Thinking things through

Nothing.

Isn’t that the point, though. Is it not the psychological “what’s in it for me” the so-called ‘wrong turn’? Motive is the driver of (psychological) thought, is it not?

Surely thought cannot ‘stop’ if there is a motive of any kind. Thinking is motive, isn’t it? The stopping of thought as it is being considered here is not a matter of will.

I imagine it would take knowing that thinking is totally conditioned and understanding what is meant by that. We say that we do, but I doubt that is actually the case. In fact, that may the only intelligent thing thought can do, to understand that whatever I do, whatever I come up with, is more of the same. Including that understanding. There is no desire to end thought in this scenario. Desire is another name for motive. If any such ending were to take place, it would have to a reflexive action, not a deliberated one.

The question of motive is a fundamental one.

If you followed your thoughts that led up to your conclusions about what you read and how you would respond to it then you would have seen that it was only thought reacting and no thinker was present at all.
That is what is important isn’t it?

Yes any motive other than to follow thought, to see it ,is thought the trickster at work. But there is no reason that thought can’t operate intelligently, is there? Once there is an understanding of the false reality it has created, it can not be so taken by what it once believed to be true eg the existence of the ‘me’ , ‘my’ beliefs, etc.

Yes. Define “totally conditioned”. But first of all, is thought aware of itself, or is awareness thinking?

The difference between thought and thinker is all in the mind that needs the separation. If you’re experiencing it, find out why. If “thought the trickster” is making that difficult, could it be because thought isn’t ready to acknowledge what it’s doing?

Obviously and in some ( or most? ) cases, it will never “acknowledge what it’s doing”.

Thought is the thinker when it’s active, and thought when it’s on standby.

This being a K forum we are in the habit of using the word conditioning in the proprietary way he does, namely by asserting that if there is a time gap between challenge and response, then conditioned memory is at work. That obviously is the normal way we think of awareness, first a stimulus comes in, then we evaluate it in accordance with our personal-ness (the condition) and then respond from the same part of the brain that houses this conditioned memory. A perpetual read-eval-respond-loop of self-centeredness. Though we would not call it that.

I guess you could say that this is thought being aware, or thought usurping awareness? With this kind of awareness we are well acquainted. There is none of this ‘seeing is the doing’ K goes on about. Mind and brain/unconditioned memory merging into the singular movement that is pure unfiltered awareness. Miraculously becoming unconditionally aware of the entire scope, nature and significance of conditioned awareness and doing away with it all as one movement in time and space. Is this the simplest thing one can do or the most difficult? Both? Neither? I have no idea. Which I am told is a good place to be.

K: Time ceases when there is only ‘what is’.

Obviously conditioned awareness is not interested in ‘what is’. That is not its job. Its job is to block stuff out, and not just background noise. Hence the difficulty with the totally part of “totally conditioned”.

Hello Emile. When Krishnamurti invites us to look at the mountain saying it is a thing of great beauty, do we look? If we do, is there motive in the looking? As I see it, awareness of inattention brings attention. When there is attention, there is attention to the movement of thought. If we look at the mountain without thought rushing in to interpret for 60 seconds before attention ends and thought starts to go round in circles again, is there any value in that? How do you all see this?

It seems miraculous because seeing for the first time what you are doing is a radical departure from the known.

Hi Sean,

Quite frankly, whatever I know about awareness, I have gotten from reading. Second hand knowledge that tells me that awareness implies no choice. I would say that all I know is choice. The conscious mind is choice. Choice is time, interpreting the present in terms of the past, projecting future, all that.

K says the conscious mind cannot be intelligent. I believe he uses the word intelligence to mean seeing things as they actually are, without distortion - that is, synonymous with awareness. Up to that point I can keep up with him. I, the conscious mind, then is not awareness.

Can we then “choose” to be aware? is the question. To choose to ‘do’ something which by definition we cannot know anything about? Or does awareness come about uninvited as K puts it when I-thought understands that it is choice and can be nothing but that. And feels the prison and pain of that inevitability.

Is awareness then simply a "negative’ state of complete non-resistance? Allowing everything to be as it is including what I know and what I don’t know. Is awareness an impersonal faculty of mind rather than a valuable experience? Having nothing to do with desire, pursuit, all the hallmarks of the self?

It is a very fine line, this. Either there is an observer in the observation or there isn’t.

Depends on your prison. Most people seem quite content, if not pleased, with theirs.

Lucky them.

