Wouldn’t you put the montbretia in a different bracket?
We all ‘see’ that the sun moves across the sky. Somebody says “no it doesn’t “. Explains why. And though the sun still ‘moves’ across the sky, if we “work” at it, we can ‘see’ that it doesn’t.
Likewise with our isolation, loneliness, fear, suffering…?
The ‘ego’ IS isolation.
Damn! I obviously haven’t been working on that enough. 
Too lazy, right? 
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I was reading through the thread, and I pulled up at this comment. Is it true that the self or ego doesn’t exist in the animal world?
Of course, it depends to a large extent on what we mean by the words self or ego, but most animals seem to have what I would call self or ego.
Of course, the degree to which this self or ego has been developed or made conscious in human beings has no parallel in the animal world. Human egotism is highly developed, highly enriched by knowledge, memory, thought, etc.
Perhaps one might also make a distinction between personality and self?
All animals and all human beings - including Krishnamurti - have a personality. This personality is a predisposition created by the particular genetic make-up of the body, combined with the earliest environmental forces that acted upon that body. As such, personality is natural and - to a certain extent - malleable (i.e. it can change with new circumstances, while remaining more or less consistent with the genetic and environmental factors that created it in the first place).
But ego or self is more basic than personality: it is the unconscious identification with the body and/or the personality. This identification is essentially made through thought. And, as such, most or all animals clearly have some (very limited) power of thought.
The ego too is not unnatural. It is merely the reflex of the body at the level of mind. It creates a centre for the body to protect itself, to take its own interests into account, to seek food, shelter, and defend itself from destruction.
When K talks about practical thought, practical self-interest, it is this basic psycho-physical centre that he is talking about. So thought as ego has its place (i.e. for physical survival).
But thought as ego has no place in truth. This is what K teaches. So when you say that K
it is non-existence in truth that is being referred to. The mind that is in a state of nothingness, being nothing. This can also be expressed as the ending of psychological thought, the ending of psychological time (there is still a place for thought and time in practical affairs).
Such a state of nothingness - of being nothing - obviously cannot occur so long as there is a sense of being someone. The sense of being someone is the identification with the body made by our thinking. That thinking still has its place in practical, physical matters, but it has no place psychologically.
According to K this sense of being nothing, being nobody, also occurs when we see or hear something beautiful, when we feel deeply love (for another), and when we are in a state of pure attention. So the seed of “you don’t exist” is the same seed as “beauty, love, attention.”
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Sure. “You are nothing” (not-a-thing) is pointing away from thought and its movement as to what you truly are. You are not that, “you are the world”. The brain is crippled by the self- image created and maintained by thought. “Evil” he called it.
Yes. Although I think we may be going overboard with too much talk of “evil”. I don’t know how helpful it is to use such moralistic language.
The practical ego - as it exists in animals and human beings - is neither evil nor good. It is created by thought as a functional centre for the body, that’s all. If it remains at that level it is not a problem. It is only when there is no awareness of what it is, i.e. when there complete identification with it (in which there is invested great feeling, emotion, memory, etc), that it becomes problematic and dangerous. Then it can genuinely act in a way we can call “evil”.
But awareness does not label thought “evil”.
So one must be careful not to assume that the entity labelling the ego “evil” is something separate from thought. That entity is part of ego too (what we might call the super-ego), and so might be getting something nourishing from calling another part of itself “evil” (the nourishment of being righteous, enlightened, egoless, etc).
Awareness and observation is just to see all of this going on without labelling it (except for convenience to communicate), and without judgement (except where a physical action is required to address actual conflict). Right?
We’re speaking about the ‘self’ that K has labeled “evil”. He used that loaded word for a reason. I don’t think he was being “moralistic”.
I don’t know Dan. Maybe K wasn’t being moralistic when he used that word, but aren’t we being moralistic in using the word “evil”?
K used all kinds of language that he felt was appropriate in a given context, but we are not K, so it is rather problematic to make one sentence he used (in a specific context) a general authority in these matters.
There are many Catholics who call human selfishness “evil”. Does this help them to investigate the nature of selfishness?
You may have a personal passion behind your inquiry into the nature of the mind which compels you to use the word “evil”, but I don’t personally feel that it is helpful in observing the nature of the mind to label its outputs as “evil” (or at least, not as a general rule).
Right, I don’t either…not as a “general rule”.
So when we use the word self or ego, we are really talking about the movement of thought in psychological (as opposed to physical) space, correct?
I may be mistaken but the only place I have seen K refer to the ‘psychological’ self/thought entity being evil is in his early works. We are all aware how he modified his language over the years in response to a particular mode of delivery being misconstrued by his audience.
Irrespective of how K meant it, the word ‘evil’ is associated with moralistic choice in the vernacular. As if you could choose not to be self, as you can choose not to be evil. He recognized this and soon dropped its usage for the most part. This stuff is hard enough to communicate as is. Why muddy the waters unnecessarily?
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I don’t know what others think. For me, it’s the “me and the mine”. The you and the yours. A psychological construction that has trapped the brain and must be dissolved.
I get the “me and mine”, “you and yours” part, but that is an outward description of the self’s activities. It isn’t what the self itself is, if you see what I mean.
A dog barks, a snake hisses - but the bark and the hiss do not explain what the dog is, what the snake is.
You suggest that the self is
Maybe. But then we have to say what we mean by a “psychological construction”, right? Which I take to be thought.
There is no “must” in the examination of thought is there?
The past, experiences, knowledge, images in memory, likes, dislikes, patterns of thinking, feeling,…the “bundle”
More important than the choice of word though is the judgement implication. Most of us who read K understandably come away with an idea that there is something that needs to be attended to, remedied, fixed, something ‘evil’ that must be eradicated. And we wait for that to happen based on our understanding, our ‘judgement’, some idealized action we think needs to be performed in the present to bring about the desired outcome.
Is not the folly of waiting the central communication that K is endeavoring to get across? Therein lies the difficulty - we can only judge, measure, weigh, understand. This is our lot as individuals, all we know how to do. K is talking about something else altogether, which I personally don’t get other than imaginatively.
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Yes. For brevity’s sake we can call the whole of that “thought.”
Thought has its right place, physically, in practical affairs, etc; but thought is problematic when it occupies (or dominates) psychological space.
So when thought takes up a fixed residence in the psyche, and acts with complete unconsciousness, we call that selfishness, egotism - right?
To me ‘evil’ is ‘darkness’. The self by occupying the mind in the present keeps out the ‘light’ or ‘what is’. And come to recall it, he said “what is is sacred”.!
All of us are flawed, but despite the fact that they are still trapped in psychological thought, many people are kind, caring and will help you out if you are in trouble. We need to remember that, I think.