If Adeen was quoting or paraphrasing Bohm, he should have made that clear.
No it was K who stated it : “There is no division”… sort of reminded me of JC in the gospels: let them who have ears to hear, hear it!
Yes, but K was always making pronouncements like that. He liked absolutes.
I know but this one sounded like it shocked Bohm?
There are things we accept as true, believe to be true, even though we can’t perceive, prove, or demonstrate their alleged truth.
Sure. So hopefully intelligence is operating. And not only pessimism. ( though it has its place)
I feel K does not end division in us, but he is only a pointer.
If nature is undivided and division is man-made conditioning, then perhaps he is only pointing to something. He is only a pointer. It’s like once it is seen that earth is not flat, we cannot go back to the illusion of earth being flat.
If K is a pointer to something, then I begin to question the illusion I have been creating.
It may not be necessary to have K as a pointer to discover something directly.
So can we discover the undivided awareness?
If we say there is no such thing, then that inquiry is over.
If we listen to someone saying there is an undivided awareness without self, thinker, centre as me, and directly see that, then we have discovered directly.
Can we discover undivided awareness?
Awareness is a faculty, not a virtue. To turn awareness into a myth is obvously wrong. Also Krishnamurti says very clearly that life is relationship (‘to live is to relate’), so all beings are interrelated, it’s not a matter of division or non-division. And ‘whole’ doesn’t mean that it’s all one nature, all equal, it simply means all-inclusive, complete, not excluding anything.
The regions where there is war, the sense of separation is high. Israeli vs. Arab, Russian vs. Ukranian.
They are all human beings but don’t see that they are same. If I can see you are same as me, I will never deliberately hurt you.
Hello. Adeen!
The problem in those regions is exactly the opposite of what you refer as the cause of conflict. They say they are all human beings, but they want to have the power to own and occupy what belongs to the other and for that matter they take war as the means to achieve it. They are fighting for power, they want to exterminate or at least subjugate the other, these are evil forces at work because what moves them is totally out of reality. There is enough land for everybody but they are voracious of power, it’s insanity and violence that is at work there.
Yes. But is this insight an actuality for us? - a total insight that has wiped away all conflict, all fear, all suffering, all self-centred conditioning, all sense of division? Or is it a partial insight which has cleared away some fragments, brought about a bit more clarity and order, but is nevertheless still partial?
One can put aside obviously divisive identifications such as nationalism, religious belief, classism, etc; but K has said that merely partial insight is no insight at all - probably because it does not resolve the issue of conditioning, of thought, at its root.
What is dormant will resurface, what has not been exposed through total insight will continue to act in the dark corners of the mind: the divisive ‘self’ is still present. This is why the matter of (total) insight remains relevant - notwithstanding the importance of inquiring into a non-divisive state of attention.
Krishnamurti’s teaching gave the PC (psychologically conditioned} brain reason to believe it can “discover undivided awareness”, but since the PC brain is limited to belief/disbelief, what K pointed to is the PCbrain’s need to see belief for what it is and go beyond belief.
Hi James. I’m not sure about this. The “total insight” K often talked about was, perhaps, the experience of observation of other living things without division and separation. Does this mean that when K looked at a tree he experienced actually being the tree as there was no division between him as the observer and the observed tree? If this is the case that insight may well change everything. From “the other shore” you perhaps detect separation and division in the form of thought very quickly and naturally whereas from where we are, on the other shore, this separation is much more complex to be aware of. What do you think?
I’m not sure that I have grasped the question [Sean]?
From what I’ve read of his journals I think this did happen frequently with K.
But I don’t think this was his ‘normal’ state (as it were) - he was quite capable of distinguishing between the observer of the tree and the tree itself in ordinary everyday practical affairs. For instance, sometimes when he spoke to people about the importance of seeing and looking (inviting them to look at a tree) he would say ‘you are not the tree of course, unless you are cuckoo’ (or words to that effect).
The ‘other shore’ being the state of radical non-separation between the brain and the external world of nature, trees, people, roads and cars, etc? (e.g. that K talks about in his journals?)
Thanks for the reply James. I meant by “the other shore” the place K often seemed to speak from (K used this expression, I think). I understand this other shore to mean a place where a state of no separation, no division is experienced. I see the place where we are as a place where we have glimpses of this other shore, perhaps for short periods of time or under the influence of psychedelic drugs.
It just strikes me as interesting how K apparently found it easy to be aware of thought (psychological thought) and how difficult this seems to be for the rest of us. Why was this so, I wonder.
It may be that K never succumbed to psychological conditioning and, dealing with people who had succumbed, was acutely aware of its prevalence and influence.
Yes. Agreed.
I’m still not completely clear what is being asked here? (I’m not trying to be difficult)
In your previous post you used the word ‘separation’ and in this post you use the word ‘thought’ (psychological thought).
So you are saying (right?) that K saw the separative movement of thought, of the ‘me’, very quickly - whereas it takes us a long time (and perhaps never) to see this with the same degree of clarity?
Is this the question?
Why do we not see the action of separative thought/feeling immediately, instantly? (i.e. with the same degree of clarity that someone like K - or another - may have been able?). - And so drop it instantly before it takes root?
Yes James, that’s exactly it.
Yes, that might well have been the case. It’s very interesting how he never succumbed to conditioning. What on earth was going on there?
I’ve opened a new thread on the subject of psychological conditioning, to see if it is possible to drill down into the issue a little more…
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