Not so lucky are those of us discontented with our content.

We are thinking it through too much. There is beauty in the world, and seeing this beauty is all there is to it. In beauty there is no motive, no conflict, no self center. To speculate about achieving this is the wrong approach. To continue with the thoughts about the practicalities, and impracticalities, the day to day complications, or the hurdles to success, this is all cultivating thought. Its not as if we don’t see the beauty, and not experience moments of calmness, quietness, watchfulness, or insight. Is it just that there is a deeper psychological habit, and we are a bit too lazy to give up our distractions??

Hi again Emile,

It’s good to read such an honest comment. It seems strange that we talk so much about awareness in intellectual, abstract terms rather than discuss our direct experience of awareness and observation. I mean, we’re in situations every day where we can observe, whether it be sitting on a bus or walking in a forest.

I don’t know about that. If we start to listen and observe what is going on around us, is that choosing?If we look at the cloud that Krishnamurti invites us to observe, is there choice there?

Yes, this seems to be the case.

This is the beginning of the 1948 Bombay talk. Emile posted the answer to a question about relation between thinker and thought that came at the end of this. This leads into it.

JK: I would like this afternoon to discuss the problem of action, which might be rather abstruse and difficult at the beginning, but I hope by thinking it over, we will be able to see the issue clearly. Because, our whole existence, our whole life, is a process of action. It is an action at different levels of consciousness. Please, I am afraid you will have to pay a little attention to this, because it is going to be extremely difficult if you do not follow it very closely, if your attention is distracted by those who are passing behind me. I shall not be distracted; but you will be, unfortunately, and therefore you will not be able to follow it and will miss its beauty; because, it is quite a difficult problem and needs very close attention.

Most of us live in a series of actions, of seemingly unrelated, disjointed actions, leading to disintegration, to frustration. It is a problem that concerns each one of us, because we live by action; and without action, there is no life, there is no experience, there is no thinking. Thought is action; and merely to pursue action at one particular level of consciousness, which is the outer, merely to be caught up in outward action without understanding the whole process of action itself, will inevitably lead us to frustration, to misery. Therefore, if I may suggest, and though the problem is quite simple, one has to be a little concentrated - not with the concentration of exclusiveness, but with the interest which brings, not exclusion, but attention. That is what is needed: to be attentive with interest. Then you and I will go together; then I won’t take the journey alone, and you won’t become a mere spectator. And if we can take the journey together, it will be much more creative, much more interesting, more vital and significant, and therefore you will be able to follow it for yourself in daily action.

So, our life is a series of actions, or a process of action at different levels of consciousness. Now, consciousness, as I explained the other day, is experiencing, naming, and recording. That is, consciousness is challenge and response, which is experiencing, then terming or naming, and then recording, which is memory. This process is action, is it not? Consciousness is action; and without challenge, response, without experiencing, naming or terming, and recording, which is memory, there is no action. Whether you are a big executive, a big business man, raking in money and piling up a bank account, or a writer, or just an ordinary man earning an ordinary livelihood, this is the process that is going on: experiencing, naming or terming, and recording; and this whole process is consciousness, which is action.

Now, action creates the actor. That is, the actor comes into being when action has a result, an end in view, If there is no result in action, then the actor is not; but if there is an end or a result in view, then action brings about the actor. So, actor, action, and end or result, is a unitary process, a single process, which comes into being when action has an end in view. Action towards a result, is will. otherwise, there is no will, is there? The desire to achieve an end brings about will, which is the actor - I want to achieve, I want to write a book, I want to be a rich man, I want to paint a picture. Will is action with an end in view, a result to be gained, which brings about the actor, So, the actor or will, the action, and the end or result, is one process. Though we can break it up and observe these factors separately, it is a total, unitary process.

Now, we are familiar with these three states: the actor, the action, and the end. That is our daily existence. I am just explaining what is; but we will begin to understand how to transform what is, only when we examine it clearly, so that there is no illusion, prejudice, no bias with regard to it. Now, these three states, which constitute experience - the actor, the action, and the result - , these three states, surely, are a process of becoming. Otherwise, there is no becoming, is there? If there is no actor, and if there is no action toward an end, there is no becoming; but life as we know it, our daily life, is a process of becoming. I am poor, and I act with an end in view, which is to become rich. I am ugly, and I want to become beautiful. Therefore, my life is a process of becoming something. The will to be is the will to become, at different levels of consciousness, in different states, in which there is challenge, response, naming, and recording. Now, this becoming is strife, this becoming is pain, is it not? It is a constant struggle: I am this, and I want to become that. The becoming is a constant battle - the rich man competing with the richer to maintain his position, the poor man trying to become rich, the artist trying to achieve a result, write a book or a poem, paint a picture. There is always an end in view, a result to be achieved, and in that process of becoming there is a ceaseless battle, a strife, a pain. With that we are familiar - I have not described anything other than what is.

