From the QOTD another part seems contradictory to the acrivity on this forum.
"The worship of authority is evil, the more so in religious matters. There is no intermediary between you and reality; and if there is one, he is a perverter, a mischief maker, it does not matter who he is, whether the highest saviour or your latest guru or teacher. The one who knows does not know; he can know only his own prejudices, his self-projected beliefs and sensory demands. He cannot know truth, the immeasurable. position and authority can be built up, cunningly cultivated, but not humility. Virtue gives freedom; but cultivated humility is not virtue, it is mere sensation and therefore harmful and destructive; it is a bondage, to be broken again and again.
It is important to find out, not who is the Master, the saint, the leader, but why you follow."
Itâs easy to fall into psychological dependency on authority, both for an external authority figure (like Krishnamurti) and internal (my worldview). Very easy! You could argue, convincingly I think, that we as a species are predisposed to seeking and relying on (practically and psychologically) authority, that millions of years of evolution have left their mark on us. Doesnât mean itâs impossible to be free of authority, but going against evolutionary survival mechanisms is difficult.
Iâm often reminded of how dependent I am on authority, despite identifying as a rebel.
Mark me down as investigator. Krishnamurti set us unconditionally free when he said, âFind out for yourselfâŚhave no authorities.â We have volumes of his life-time work available 24-7(at our fingertips) thanks to the 4 foundationsâ online repository. We can choose to investigate, resonate, accept or reject any of his teachings. And yes, I have a choice. For those who have rigidly decoded Kâs work, realize there are different perspectives on it. We are all in this together.
As a species we have existed for millions of years, but perhaps for only thousands of years we have been bound by and limited to the brainâs ability to determine, decide, choose, what is true rather than to innocently perceive directly. At some point our species took a wrong turn when we gave greater importance to the intellect, thought, than to freedom from the known.
Doesnât mean itâs impossible to be free of authority, but going against evolutionary survival mechanisms is difficult.
âGoing againstâ is the problem - not the solution. The difficulty of finding freedom is that we donât really want it because we can only want what we know or can imagine. Weâve been bound and driven by thought for so long, we havenât a clue as to what freedom might be. We just believe we must be free.
This is largely speculation and unfalsifiable. It is not established (afaik) that homo sapiens ever perceived the world directly-innocently. The reason I bring it up is because Iâm used to you being very careful what you put forth as âfactual.â Youâre like the forum lie detector!
This is Krishnamurtiâs and Bohmâs view. Itâs never been proven true or false, doubt it ever could, at least not rigorously.
Personally, the notion of a âwrong turnâ makes sense to me, but my feeling is that the turn happened when the imagined started getting confused/conflated with the actual. Imagination is a powerful and dangerous ability!
This is significant, eye-opening. Even the notion of a âwrong turnâ could be a product of someoneâs imagination. Religions could be rooted in centuries of imaginations. Even when I use imagination for planning, organizing, problems solving, decision-making, it could be based on piles of othersâ imaginations. Truly a brainstorm!
What is it NOW that makes us a researcher or a follower?
The statement from the conversations between K and David Bohm about a wrong turn is indeed not verifiable and brings a time factor into the discussion and even the latter argument is linked to the teaching.
Canât be started with an empty mind by asking a question like:
Is it possible to investigate the mind with the mind?
[quote=âInquiry, post:4, topic:2233â]we have been bound by and limited to the brainâs ability to determine, decide, choose, what is true rather than to innocently perceive directly.
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Reading the memoir of a wealthy personâs experiences, the travel, the romance, the cuisine etc I become jealous. When I become aware of this reaction and there is no attempt to be âfreeâ of it, there is freedom from it. There is a âdirect perception of the situation
To tie that in with this thread, is that the follower (worshipper) does not have to change, to âbecomeâ a non-follower âŚbut that the situation of me as worshipper and the worshipped as other than me, is seen without judgement, condemnation etc, in other words a direct perception of the total situation?
âŚThe belief behind âreligiousâ / spiritual following being that if I take your dead teaching and add it to my store of dead knowledge, something new will arise from all the rot?
Itâs my conditioned response (reaction) to label and judge, so if Iâm aware of and interested in my reaction, I can look at it and see if itâs appropriate, accurate, or just confirming my beliefs and values.
Reactions are conditioned response, so if Iâm not aware of them and how they determine my behavior, my decisions, nothing is new, and Iâm just repeating myself.
I do not know whether this is the way it works. I do not think so. It seems not to work with me.
The moment i have a reaction, which means that i am conditioned, why else should i bother?, i will label it and by doing so the whole thing (thinking) starts.
So, can i prevent a reaction?
Why are we doing this? I cannot answer this question, but for me.
Is life hell? Do i want to escape from it? By asking these questions?
Life is hell! Look around and you will see it.
And this is what we as a human race has made of it. There is no escape from this.
So, what are we to do? Discussing on Kinfonet? As a kind of intellectual amusement? Trying to understand K? Is this possible? The moment you say i do, the understanding has gone. Nothing seems to last. Or better : you can not lay hands on it.
And still ⌠we do. Why?
The mind is able to mirror/see itself to some extent (awareness, self-awareness, metacognition), but the seeing is likely to be imperfect, limited, a bit blurry. Is the landscape able to see its reflection in the water?
I would say no because you are the reaction. You can try to substitute something else after the reaction which would just be another reaction; something judged to be more suitable, more appropriate. That is called self improvement. We are interested in the observation of the self and not in improving the self.
Indeed neither the landscape sees itself in the water nor the water in the landscape. So there is a certain natural function working. The mirroring function is given to the water but not to the landscape. The sharpness and clarity of the mirrored thing does wer dependent on the conditions prevailing at the time. The light, the wind, the purity of the water, any vegetation, etc⌠they all come into play.
With this metaphor looking at the mind and thinking, it becomes clear that any influence we exert on it contributes to bluring the pure image, wether it is hell , heaven or whatever name we gif to what is.
The metaphor holds well for the original: Only an utterly still pure pond will reflect the landscape without distortion. But that doesnât necessarily mean it works the same way for the mind. Maybe some perturbation of the mind helps it mirror more accurately? Effort, for example, which is a form of perturbation, right? Effort might be needed, the right kind, for the mind to reflect well.
Itâs not a scientific equation so i realize there is space for differences. But even in science there should be space for such a approach which is by the language used very absent.
âMaybe some perturbation of the mind helps it mirror more accurately?â
How can stillness be helped by perturbation?
You suggest that this perturbation might be effort, i.e., me doing something to reduce distortion, when me is the cause of distortion. Whatâs wrong with me doing nothing/being absent for the sake of clarity?
