With respect. We have to use thinking to communicate. Reasonable, or making sense of our activities, and environment usually reach a point where we have to guess what and why everything is happening and being on the same subject. Take watching a sporting event. Or scientists working together on a project.
Generally people are reasonable or chided and in a friendly manner told where reason and the edges of reason are being approached. The players stay within certain boundaries as do the spectators. The betters win or lose, they do not say they won when they ;lost. The problem with creativity and discussions is that we cannot produce it reasonably or with logic.Creativity is not a talent that the self can ever control or program into the memory. Taking charge of thinking is not really control. We must know our natural limits. Thought is not, and will not ever be the things, activities, positive, or negative virtues thought describes, or talks about .Thought is only a tool invented by the human brain to communicate with fellow animals. Beliefs are not a form of communication they are a pattern of thought pollution.
Thought pollution is taught by religious, and political organizations. They are all teaching members extremely overall deeply questionable unreasonable patterns of fanatical programming. There is no reason to call that reasonable since there are so many languages, and different versions of conformists that the words in them are not the thing or the behaviors either. All thought is limited and incomplete and no ones thought is better than anotherās when pointing out facts . Ponder on that for yourselves . The word is not the thing. Memory is not creativeā¦ Talents can be improved with practice,only talents are not the source of creativity either. Repetition is not creativity. Perception is always in the now.
My understanding is insight draws upon lots of the same set of skills thinking draws upon: reason, pattern recognition, connection, feeling, imagination, and even intuition. I see insight as a kind of āspecial caseā of thinking, a higher thinking. Right thinking? Intelligent thinking? This is kind of what I meant by āWe may just have to do it better.ā
I also regard intelligence as a special case of thinking. Itās right thinking on steroids. Dividing human mentation into different categories - thought, insight, intelligence, feeling, intuition, imagination, speculation, practical, psychological, usw - is for me kind of like pinning a lovely living bug to a board and vivisecting it. Ouch! I prefer to look at the entirety of mental activity, mentation, which I usually call: thinking.
We have heard krishnamurti and perhaps many others talk about thinking (or thought). If one starts from that space, the questions tend to revolve around what one has already read and heard. One might be trying to find the relevance or accuracy of what has been said. But it still remains directed towards what someone else has said, and oneās interpretation and memory of it. Doesnāt this kind of approach cloud oneās ability to be aware of oneās own reality, outside of philosophical positions or assertions?
I would ask, what is thought? are we really aware of it, or merely working with the word and its meaning derived from literature?
Thought / thinking is a movement in the brain. It is similar to the heartbeat, which is a movement in the heart or the movement of breathing in the lungs. In the case of thinking, the question is whether it is functioning āproperlyā or is its functioning depriving the brain of a state of āsilenceā or stillness that it requires to function fullyā¦ There is also the question of thoughtās formation of a āthinkerā apart from itself and the division that that has had on relationships with others and the world.
Each of us has to answer that for themselves. Awareness of thinking is complicated by the belief that the process is being done by āmeā. That isnāt so with breathing or the heartbeat so the awareness of thinking seems to get absorbed by it or ābecomeā one with it. There is then a tendency to āgive upā being aware of oneās thinking. But it is possible. To be aware of its movement.
It occurs to me that being aware of oneās thinking may be more difficult when the intellect is very refined, complex, etc. In that case it may be more difficult to get beyond the belief that there is āsomeone in controlā? Whereas someone with a simpler intellect might not have that problem to the same degree?
It could be that all Krishnamurti was trying to do was turn his listenerās attention to their own streams of consciousness and begin to question the brainās purpose in this constant streaming.
The listener might acknowledge that the silence of thought is necessary for clarity and understanding, and might wonder what the brain has against clarity and understanding.
And when Krishnamurti talked about the need for the brain to undergo the radical transformation from streaming its contents to being silent and empty for the sake of clarity and understanding, the only thing left for the listener to understand is why there is no path, no technique, no way to bring about this transformation, what further use does one have for Krishnamurti?
This question is key for us here. There should be an abiding awareness of it to help us avoid the unintentional slide into psych dependency. (I speak from experience!) Freedom from our conditioning is freedom from our Krishnamurti conditioning.
Thinking divides into subject and object. Is this a tendency or necessity? Is the division thinker-thought inherent to the process of thinking or conditioned? Is there a thinking we are capable of which does not divide into subject/object? Is grokking a form of nondual thinking? Contemplating? Intuiting? Is the thinker-thought divide ultimately illusionary like the observer-observed divide? (These are questions, not sneaky assertions!)
Maybe not inherent. More like a habit. Indulging a habit will continue it. If a habit is considered dangerous, there is an attempt to break or end it. Indulging the habit wonāt do that. Intelligence is needed to determine the way to end it. We experiment to see what if anything works. Are we aware that we are indulging, if not why not? Can we be aware of the habit without trying to stop it, since ātrying to stop itā doesnāt work. If awareness of it ; this thinker / thought duality, is the only other possible approach, the rest being indulgenceā¦why isnāt there a constant awareness of it when there is thinking in motion? Why continue to indulge it?
If the danger of having this habit hasnāt been understood by oneself, why bother about it at all?
And if you feel you have seen the danger, what is the approach that may end itā¦belief?
Arenāt they the same phenomenon? We know the brainās content is constantly streaming thought, but we identify only with the thoughts we choose to have, but not with the āmonkey-mindā thoughts weāre unaware of until weāre trying to be quiet, e.g., meditating?
Doesnāt this same principle apply with vision? Arenāt we projecting are own content onto what weāre looking at and failing to see what weāre doing?
Isnāt our streaming content polluting everything we think and see and hear and feel?
Assuming thinking is not inherently divisive, is it possible to think non-divisively? Is thinking non-divisively an aspect of intelligence? Right thinking?
Yes. If we believe our streaming content is more helpful than harmful, we have a positive bias towards our streaming content, and we shouldnāt be harassed for being hopeful.
So one feels oneās content is the problem, and the solution is the dissolution of oneās content, but the other feels oneās content is not the problem, so the problem is we canāt agree as to what the problem is, and we canāt think together until (if ever) itās clear what the problem is.
We agree that I, the ego, the imagined self, is the problem, but the brain canāt prove it by turning off the illusion machine, so the brain isnāt ready to be alone, all one.
