurrence, some genuine insight (which I personally do not doubt), it is not the insight that K spoke of - it is a partial insight. And a partial insight - even several of them, a great chain of partial insights - never adds up to the whole.
So why does this matter on a forum like this? Why am I making a fuss about it?
It matters because these claims - which obviously cannot be verified in the usual way - inevitably place those persons making them on a pedestal of spiritual authority: âyouâ have had Kâs insight, and âyouâ can talk from there, as a Master to a pupil. You no longer have a âselfâ, so I (the ordinary reader) must implicitly defer to you in all matters related to self-knowledge. We no longer need to look at what K said, because we already have a âlivingâ K writing to us on this forum - we just need to adjust ourselves to their different explanations.
Do you not see the confusion this will cause? The danger of it?
However, if one is willing to step back from the brink (as it were) and simply call oneâs partial insights partial (and nothing more than that), then they can be a ripe beginning for an exploration amongst equals, where we each can pitch in (perhaps with our own partial insights) and so help each other find out what is going on inwardly, or what K meant by this and that - help each other move (if that is the intention of sharing oneâs insights).
One therefore does not become an authority, a guru, a master - but we are each of us both masters and pupils, learning from each other (and ourselves) as we go along.
Do you not see the reason (i.e. the sense) in what has been stated here? Or do you find it completely unreasonable (i.e. nonsense)?
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No thatâs not the situation.
Simply Observing my own thoughts saw that I very easy and frequently my shortcoming qua clumsyness and having not seen something attributed to my visual handicap and questioning the truthfullness of this.
Within a few days, I received unsolicited two books, the first in Dutch and the second in English. The strange thing was that on the same day that I received the second book, I came across this title in the first one. One exercise that drew my attention was the âBrock-stringâ, which I had made up myself because it was not for sale in Europe, and to my amazement, it had such a good result in such a short time.
So questioning one of my own thought with a chain reaction as a result.
P.s.: The English titles of the two books are.
- Luminious life from Jacob israel Liberman
& - Fixing my Gaze,
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For thought/self, it is âsaferâ to be concerned with the movement of the âotherâ than to be aware of its own movement?
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James - you claim to have had no insight, therefore by pure logic, you cannot by your own definition see the truth in whatever is said, nor act from it.
All the accusations you make regarding this writer are therefore your psychological images, your opinions, and your analysis - not based on fact, personal (in a non-personal forum) and an ongoing attempt at bullying and harassment. Nice try - again!
One cannot help another psychologically, can one?
Insight has no democracy - it has no ladder - truth is - all that is required for it to manifest is to âbeâ.
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If a group of selfs get together, and they all manage to actually agree on something, does that make it the truth?
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gâday Patricia 
,
âHelpingâ the other (psychologically) is abomination⌠a horrorâŚ
the creation of an image about the other is also abomination⌠a horrorâŚ
side note: example: image-making â pedestal-envy [grins], caused by of all things - comparison !!
also, there is also the assumption that one can âknowâ another, which in itself is also abomination⌠a horrorâŚ
speculation, conclusions, intellectual enquiry, etc., whatever in the same sense is also abomination⌠a horror⌠also a meaningless activity - entertainment, eh?
analysis/paralysis
abomination - a movement away from what it means to be a human beingâŚ
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How many psychologists does it take to change a light-bulb?
Only one - but the light-bulb really has to want to change.
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"And if I want to look at you, if I have an image about you I canât see you, I have no relationship with you, the image prevents me from having contact with you. Inwardly if the mind has any opinion about itself, then it canât learn about itself.â
â J. Krishnamurti, 1972
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The way I see it, this forum functions as a kind of online âashramaâ, where we can discuss Kâs teachings without the distortion of authority, and in this way help each other to better understand the teachings and ourselves (otherwise, why be on this forum at all?).
During the 1970s Krishnamurti often discussed the need for what (at that time) he was referring to as âashramasâ, places of learning, where people might gather together to discuss and enquire into Kâs teachings. In a series of discussions in 1977 (collected together in book form as The Perfume of the Teachings), K asked whether those near to him, who had lived with him and travelled with him, could contribute to such an ashrama (place of learning), and he set out some sense of what this might entail.
(One must bear in mind that none of these trustees, the people who were near to K, claimed to have undergone the mutation that you and Charley are claiming to have had - so you are very much outliers in this regard).
Now, given that few of us on this forum have lived with K or knew him intimately, some of the aspirations K had for his ashramas (which would later be called Centres) do not fully apply - we cannot convey the perfume of what it was to be in his presence, of what it felt like to be near âthe Buddhaâ (as he says). Nevertheless, we can still get a sense of what his intentions for this online forum might have been had he still been around to see it:
If I came there to discuss with you and with the people around you, around the place, the question of awareness, attention, the question of not being hurt, for example and, being hurt, how to go into it, could you help? Help in the sense unravel it. Not intellectually, I am fed up with that kind of stuff; I have done that all over the place. I come here to open it all up, just to be aware of it. Could you help me? Or could you help me to end sorrow? And to see what it means to love, what compassion is, and so on? âŚ
Could you help me? Help me in the sense discuss very clearly, and mean what you say, not be intellectual, not be merely verbal, having gone into it deeply yourself. If I am attached to my wife, husband, attached to so many things, could you help? Could you discuss with me, not at the verbal level, but at a much deeper level, what the implications of attachment are?âthe feeling of attachment and the feeling of completely being free from all attachmentâŚ.
K is gone, dead, or whatever, or Buddha is dead. So, I want to understand what he said about certain things. And you people have listened to him much more than I have, have gone into it much more than I have, and I would come to find out what he said with regard to what I think. I will not accept you as an authority; I wonât accept you as source of enlightenment or anything of that kindâŚ.
I want to discuss it with you there. You are not representing him. You are not taking his place. You are not assuming his authority. But you have listened, breathed the same air, seen the affection, the love, the feeling that you had for him, for the Buddha. I feel, âMy goodness, I want some of it.â I want to find out, because I have not been able to listen to him, unfortunately. Or Iâve just listened to one talk. That was not good enough, but I captured something there and I come to [this place] for that thing.
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These are your images, Patricia - I am just challenging your assertion that you have had Kâs insight.
You have stated very clearly elsewhere on the forum your own assumptions about your âmutationâ and level of âinsightâ, so I had no need to invent them.
Hello James. For what itâs worth, this is how I see this forum:
- We come here as equals.
- None of us are experts in the teachings.
- We probably all have some understanding of the teachings.
- We may well have understood different parts of the teachings and, through sharing, throw light on parts of the teachings that are less well understood leading to a deeper understanding for all of us.
If we are capable of coming to this forum with an open mind, with a spirit of inquiry and friendliness, we may find our experience here both enriching and agreeable.
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Well said! - this is exactly what I feel this forum is for. You have expressed it much more clearly and succinctly than I have been able to. Thank you 
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Is that how you think the forum actually works? Or how you think it should work? If the latter, how do you think the forum actually works, where does it stand with respect to each of your points?
Of course not! What a question! Each one of us creates and modifies our self-image to succeed in the world of self-imagined people, so itâs more practical to have an incisive, droll persona instead of a stodgy, preachy, self-righteous one .
Hi Nobody. The four points I made were how I see the forum, based on observations during the years I have participated here. The last sentence I wrote, under the four points, started with the word 'If". I think itâs clear we donât always come here with open minds and a spirit of inquiry and friendliness. In general, I donât find much friendliness in this forum. How do you see all this?