Everything we think-feel-intuit-believe we know may be wrong. Scientific ‘laws’ may just be models which happen to predict material outcomes quite accurately. Same for spiritual laws and principles and teachings. 2500 years of wise learned people saying X is true doesn’t make X incontrovertibly true.
When I talk about lucid dreaming/streaming, I’m telling a story. It’s a metaphor, a way of looking at the nature of reality, a map which may point to a territory.
Isn’t the territory the brain’s use of thought to create and maintain a false sense of security?
There is per Krishnamurti no such thing as complete psychological security.
But there is complete security in the form of intelligence:
So, there is security only in intelligence. We won’t go into the question of what is intelligence as our time is up. It is intelligence that says that is false - right? Because you have examined it, you have looked at it, you have doubted it, you have questioned it, but if you say, ‘I accept the false as the truth’, then you are unintelligent. But the moment when you look at the falseness of things and see clearly the false as the false, that perception is the beginning of intelligence. Right? Now to go into that intelligence profoundly, which we shall as we go along, that is security. Intelligence of that kind is supreme security.
I doubt this question can be answered definitively (by us at least). The territory may be imagined and it may be real. Are these the issues that prevent us (dissuade us) from taking the leap?
Is there a “leap” or any action that one chooses to take?
If the human brain has taken a wrong turn, wouldn’t it be enough for the brain to understand why it took this turn?
It would seem so …but ‘understanding’ that something I’m doing: drugs, smoking, overeating is harmful doesn’t necessarily end it. The ‘reflexes’ gathered in the brain over a lifetime can be modified to a degree but not dissolved. Maybe the ‘understanding’ has to be very deep and as has been said, with no judgement?
Hi Dan. I wonder if we understand the same thing here.
My understanding is that what separates “me” from the tree is the flood of past knowledge and experience about trees which is activated, through thought, when I look at the tree. For example, I start thinking, “this is an oak tree, they live for up to 200 years, etc., etc.” This conditioned response prevents me from actually seeing the tree and separates me from it.
I’m sure we’ve both read K’s vivid descriptions of moments when, seemingly, there is no separation between him and other living things he is looking at. I understand that K was free, at least some of the time, from the bundle of memories which make up the self and which separates us from each other.
I’m not sure about the statement “you don’t really exist”. I think you have said that, or something similar Dan, though I might be wrong. I mean, the bundle of memories which we each have do exist, so in that sense, we all individually exist as separate bundles of memories.
Anyway, I wonder if we are both understanding the same here.
I think the difference is here: there can be a bundle of memories and knowledge about the tree but without the ‘me’ that feels possession of those memories and that knowledge. I think that is what is being suggested: the ‘me’ entity doesn’t actually exist! The brain can study and analyze the working of the tree and be aware of its form and beauty without the presence of the ‘I’. The I or self-image is a psychological structure built up over time. I am the past in that sense and when I look at the tree I am bringing the past into each present moment. And each ‘I’ is different, made up of different experiences and knowledge and so the perception of the tree is ‘filtered’ through the past, through this ‘me’. If this analysis is right, looking at trees in this way isn’t a serious problem but looking at each other through the eyes of the past and the ‘me and mine’ seems possibly to be a huge source of the world’s suffering and violence.
When the brain identifies with its contents, it perceives what it projects upon actuality instead of perceiving naked actuality. So can the brain be aware of its relationship with its contents, and by this awareness keep its contents where they belong instead of making them its authority?
And it does this automatically…it isn’t intelligent this ‘identification with its contents’ because by doing so, it confines itself in a ‘box’. No matter how big a box, it will always be limiting itself. And by doing this for a false ‘sense of security’, it deprives itself of ever realizing its infinite potential.
So if the brain knows what it’s doing, why it’s doing it, and why it needs to quit doing it, why doesn’t it quit?
The obvious answer is that to quit living with the known is to begin living with…what? The brain can’t stop living its usual way until it knows what a self-deceiving practice its usual way is, and that can’t be clear until the brain is free to see it.
So it seems to me that the brain can’t come to order by an act of will, choice, or decision; can’t take the leap, step out, etc., but that the brain comes to order before it knows it. All the disordered brain can do is be aware of what it’s actually doing, and for no other reason than it has nothing better to do.
The present. The sights, sounds smells of the world. The colors of nature, the beauty. Music, art, technology…the connection with it all? As K put it, “participate in the Immensity “?
For the brain to resonate with Intelligence, it has to be intelligent. Is it intelligent of the brain once it understands the relationship between images of thought, ie. possible negative future occurrences and the effects such thinking has on the entire body: fear, anxiety, worry etc…is it intelligent of the brain to allow such fleeting thoughts to affect the whole system when they may never materialize?
I doubt we choose to take the leap, though I think we can choose not to.
Perhaps profoundly rational sane healthy brains would change their evil ways at understanding the origin of these ways. But average brains, even strong clever brains, would go Aha! and then slide back inexorably into their goofiness. Look at us here for example. We all get it, but only halfway.
Those are all nice words and probably true, but for the isolated, self-deceiving brain, they’re just words, and that’s why I asked “what”?