When you really know something, you don’t give it a thought - you live it spontaneously. What you think you know is false confidence that hasn’t been undermined by reasonable doubt.
As language and ideas are a function of thought - what I (we?) am expressing is knowledge - the important thing to keep in mind is that we (I) are merely trying to build the best (most useful) models (and avoiding woowoo fantasy and irrationality) - and not describing truth/reality as it is. These ideas only have meaning in this dialogue and should not be grasped as gospel forevermore.
I hope not - the idea of me observing myself (or my thoughts) is one of the most potentially misleading ideas here on Kinfonet - and one I try to address regularly, without much success I feel.
If you are unable to answer something, how do you know if it’s worthwhile to keep trying?
But isn’t hope the essence of the observer? The fact is we don’t know. At this very moment we don’t know what is actually doing the thinking for us. We don’t know what game, if any, thought is playing. We don’t know if the observer is present or not.
At first glance, one might assume that the universal mind has all the answers and that it is the personal mind that is caught in doubt and uncertainty. But is this so? Doesn’t the doubt and uncertainty of the personal mind have its roots in knowledge? At moments of crisis or challenge in relationship, this knowledge comes to the fore. When this happens, the observer is out in the open. Either he fights his corner and then retires, as victor or vanquished, or he faces the full significance of what is happening to him.
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To be fair Rick, you picked up the word “universal mind” from another thread in which it has a certain context, and transplanted it here with no interest in exploring what K might have said about it. I’ve forgotten the context in which it originally arose (on the other thread), and so now we just seem to be discussing something else, although I don’t know what - proof of universal mind? evidence of universal mind?
I have shared with you the feeling I have sometimes had in nature of a universal integrity, wholeness, or order to nature which is sensed at the level of intuition. It may be a perception of something true, it may not be. But it is sufficient enough, as a sensibility, to make me open to the possibility - which K has talked about - of a universal mind (in K’s sense). Perhaps one can put it in different words. The feeling that all life is intelligent, sacred, meaningful - plants, animals, ecosystems, even rocks and crystals, even water and air.
But you don’t seem to be interested in exploring this, and I’m not interested in proving something abstract to you (or anyone else).
Let me put it to you: are you able to answer the question of what makes any of all this possible (by which I mean life, nature, the stars, the cosmos)? If you are not - and I don’t think any of us really know the answer to this question - is it still worthless to ask it?
I don’t think so. The best questions may not have an answer.
True! I really like to do this sometimes, pluck a concept from somewhere and have my way with it. I understand why you might feel uncomfortable with that, it flies in the face of responsible analysis. But I like flying the face of things!
I have shared with you the feeling I have sometimes had in nature of a universal integrity, wholeness, or order to nature which is sensed at the level of intuition. It may be a perception of something true, it may not be.
But you don’t seem to be interested in exploring this, and I’m not interested in proving something abstract to you (or anyone else).
I am interested in exploring your sense of what ‘universal mind’ may mean. I’m not challenging you to prove anything. What made you think that? Maybe my:
If you are unable to answer something, how do you know if it’s worthwhile to keep trying?
I didn’t mean for this comment to be taken personally by you, as if I were taking a swipe at your “I don’t think I can answer that,” but I can see how it came off that way. Sorry! It’s a question that is important for me. If something is or seems to be unknowable, how can I determine if there’s a benefit to dwelling on it?
Let me put it to you: are you able to answer the question of what makes any of all this possible (by which I mean life, nature, the stars, the cosmos)? If you are not - and I don’t think any of us really know the answer to this question - is it still worthless to ask it?
Yeah, that’s what I don’t know!
Why should there be a benefit? To use this kind of language sounds utilitarian, and there may not be any utility to what we are talking (or not talking) about. Which is not to say that it has no value, only not a utilitarian value.
Again, because you have shorn this topic of its context, I don’t know what we are talking about. But if we are talking about the feeling one can have about the unity and wholeness of nature, how it all fits together so beautifully, how it all coheres in a magisterial order - an order that includes black holes and galaxies, and the little ant winding its way through the grass - then I don’t know why you would doubt that, or say “well I don’t know about that”?
Don’t you have some feeling for nature, for the cosmos, when you see those recent photos of the universe taken by the James Webb telescope?
Maybe you don’t have any feeling for it, or you just feel that its meaningless. That’s ok too. But this is not what I feel about it.
Let’s admit it we have only the local mind which is merely concerned with itself. Universal mind died when Krishnamurti died.
When I get that kind of feeling, I don’t doubt that I’m feeling it, but I doubt its literal veracity, just as I doubt the literal veracity of any word, image, idea, feeling, concept. Doubt as in: I don’t know.
