Observe the thinker, self, me and ego, and it is evident, thinking has stopped.
According to my understanding, the āobserverā is simply whatever one is currently identified with, oneās habituated reaction to events and things - which are the outcome of past experience and memory. One can become aware of oneself identifying and reacting in relationship.
When there is only observation taking place - which is attention - then naturally there is no observer at that moment (the observer comes back when there is inattention).
Thinking as such is irrelevant to being aware and to observing.
I donāt feel that observation and thinking are synonymous. You want to equate them; but as far as I understand it, when there is pure observation there is no thinking. Words can come in later, in order to communicate, or for practical purposes, or because one has become inattentive. But observation does not equal āthinkingā.
You seem elsewhere to want to give thinking a more significant role than this. But even so, an observation does not need to be put into words, and has no necessary relationship to the words. The words - the āthinkingā - is a wholly secondary activity.
One can cook a meal and then carry the meal to the table to eat - but the meal and the carrying of it are not equivalent or primarily related phenomena.
Again, I would rather say that observing without concluding doesnāt condition us, but āthinkingā (which, as you say, is putting observations into words) inevitably will.
Except that what most of us call love is not love, but sentiment or desire. Most of the time the so-called observation we make about these matters is distorted by our thinking.
This is what I feel too.
Again, I donāt feel this is correct. Rather, the self, the thinker, the ego appears when observation is no longer primary (and āthinkingā has taken over).
What distinguishes the collective thinking you describe from Krishnamurti-Bohm dialogue? They seem quite similar. Are you building on Bohm dialogue, addressing areas where you feel it would benefit from fine-tuning?
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What do you mean by āobserve the thinkerā? Is it possible ever to observe the thinker? I doubt it. Indeed, I am sure about it after thinking it through, but maybe I misconstrue your meaning.
Again, forgive me, I am not describing anything. We are in it. It is actually taking place. Thinking is taking place or you are caught in thought, not knowing what to think. Which is it for you? All descriptions are pointless; for the description is not the thing. You know this, surely. Or Iāll bet you have heard it said a thousand times.
I think I know what you are saying to me. You are saying to me that once you understand what is being asked of you then you might or might not decide to join in with us. This is so, isnāt it? As long as you accept the proposal, the description or the principle behind all this - behind what it means to think - then you will join in. We have said that thinking means observing and then putting it into words. Thatās all. There is no proposal. We are pointing out a fact, not an idea. Thinking has nothing whatsoever to do with thought. Employ thought at any level and you are not thinking. Compare this to Bohm dialogue or to something else and then attempt to join in and you are not thinking at all, you are just comparing one idea against another and then attempting to keep in line with your favoured idea. I hope this doesnāt sound too brutal, but this is so, isnāt it?
So let me be clear. This has nothing whatsoever to do with any notion of a shared or a collective thinking. That is your interpretation of what I am saying based on what you already know and have experimented with. This is not just another experiment away from the realities of life. Life is a shared activity. So is thinking. Thinking is life. Thought is not.
If you have read this far, you are in it now and you have to respond. Your response may be to shut the computer and never come back. It doesnāt matter.
This is what I mean by love:
Love one man and you will love them all. Love one Pole, one Hungarian, one Iraqi, one Iranian, one American, one Brazilian, one English, one Scottish, one French, one Spanish (yes, Pabs, you!), one Portugueseā¦ Must I go on?
Donāt question me any more about love. Question only yourself why you do not love every single human being in front of you. Then Gaza is over and no more horror like that will come this way.
Now, if you really want to question me, kindly put to me one vital question, not a lot of subsidiary side issues. Then we can think about it slowly, carefully, lovingly and all the rest of it; and our poor old brains can take a rest while we think. The thinking brain. Give it a chance to think and to shine like a brightly lit pond, not a single ripple upon the surface.
On the thread we have been looking at the relationship between thought and thinking.
Firstly, you seem to have been saying two different things:
on the one hand, you have been equating thinking with observing, making them more or less synonymous;
but you have also said that āthinkingā is merely putting into words an observation.
