Thinking is our salvation, nothing else

Kinfonet Discussion
21

Much of your reply is concerned with the meaning of friendship. I’m not opposed to looking at what friendship means; but as the thread topic (and my reply to you) was originally about thinking, I will pursue that for the time being.

Putting ‘friendship’ to one side, it has still to be explained how ‘thinking’ is separable from ‘thought’, except for purely rhetorical purposes (i.e. to make a particular point).

You seem to be distinguishing between fluid or active ‘thinking’, and congealed or static ‘thought’, and suggesting that there is more free-play, creativity and permeability when static assumptions in ‘thought’ are put to one side and active ‘thinking’ takes place.

This may well be the case.

But my point is that honey, whether it is runny honey or set honey, is still honey. It is still sweet and sticky.

Similarly with thought and thinking - so long as thinking involves thought and memory, it must be limited in the way all thought is limited.

Yet you insist on asserting that thinking does not involve thought and memory. For me, this is like saying that runny honey does not involve honey. It makes no sense.

Is there such a thing as a contentless movement of thinking? I doubt it.

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22

How do two people look at one another? They use thought and memory, don’t they? So their looking is based upon the past, which is where their images of one another come from. But if they don’t use thought and memory, knowing that it provides a very skewed observation, they are then just looking at one another. And have we ever done this? Have we ever just sat with someone whom we have never met before and looked into their eyes? It doesn’t matter whether it is for a few seconds or for a few minutes.

And then these two people say to one another, ‘Alright, we have done the hard part: we have looked at one another and no images have bothered us, no thoughts, no memories or associations. Now, let’s think together in exactly the same way.’ That’s all.

Unfortunately, here, we have not got the delight of being able to look at one another. But we still have the opportunity to think without all the bother of thought involved in it.

Looking with images means thought is doing the looking. Therefore it is merely an automatic reaction taking place within the brain. But to look at one another without any images at all means that the brain is extraordinarily quiet. That looking itself is a whole action, not a partial, distorted reaction. Then - next step - thinking is possible, which is itself a whole action. There may be absolutely nothing to think about. But, if there is, we now have the ability to think because we are not scared of each other. And it is only a brain that is totally free of fear can think. That’s all we are saying. There is nothing radical or new in the description of it.

Now, look at what happens generally. We say, ‘I am too scared to look directly at another person without my images. Let me first find out how to put aside my fear and then I might look.’ But the only thing that puts aside fear of the world is the direct looking at that world. There is no intermediate step, no process, no secret trick or technique to help one get over the fear.

So don’t think of it as a contentless movement. That is a trick of thought, which is the denial of thinking. Where there is content, thinking is impossible. It is therefore not about a contentless movement of thinking but about the very first move to think, to step away from every last shred of content. That first step alone is the whole action, not the movement which one imagines must follow in its wake. A desperately hungry man is not interested in the ten courses of a banquet - he wants but one mouthful of bread. But we are not hungry enough to think for ourselves and to free the brain from thought.

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23

If we can be simple, what you really seem to be pointing to is the importance of acting without images - or acting directly from observation (rather than thought).

So observation without an image is the essential starting point (and the discussion of a ‘thinking without thought’ perhaps takes us away from the central issue). Can there be an observation free of thought?

The question for us here is how do we ‘observe’ one another on a text-based forum. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but we have to recognise the fact that a text-based communication isn’t a very direct relationship at all.

This is why I think the root question is the more general one asked above: Can there be an observation free of thought? This will then impact on any ‘thinking’ or variety of relationship we are involved with.

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24

Yes. Observation is action, isn’t it? Not first to observe and then to act, but observing is acting. Observing without thought is really the same as saying observing without any observer. It is only the observer who wants to differentiate between observation and action in order to delay action. He can’t exist anywhere else except in that gap, which might be the gap of observing the horror of Gaza (or wherever it is in the world where man is killing man) and the acting which puts an end to the horror. But the observer himself is the horror; what is happening in Gaza is a consequence of what is happening inside each one of us. Therefore, when we put an end completely to the observer then we put an end to all wars. Not today or next week, but it will happen. And our thinking is what puts an end to the observer. Observing, thinking and acting are all one whole movement. Yet we have never so far made the connection because we equate thinking with thought. But thought is the denial or the avoidance of thinking.

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25

Agreed.

I don’t see how this is so, and I don’t understand why you continue to be so dogmatic about this? The observer has been put together by thinking, just as thought is part of thinking.

Thinking involves thought. Whether it is fluid thinking, creative thinking, expansive thinking, or ‘free’ thinking. If it has no reference to memory and thought, then it is no longer thinking but observation, awareness, attention (or whatever word one likes to use).

It seems to me that you want to redefine the word ‘thinking’ to mean something quite different from its general meaning, and yet you have (so far) been unwilling to clearly explain or give reasons why we should take your word for it.

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26

So let’s think about it and find out the exact, complete truth of the matter, observing everything very carefully as we go along. You say that the observer has been put together by thinking. But who exactly is saying this, making this statement? How can the observer - which is just another word for you or me - know where he has come from? Other observers may have told him this, but all those other observers may be wrong. So by observing ourselves right now, is it possible to see the observer at all? Or, it is only when one stops observing and says, ‘Here I am,’ that the observer exists. While there is observing and thinking, there is no observer or thinker present; there is only the activity of observing and thinking.