The point is that it is impossible to explore sensibly any notion or idea. Exploration is only possible when we start together with a clear and verifiable fact. Surely the first fact in all of this is that we don’t know anything at all about the mind at any level, whether it is the so-called personal mind, the universal mind, or all points in-between. This state or actuality of not-knowing must therefore be the key to our exploring any further. In other words, we are dealing with something we don’t know anything about. This ‘something’, which we are calling the mind until we know any better, apparently exists somewhere inside oneself and allows us to formulate sentences and converse with one another. But where these sentences come from, we also don’t really know; and with whom we are conversing, this too we don’t know. So we are already starting to see - vaguely, hesitantly, doubtfully - that this fact of not-knowing covers a vast field.
If this is of concern, then I reckon that it might be helpful to inquire into 2 questions : Are we hoping for an ending of movement - and if so why? And : what is thought? ie. what is its source, its function?
PS. Seeing as we are trying to keep things tidy - I’ll post this on the quiet brain thread in case we wish to continue along this line of inquiry
Anyway, I’m glad we did manage to give an excellent definition in this thread - solving the mystery of what universal mind is, is a definite winner! Bravo all! 
Of course, one could point out that we didn’t give a definition of what “mind” was - personally, I always like to refer to the consensus opinion - which seems to be that mind is the word we use to describe the various phenomenon involved in data processing.
Yes - but then, as you say, you can doubt anything and everything, and then all investigation is blocked.
Anyway, your initial question (the one I am responding to, which you asked before the discussion of the quiet mind arose) was:
As was made apparent in the comments that followed, there is no general acceptance of a universal mind here. I think only Dan and I have registered any openness to using the words.
As with all usage of words, there is a context. On the thread where you saw those words being used, there was a specific context for using them (it was part of a discussion about the brain, what its function is, what place has thought in the brain, is there a space where thought has no place?, etc) - which is why (in post 15 in this thread) I began with asking the question:
This is what I understood to be the continuation of the conversation from the other thread. (One of the implications for pursuing this line of inquiry was that the brain should be quiet - hence the discussion about the quiet brain).
But it is clear from your replies that this conversation (continued from the other thread) held no interest for you.
The other context for using these words (universal mind) is obviously K’s teachings, as well as his conversations with Bohm. A recent thread looking into this topic (from May) - titled “What is the relationship of the mind to the universe?” - explored what K had to say about universal mind, why he and Bohm used those words, etc, and so I shared a couple of shortened extracts from that thread here (in precis, K says that when the mind is absolutely empty, then there is no separation or difference between the mind and the universe - and so the mind is then the universe, the universe is the mind).
But again, you have made it clear that you have no interest in finding out what K meant by the words universal mind.
So, shorn of all context, your question then was: what makes those of us who have used those words (“universal mind”)… ourselves open to using those words?
Speaking for myself - although I have seen Dan say something roughly similar - the context for being open to this usage is my relationship to nature. Maybe this is an idiosyncrasy of mine (I don’t believe it is - I have a sense you feel this yourself sometimes when you are in nature), but nature has some kind of inherent meaning to me, a value not capable of being summed up in terms of benefit and loss. Nature is the mother of life, just as the universe is the father of all energy and matter (I am being poetic of course, they have no gender!). Our bodies and brains are part of nature, just as the plants and trees animals are a part of us. I am not a nature mystic, but I have always had this feeling from childhood that we are a part of nature, we are not separate from nature - and that nature, like the brain, is a vast network of integrated synapses and connections that go to make up the whole. Probably everyone who lives or works in nature has felt this occasionally.
The point is that this sensibility creates the context for those words - “universal mind” - to have some possibility of meaning something. I am not claiming to have experienced “universal mind”, only to have sometimes had a sense of what those words sum up very usefully.
Now you say - in reply to my very ordinary, everyday nature mysticism -
That’s ok. I am not objecting to this. As I said previously, this feeling I sometimes have in nature may be a perception of something true, and maybe it is not. But the point is that you wanted to know why some of us may be open to using the words “universal mind”.
Similarly, if one takes some other words that K has used - like love, compassion, insight, the immeasurable, etc - one may not be able to say that one truly ‘knows’ what K meant by these things. So a person like you might come along and say,
But we have all had moments of what we might call love and compassion (in the context of our relationship with others), we have all had small but genuine insights into things, we have all stood on a mountain top, or slept out under the stars on a clear night, and had the sense of an immeasurable space all around us - and these create the context for us being open to the possibility of a fundamental love, compassion, insight, or state of infinity.
One can, and should, doubt the ordinary feeling we may have of (what we take to be) love, just as we can (and should) doubt the wider significance of the small insights we have: but it is obvious that such moments (or their absence) provide the context for whether or not we are open to the possibility of true love or total insight.
So, similarly, with the notion of the mind and the universe having some kind of deep relationship beyond what we presently ‘know’.
Dan probably goes further than I am capable of truly saying at present about all this; but, based on what I have shared with you, I have the sense - a context created by my relationship with nature - that what he says is possible (which is why I remain open to the possible significance of the words “universal mind”):
Making sense is overrated. ‘Sensibly’ might not be the best way to explore.
Exploration is only possible when we start together with a clear and verifiable fact.
Makes sense.
not-knowing covers a vast field
Yes!
