I know when I’m thinking because I can follow the train of thought and direct it. But I can’t know when I’m not thinking without acknowledging the fact, and acknowledgment is thought. So it seems I can’t know there is no thinking until after the fact. I can reflect on a span of thoughtless awareness and how marvelous it was, and develop a craving for more thoughtlessness.
Krishnamurti talked about meditation as a state of mind that is very different from what we experience, that is, what we now know as the default mode network of the brain. Thanks to neuroscience, we know there are other neural networks that can be accessed, and that meditation is one of those neural networks. It is characterized not so much by thought as a lack thereof. It is more a state of passive observation wherein things are less what they are said to be than what they actually are in the moment.
If we can understand awareness in general then we can look at awareness of thought in particular
As you say, we can be unconsciously aware of a song in our head or the bird songs outside, and suddenly experience awareness of what has been going on. Also, we know that thought goes on unconsciously. So there is awareness and a capacity for selective awareness. K’s term, “choiceless awareness” refers to the absence of selectivity. This complete awareness is not achieved through effort or will or training, but could be a different neural network of the brain.
Yes it is as if a part of the brain ‘awakens’ that has been dormant and ‘sees’ (Is aware) of the part that has been functioning in the darkness, as ‘I’ / ‘me’ and there is a ‘shock’ in that insight…and though that limited part (the snake?) once again resumes, it is felt somewhere, that nothing can ever be completely the same again.
So it seems that one must learn a new way of being. That is, learn how to go from the default mode network to the mode of consciousness where awareness cannot be selective; is by default, choiceless.
So it seems that one must learn a new way of being. That is, learn how to go from the default mode network to the mode of consciousness where awareness cannot be selective; is by default, choiceless.
Yes. This is what I believe K. meant by the ‘art of awakening in the moment’? It is understood that there is no method, no “how”…so what is it that allows this “default mode” to give way? This opening of the brain to a new way of seeing? This “stepping out of the stream”, etc.?
We know a lot more about the brain now than we did when K was alive. He felt that his brain had undergone a radical transformation that was cellular, and no doubt that’s what it feels like when a neural network becomes operative for the first time. We know this change can be forced with psychedelics, but we know also that this is just a glimpse what the brain is capable of, and not the “awakening of intelligence”.
Krishnamurti was quite insistent that there is no “how” to this awakening, and that it only comes about when one is determined to find out if it’s possible to live with complete attention and without conflict. The mind wants to find out, and all it can do is inquire into the matter by observing its own movement without any intention to change or become different. The problem is what the mind doesn’t know about itself, and as K said, the seeing is the doing. The first thing to see is that there is no observer, no thinker, no me, no I, apart from the mind that creates the illusion of such separate entities. There is only the mind caught in its habitual, repetitive mode of consciousness wondering if it can operate in a radically different way.
What would be the rationale for attempting this? Seeing that “selective awareness” only functions from intention? Wanting to see more clearly in order to think more rationally, while desirable, is not a strong enough motivator to sustain a state-of-awareness-for-no-reason for very long, at least not in my experience.
The rationale is to learn about the mind. One observes animals and plants and other natural phenomena because there is much to learn through such observation. Likewise, one’s mind.
Do you mean to find out more about how the mind functions structurally - to find out first hand if what K says about observer and observer and so on has any merit? Like a scientist would look at it? Only using your own mind as an example of the human mind?
And not from a personal point of view for self-improvement purposes? So you are saying the motivator is a scientific interest in learning about the human mind. I like the sound of that. But I think most ppl would probably say the reason they are looking at all this is to find a way out for personal reasons — not necessarily selfish ones, maybe even because of the abject failure of our species to find lasting happiness. Perhaps though the reason doesn’t matter as in both cases the end goal is the same - learning how the mind works.
Just wondering why so many of us, myself included, are unable to do this choice-less awareness thing for more than a millisecond.
Yes some are. Thinking about this in terms of “neural connections” in the brain. Each brain has been ‘conditioned’ to operate in a somewhat predictable, limited way. Certain ‘patterns’ of thought are formed and the question is, can that patterning not be 'changed, but can it end? Presently there is along with nationalism, and the beliefs of organized religions, classism and racism. All of these dividing beliefs inevitably create great suffering, wars, famine, pollution, poverty, etc. That is our history. Drugs are obviously not the way out of all this. The ‘change’ has to take place in the brain itself doesn’t it? It has ‘settled’ for this mess for whatever reasons: safety, security?..K. has spoken much about ‘silence’ and an ‘emptying’ that can’t be brought about by effort or will. Also the importance of a state of mind: “I don’t know”. This it seems is anathema to the brain at this point because in ‘knowing’, it finds safety and order…even though what it ‘knows’ to be true is actually false and destructive…
If the mind is really interested in the way it works, it observes its activity and finds out as much as it wants to know about how it can be both clever and mistaken, clear and confused, open to new information and closed to what might upend its assumptions.