This is what I mean by thinking about it. There is no conclusion reached about the origin of the observer or the thinker because he has not yet come into play. At the moment, there is just observing and thinking, which simply means putting our observation into words. That is all that is meant by this word ‘thinking’: making an observation and putting it into words. Putting it into words does not mean any conclusion has been reached.

Is this clear so far?

27

Thinking does not condition us. On the contrary, it is thinking alone that prevents us from being conditioned.

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28

One is not being dogmatic about any of this. We are finding out about it as we go along, which is the tremendous fun of it. Anyone can do it; it is nothing special. We have discovered this very simple thing, which is that thinking is merely an observation put into words. So when one says, ‘I love you,’ that’s an observation put into those words at that moment. If you don’t mean it, you don’t say it. You keep quiet and carry on observing, finding out why you don’t love that person. This is all so simple and obvious, isn’t it?

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29

So thought reacts to the word " thinking " .
pointing to the reaction and watching it together is thinking ?

30

What distinguishes the proposed group thinking from Bohm-Krishnamurti dialogue?

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31

It’s becoming clear where you’re coming from, but perhaps the description you offer is not really using ‘thinking’ at all as it’s used. What you describe as making an observation and putting it into words includes time and is a two step process of observation and verbalization aimed at producing thought.

You see, this process is often tied to a center, an actor ‘I am thinking’ which is itself a construction of thought. This attachment corrupts the act of thinking, turning it into something self-referential rather than a simple flow of awareness connecting directly with reality.

Can we inquire into whether thinking, in its true sense, might be free of this interference?

32

Essentially, all nouns arise from thought and serve only as static representations, fragments of the living process. If we were to forgo nouns altogether and replace them with verbs, there would only be ‘friending’ as a continuous action in the present. This points to the utopia that thought imagines but cannot realize.

The challenge remains: can thinking, so often entangled with the constructs of thought, ever transcend this corruption? Is it possible for thinking to remain pure, an unbroken flow of awareness and inquiry?

33

When one says, “I love you,” it’s worth questioning whether this is truly an observation of actuality of ‘loving’ or merely a thought about love.

Isn’t it that we rarely live in the immediacy of loving itself but instead interpret and express what thought has constructed about love and its circumstances?

The words as an outcome from observation + verbatim (thinking), are not a direct verbalization of ‘loving’ in the present moment but a reflection of what thought thinks love is, shaped by memory, desire, and projection.

Can we see this distinction clearly?

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34

Yes. That’s all of it. It is not in any way complicated.

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35

What do you mean ‘proposed’? Nothing whatsoever is being proposed.

36

There is no false or true sense of thinking. Either we are thinking or we are not. It doesn’t matter if our thinking has interference. On the contrary, it is only this interference that makes thinking possible. When you watch the war on TV or even just watch the actions of your neighbours in the street there is immediately thinking about it. And it is painful, if the neighbours are noisy or aggressive. So we stop thinking and form a safe conclusion and then act from that conclusion, which is to go inside and shut the door. That’s what we do. The centre, the thinker, the self, the ‘me’, the ego - take your pick - only appears once we stop thinking.

37

Again, there is no such thing as pure or impure thinking. We don’t need ‘friending’ or anything else if we are thinking together because our thinking is the total action.

38

Look, sir, the other day I was in a room with nine other people, including my husband and someone I have only known for a couple of years. All the rest were relative strangers; and we had been together for just a few days at Brockwood, talking all these things over as we are doing now. We were having a dialogue together, thinking together, exploring all these things that matter to us, and mentioning all sorts of strange abstractions like truth and reality. We were talking about motives and I asked them all why they were there. Silence. So I told them why I was there. I didn’t have to wait until the right answer popped up. There is no right answer. There is just the answer at that moment. So I said, ‘I know why I am here,’ and turned to the young man on my left, held his hand, looked into his eyes and said, ‘I love you; I love you to bits.’ At that moment he was my whole world, and nothing else mattered. And he smiled at me and we carried on. But I didn’t say it to my husband or to anyone else because it wouldn’t have been true. It would have been thought as the thinker making a statement.

At this very moment, I don’t love you or anyone else in the world. That’s a fact. There is no ‘me’ here to love or not to love.

If you want to make distinctions and question why you are using this word or that word, that’s up to you. But you will never get it right, even if you take a thousand years. The only right action is what we are doing now, which is thinking together, which will always be imperfect, incomplete and yet whole. Only that which is incomplete, imperfect and unfinished is ever truly whole.

39

If thinking without center is called ‘thinking’ (pure or true in a sense that it is innate and natural to the brain).

What is, then, the process with presence of the center, thinker, self called? In common language this is referred to as ‘thinking’ (corrupted or distorted from the natural flow).

Correct. But that if is obviously not happening.

Ommm

40

This is not about being correct or incorrect, pure or impure, right or wrong. You have reached a conclusion by saying that thinking together is not happening. How do you know? We are both still here. Only your conclusion stops it. Otherwise, we are free to carry on thinking. As long as one of us is thinking then we are thinking together because it is a total action. There is not ‘me’ over here and ‘you’ over there and then we join together to think. That is not thinking together. That is just one part of thought trying to connect to another part of thought in order to strengthen itself. Thinking together is something that has not yet ever happened and maybe never will while we try to make sense of it separately. First to observe and to put into words what we see.

I see that I don’t love you. Now it is your turn.