Paul and Douglas and Charley and a few others. Enough so it felt to me ‘universal mind’ was being seen as existent, if mysterious and possibly unknowable. My concern is that if Krishnamurti and Bohm take some concept to be real, fans of K’n’B might follow suit without exercising much doubt.
So, shorn of all context, your question then was: what makes those of us who have used those words (“universal mind”)… ourselves open to using those words?
Openness using words is not the issue. Reification of the words is. If words, ideas, images are assumed to be real because a trusted source presents them as real, that’s worthy of exploration.
The point is that this sensibility creates the context for those words - “universal mind” - to have some possibility of meaning something.
There is for me no issue with entertaining the possibility of a ‘universal mind,’ as long as that entertaining doesn’t distort the looking. We all have our belief systems.
I’m gonna stop here for now, I’ll respond to the rest later.
Does it also make sense to say, as we said earlier, that our dialogue must be from the universal mind at the start? How we may wish to define ‘universal’ is irrelevant for the moment. It would be like defining God or love or freedom. The essential point is again that in order to carry out any proper examination and exploration of the subject, it has to be with us as a fact right from the start. We cannot move from the idea to the fact; we have to start with the fact.
Another way to put this may be to say that in the psychological field any fact can reveal the whole, even though at present we don’t seem to have any fact other than not-knowing.
Doesn’t the universal mind have something to do with the total absence of memory? The personal mind is full of memories and the records of experience. The universal mind wouldn’t just be more of the same; it must be something very different. I am not sure this is the right question, but I think we need some extra question at this point.
Maybe it would help if I share some personal reasons why I am not offended by the phrase “universal mind”?
When I was a boy I spent a lot of time outside in nature, playing with friends, making dens, climbing trees. This was particularly the case when I lived in Argentina and then in Yorkshire (UK). I recall feeling at that time that nature and the mind were not wholly separate things. We spent summers in a country cottage, and would often walk down by a river that ran through rocks and hillsides, where there was a strong sense that nature - the river, the trees, the sheep grazing nearby, the bats flitting in the evening, the caves in the hillside - was a living thing in its own right (as distinct from what we humans do to it).
Later, when my family moved south to Kent (a rural county near London), we lived on the edge of some countryside, and I would often wander there after supper, after school had ended, to take in the sounds and smells of the late afternoon and early evening. Sometimes - perhaps under the influence of reading poetry, or because at the time I wanted to be a zoologist and was reading all about the natural world! - I felt a strong sense that the trees and birds around me were all part of a single, unitary intelligence or mind. Not an intelligence or mind with self-consciousness or conscious intentionality (like a human being or animal), but just a kind of impersonal intelligence that may also be conveyed by the words “nature as an interconnected whole”. This sense has never completely left me.
A few examples.
Once, when I was visiting a friend in the countryside as a teenager, I went for a walk near his house, and there were some golden coloured corn fields, with a disused barn, surrounded by green woods. I remember sitting there for some time taking in the beauty of the place, and I had the sense that the corn field, the trees surrounding it, and the blue summer sky, were all part of some kind of unitary goodness, as though they were both praising the glory of things, as well as themselves being the praise.
Once when I was in Israel, I had been visiting one of the deserts there (I think it was the Negev), and we had returned to a friend’s house somewhere in fertile countryside. The desert experience is something quite drastic - purifying and cathartic on the one hand, but emptying and annihilating on the other. Coming back to this beautiful tree lined space, with a hot yet cooling breeze still blowing, the sun setting, and one particular tree making its own presence felt in the twilight, I had the strong, almost palpable sense that the air itself was alive, ‘mindful’, intelligent in some sense.
On one of the trips I made to India I attended a meditation retreat that lasted for 10 days or so; after which I travelled with a friend to some hills-stations in the Himalayas, stopping to go on mountain treks and to see some glaciers, on our way to Dharamshala and McLeod Ganj (the residence of the Dalai Lama). During a stay at one of the hill-stations (I think it was Nainital) I remember taking a long evening stroll above the town, looking down on the lake there, with the houses far and wide covered by a blanket of darkness except for electric lights, and the stars above me head spread out in space. I recall that, for 10 or 15 minutes approx, I had a kind of vision (for want of a better word, because it was not a visual event) that the earth is part of an infinite universe - or rather a part of an infinite series of universes, coming into existence without end - and that the totality of all this is like a kind of womb, giving birth to life, to energy and matter. It seemed as though it was all one dynamic movement of infinite, unending creation.
So these kinds of experiences make me open to the possibility of a universal mind.
That is the grand Catch-22 of this ‘non’-approach. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t!
Yes, very helpful!
You obviously have a strong love for nature. It seems quite sacred for you.
I am tempted to think:
The particular mind is to an individual as the universal mind is to the totality.
I know the former, but can only speculate about the latter. It’s not a fact for me, it’s unknown.
So what now? Drop the exploration? Strive to grok-experience the universal mind? Watch tv?