So which meaning is primary for you here? When we are talking about āthinkingā it would be helpful to be clear which meaning we are discussing.
Secondly, would you admit that thoughts are rooted in memory, and that a process of thinking involves some content of memory?
Yes, a process of thinking would definitely involve some content of memory. But is thinking a process? A process implies a journey from here to there, from confusion to clarity, for example. But observing that I am confused and putting it into words, I am facing something called āconfusionā - and I have to find out why that word came out of my mouth. In the same way, as when I turned to that gentleman the other day and said to him, āI love you; I love you to bits,ā I have to find out why that statement came out of my mouth, both the truth and the falseness of it. First I observe the feeling, then I put it into words, and then I find out what happens, what action takes place. I am not equating thinking with observing or with anything else. I said thinking is a whole action, nothing is excluded, but the brain is totally empty. It is only the empty brain which can think. When it empties itself of confusion then maybe love is all that is left. It makes sense, doesnāt it? But the ending of confusion is definitely not clarity. Thatās the point. Thatās the direction any process implies. A process implies I will move from confusion to clarity, so all the while I am talking about confusion I am only interested in clarity, which is just a stupid idea, a non-existent concept.
Not āmaybeā love is all that is left - it is so. Every āmaybeā belongs to thought. So one says, āWhy am I going back to thought? Why am I hesitant? Why am I saying āmaybeā?ā and observing the hesitancy, putting it into words and moving from there.
Are we saying that the authority of thought is inevitable?
And weāre full of it
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As I am using the word, it simply means āsomething that is happeningā. A river is a process in nature made up of water, etc. Thinking is a neuro-chemical process taking place in the brain, whose content is memory.
Good. I follow.
When you make dogmatic statements like this I wonder if you are aware of the confusion it creates? Most people - or all people if you like - think, are thinking (whether asleep or awake), and their brains are not empty.
This is why I have been attempting to get you to clarify what you mean by āthinkingā. Thinking involves memory, which is content.
An empty brain is an empty brain - it isnāt thinking or caught up in thinking. K talked about a quality of response that comes from emptiness or resonates from emptiness (like the response of an empty drum), but emptiness and thinking are not the same thing.
As far as I understand it, thinking/thought (whether fluid or frozen) is a neuro-chemical process taking place in the matter of the brain, and every time it moves it leaves some synaptic configuration or trace in the very tissue of the brain.
Over time these traces become habituated or settled, and this is what constitutes our psychological conditioning - which is authoritative for us (unless there is an unconditioning of thought).
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You say thinking involves memory and content. Right? But whose memory? Whose content? You are talking about the thinker. The thinker is his memory and content. The thinker is the past. The thinker is the self-image or the image you have of another. And so the thinker is the thought. We are not asking either thought or the thinker to do anything. They canāt. We are asking the brain to think. And only an empty brain can think clearly, logically, free from motive and prejudice. Right? From the moment he steps on to the platform until he leaves, K is thinking. He is looking at the room, at the people, how they shuffle, cough, sit still or restlessly; he is watching what happens as he observes and is aware of the crowded environment. He then talks, putting together his sentences coherently, attending to the sequence of his words, remembering his place and so on. He is thinking from start to finish. Do you doubt it? But he is not employing thought and memory to assist him because he does not know what on earth is going to come out of his mouth. That to him is thinking: listening, observing, communicating, which is the putting of it into words.
It is only an empty brain that can think. Otherwise, it gets caught in its own secret motives. Therefore, most people require a script, precisely so that those hidden motives - greed, desire for fame, status, sex, etc. - do not get accidentally revealed. What is so difficult about all this? Whether they are talking to a large group or to a small group, most people come prepared with a script, written or memorised, in order to impress, to persuade or to influence. Or their script is, āI am lost - help me,ā which is also a form of persuasion, manipulation. Thinking is the abnegation of all such scripts. Throwing away the scripts and the cue cards, one has to think for oneself, naked, vulnerable and alone. Hiding behind the script is a very lonely place; being alone without a script is something else altogether different.
May I ask if you are aware of your own motives for being here. First, by observing them and then putting them into words. Why are you here? This is not a personal question. This is being put to the room. And the putting of it into words is for oneself primarily, not for the others.