the importance of a state of mind: “I don’t know”. This it seems is anathema to the brain at this point because in ‘knowing’, it finds safety and order…even though what it ‘knows’ to be true is actually false and destructive…
Yes, the mind is insecure and settles for the false sense of security that knowledge provides. But the mind is aware of this and is usually questioning and doubting its certainty. When I say we know this or that, I’m referring to what scientific research and experimentation has revealed. Of course this can change at any time, but it’s somewhat reliable.
It was probably a mistake on my part to write “awareness becomes thinking.” Just now I was aware of two men walking across the road. But then something brought them to my conscious attention and the rumblings of thought began. Formations of thoughts began to assemble themselves. So, awareness did not become anything. It was augmented by conscious attention and then by thought.
I also noticed that as the thought formations became more directed my state of attention became directed by the thought and my awareness, though still there, became of a more limited and selective affair. When a purpose is directing awareness, I could conclude, then the quality of that awareness is radically altered.
At that point, it seems to me, awareness takes two forms. One can switch back to the less-focused awareness to gain further, new or more general information or switch again to the focusing function to investigate deeper the points that thought forms around. That seems to be an alteration of ‘psychic distance.’ By psychic distance I mean that my mind either zooms in or zooms out. When it zooms in it is abstracting significant points from the overall picture. When it zooms out for a wider view it is capable of a more concrete perspective.
My ‘conclusion’ is that the movement of awareness is a sort of back and forth scanning of life from the concrete (whole) to the discrete (part). This can be described as different degrees of abstraction.
It seems to me that conscious attention and thought can be operating at different degrees of psychic distance. It can be in and up close processing around discrete aspects or it can stand back and take a wider view of context and linkages. Conscious attention is a vigorous state, a fertile state for thinking to take place. It is a ‘doing’ state.
OK…so the circus goes on, then? K asked so many times in his talks, ‘What will you do sirs?’. He was talking bout change…in other words, ‘what will you do to change?’ I think he even used the words, ‘find out’…how will you ‘find out’…or something similar.
It may be impossible to know when the mind is not “engaged in thinking” because, for one thing, thinking goes on unconsciously, and for another, to know the mind is not thinking is to think
“The mind is actually saying, “I know that I don’t know.” It is still trying to answer a question.”
Acknowledging what I don’t know is just that - there’s no question. I am merely facing the fact that I don’t know.
When the mind is determined to find out what it needs to know, it does everything it can to find out and gets a result, even if it isn’t what was hoped for or expected. There’s nothing circular or futile about it.
The determination to get a result is not in itself circular. It is only when one is determined to enter some sort of egoless “I don’t know” state of mind, as a result of ones determination, that the endeavor is both futile and circular. To simply acknowledge that you do not know anything at all about that ‘state of mind’ is different. You cannot usefully set as a goal, a non-goal state. As K said, the end and the means are the same.
I think an ambiguity in the use of words may be confusing things here.
In daily life it is relevant to move from the ‘I don’t know’ state to the “I must find out” state. I need to find out how much tax I must pay, for example. But I understood that we were not pondering such practical things. With regards to the issues K presents us with, no amount of determination to reach any state will get us there. Determination is will and will is not the appropriate tool. K’s point s that there is no tool.
So, as far as I can see, we just get to the state of mind of acknowledgement that we do not know, and stop there. I do not know what ‘death to the self’ is. Period. I stop there.
Yes, the circus does go on Tom. That is a fact. It is the fact. And when and if K asked “What will you do sirs?” do you understand by that question that he was proposing you do something? You can tell me he asked, “How will you find out?” and I can respond that he also said there was no way to find out.
So, I think these type of questions, when he posed them, were essentially rhetorical. He was not actually asking someone to tell him how they would find out. He was raising the question. Had someone answered they would do a, b and c, what would his response have been? We have read and listened to his talks and conversations so we have the answer. He would have pointed out that there is no ‘how’ and no ‘way’ to find out.
He suggested the likelihood or possibility that finding oneself in such a place or such a state of mind (beyond self) would be more likely were we to lead what he called ‘a serious life.’ I think his teaching constituted an open invitation to the world to lead a serious life. And if an effect of so doing was transformative, so much the better. Otherwise, as you say, the circus goes on.