So, then, the problem is: Is there not action without this becoming? That is, is there not action without this pain, without this constant battle? If there is no end, there is no actor, because action with an end in view creates the actor. But can there be action without an end in view, and therefore no actor? Because, the moment there is action with the desire for a result, there is the actor, and therefore the actor is always becoming; therefore the actor is the source of strife, pain, misery. And, to eliminate that strife, can there be action without the actor, that is, without the desire for a result? Only such action is not a becoming, and therefore not a strife. There is a state of action, a state of experiencing without the experiencer and the experience. This sounds rather philosophical, but it is really quite simple. We know that in our daily actions, in our everyday life, there is always the actor or experiencer, the process of experiencing, and the experience; the actor is acting in order to achieve an end, and I know that that process always produces strife, because I live in strife with my wife, with my husband, with my neighbours, with my boss. I know the life of strife and conflict, and I want to eliminate conflict, because I recognize that conflict does not lead anywhere. It is only creative happiness that brings about a revolutionary state. So, to find action without strife, there must be no actor; and there is no actor only when there is no end in view. Can I live in a state of experiencing all the time, without the desire for a result? That is the only way to solve this problem, is it not? As long as action has an end in view, there must be the actor, the experiencer, the observer, and therefore a process of becoming which creates strife, and therefore a state of contradiction. Can one live in action without a state of contradiction? There can be freedom from contradiction only when there is no actor and no end to be achieved, which means a state of constant experiencing without the object of experience, and therefore without the experiencer. Now, we live in that state when the experiencing in itself is intense. Take, for example, any intense experience that you have. In the moment of experiencing, you are not aware of yourself as the experiencer apart from the experience; you are in a state of experiencing. Take a very simple example: you are angry. In that moment of anger, there is neither the experiencer nor the experience; there is only experiencing. But the moment you come out of it, a split second after the experiencing, there is the experiencer and the experience, the actor and the action with an end in view - which is to get rid of or to suppress the anger. So, we are in this state repeatedly, in the state of experiencing; but we always come out of it and give it a term, naming and recording it, and thereby giving continuity to becoming.

Now, the problem is, how can there be freedom from conflict in action? As I said, only when experiencing is lived completely, wholly, all the time. You can live completely, wholly, only when there is no terming, when there is no naming, and therefore no recording, which is memory. Memory is the recorder of the outcome of action with an end in view. Sir, when you have an experience and you are in that moment of experiencing, if you don’t term it, f you don’t give it a name and therefore record it, put it in the frame of reference which is memory, then that experiencing is joy, that experiencing is creation.

We seek an end to everything we do because we want to end the conflict that moves us, but we also want to justify conflict by bringing about meaningful change. We know, intuitively, that the most meaningful, beneficial thing we can do is see the conflict, thereby ending it, but we believe in the energy of conflict because it brings results, and we demand results.

The observer pops up when observation deviates from the terms and conditions under which thought operates. Observation is always present, but so are the reminders of what doesn’t abide by the conditions, and this constant reminding dulls the mind into a compliant stupor.

You can’t have it both ways. To think we are shifting between intelligence and non-intelligence, seeing clearly and not seeing clearly, this is the old conditioned mind at work, maintaining the usual way of thinking and self deception. The questions, What is intelligence?, What is seeing clearly?, these are really unexplored, and we think we know what they are, relying on knowledge, relying on our standard use of these words. We make comparisons with the standard meaning of words, as if this verbal elaboration, is actually an understanding of truth.

“Shifting between intelligence and non-intelligence” is your phrase, not mine. If that’s how you want to interpret what I’ve said, so be it. But if you observe closely, patiently, you will see that the brain’s conditioning is the only thing preventing seeing clearly, seeing what-is. Direct perception is immediate and unconditional, and conditioned response is a reaction, which means it takes time and energy, whereas direct perception does not.

The brain is capable of seeing immediately and unconditionally, and were it not for the conditions imposed upon it by the insecurity of the mind, thought, it would be seeing what-is right now.