You are quite right to say that emptiness and thinking are not the same. But it is only from emptiness that the brain can think. The very same brain is then free not to think at all. Do you get it? That is, listening, observing, and not putting anything into words. That is possible when one walks alone through a crowded street or when one is wandering through the fields, perhaps with a friend or two, or driving a car. But here we seem to be caught in so many questions and therefore thinking is necessary to deal with them.
If you want me to I shall tell you exactly why I am here. I donāt know what my answer is to that question because no-one has yet put that question to me. But I know a lot of very clever answers are possible.
Experience always leaves its mark - And colours future experience.
What is the authority of thought or experience based on? What gives it its authoritative status? And consequently what changes in āunconditioningā - what is it in our relationship to thought that changes?
I think we both said that thinking involves memory and content, didnāt we?
The content is partly shared human content (social, racial, genetic, etc), and partly content built up from a multitude of childhood (etc) experiences.
All of this content contributes to our conditioning, which includes the self-images and images-of-other from which there is action and reaction in relationship.
Speaking for myself, I find it speculative to assess what was taking place in the brain of K when he spoke on the platform, or how he knew what to say at that moment. Except to state the obvious: he invited his listeners to think clearly and logically for themselves, and to listen to what he had to communicate (both verbally as well as non-verbally).
K talked about a speaking from emptiness, of intelligence guiding thought, of love which is not sentiment or desire. He also spoke a great deal about thought, the nature of thought, and the possibility - or rather the importance - of the ending of thought. I donāt recall him saying that thinking will solve our human crisis, or be a source of salvation for mankind.
So perhaps before examining the nature of an empty mind and its relationship to thinking/thought (or indeed love, intelligence, etc), we could start out by sharing what we understand to be the nature of thought?
For myself, as I understand it, thought is memory. Anything that can be thought has its roots in past knowledge and experience. And any thinking that takes place is a movement in memory.
What do you feel about this?
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Habit? Repetition?
A story told over and over again becomes legend.
A lie repeated often enough becomes āthe truthā.
A habit repeated often enough becomes fixed character.
It seems to be based on the lack of attention. It isnāt being attended to. Without attention, it is the controller. With attention the situation may change.
Iām recalling K saying to a group something like when thereās attention thereās no problemā¦the point is to be attentive when youāre inattentiveā¦do you get it?
How do you know that thinking is a movement in memory? How have you arrived at this statement? Either you have thought about it and arrived at a conclusion or something else takes place which is not that process, which has no relationship to either thought or memory. Thinking. It is guiding your life, inside and out. It is with you until you die. So what is it? If it is merely a movement in memory then it is not right to call it thinking. It is not something alive, something living. There is no action there at all, just a collection of dead reactions, a bumping together of dead memories, agitated occasionally by oneās daily encounters with the other collections of dead memories we call other people. Therefore are you a human being at all? Am I? A thinking being, alive in the world, conscious, aware, able to function intelligently in the present moment whatever happens. Or am I an entity that only exists in time, with both a past and a future? For that is what it means to move in memory. It means an existence of perpetual sorrow. Where there is time there is sorrow. Memory, thought, time, fear and sorrow. K has said all this for several generations now. It is not new to you. I wonāt go over it again.
Or there is no such thing as memory at all. Then how will you move? You have no memory, which means no images, no opinions, no theories, no hopes, no beliefs, no formulae, no ideas - nothing whatsoever to help you move through life. So how will you move through life? You canāt. Only then can life move through you. An eternal, infinite movement. Or you continue to move through memory - God knows why! - for what do you expect to find there on a rubbish tip?
So thinking is impossible where there is memory. It requires or demands a totally empty brain in order to be able to think. And the action which empties the brain, daily, is thinking, nothing else. There is only today to worry about because there is no memory.
Thank God that Hermann gets it! Hopefully, when we meet one another on Wednesday, we can go over this again together.
Just guessing, but I would say its authority, its domination, is that it operates constantly, never allowing for the silence of clarity.
What gives it its authoritative status?
Its ubiquity.