Yes. What you are is “nothing,( not-a-thing)”
What he meant by “nothing” is that your social status and self-image are imagined, not actual. Others admire or despise you according to custom, convention, whim, or rumor, and you can imagine yourself, but actually you are a human identified by the contents of consciousness.
Only you can know who/what you are by being here now, i.e., in a meditative state of mind wherein no thought, feeling, or impulse escapes notice.
That is your opinion of what he ‘meant’, mine is quite different. For me he is pointing at what we are in ‘essence’ , which is beyond the ‘material’. That in essence we are " not-a thing and one with all living things, with all creation. There is difference but no division. All this about wanting to be something, to be someone, is all for me part of the brain’s conditioning, based on fear. It is the reason the brain has not evolved psychologically while in the practical realm , technological, biological, medical, communication , etc, the brain’s potential seems limitless. K has said the brain has “infinite potential” but its “conditioning” has stifled the psychological side.
He brings it out here: Reading the book of mankind, 821218
(link is at Reading the Book at one Glance, post #9/11
The very content of consciousness is the division between “material” and “essence”. Therefore, consciousness itself is an idea. It’s a “concept or mental impression” (from the definition of idea). For me, that is the fact of “The observer is the observed”.
That’s an interesting interpretation, but I don’t know of anything K ever said to support that notion.
For me, it’s implied in so many things he has said. In the video I referenced, he says that the mind is separate from the brain. the brain having infinite potential displayed in practical aspects but stunted on the psychological side due to its ‘conditioning’. The ‘mind’ is the mind of the universe, the cosmos…but when the brain is free from conditioning, mind and brain are one.
Have you ever come across this quote from Terrence Stamp’s interview with K:
K: “What you are…what you actually are, is being. Being is not the mind thinking. Thinking is a movement, a motion. Being is the silence that precedes the motion. You cannot see it; you cannot grasp it because you are it. The feeling that you are. The unadorned naked awareness that is always there, rarely heeded, is what you always have been, always will be. Cannot not be. You can’t look for it, because it is what is looking. It is like space, you can’t see it but everything is in it. Everything is it. So I say to you, be aware when you are unaware, let its presence warm you, fill you. Be present in the Presence.”
Private talk with T.Stamp Ojai ca. 1986
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Is this a verifiable Krishnamurti quote? It sounds suspiciously unlike him.
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It was on the old kinfonet website and is included in Mr. Stamp’s autobiography. Perhaps someone who knows Mr Stamp could verify it for us. He strikes me as being quite serious and until something else comes to light, I take it to be an honest representation of what K said to him.
Mr. Stamp’s honest representation could be a far cry from a verbatim quote.
Well that can be said of all of us…hopefully someone out there can add something.
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Good analysis. You describe well a picture of what happens or might happen. But thinking about it, a few things are missing here. Love and intelligence for instance. Freedom from the known or from possession is not a goal per se or a valuable state which will make us whole. Freedom from the known is functional to the awakening of intelligence, without which life is futile and senseless. Same thing with freedom from possession: not attaching ourselves to anything or any person we can discover love which gives a sense to our relationships and our whole life.
Being perpetually dissatisfied shows lack of love and so an impossibility to really enjoy life. When you love it’s not so important whether you possess or not certain things and you don’t need to get rid of them. Living is being in relationships and if I have a dog, for instance, I’ll have to take care of it. This implies some nuisances of course, but it’s part of the game of life. If you don’t want the burden of relationships then you isolate yourself from others or the world and this is not living.
I may be wrong but to me its seems that your interpretation and Inquiry’s one are not antithetical but rather complimentary. Both can be valid and probably are.
But the problem is another one in my view. K. mission was not that of giving answers or describing the nature of the things, what we are, etc. but rather to invite us to discover those things for ourselves and by ourselves. I. e. be a light to yourself. In trying to “interpret” what he meant we are falling into the trap which all religions have fallen in: that of depicting with words something which is beyond words and so creating a theology and a number of beliefs… let’s talk of something we have had direct experience and avoid to indulge in speculation.
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I made a search with Krishnamurti.org and another web site too but could not find that conversation with Mr Stamp. From where you copied it? You said it was in the old forum so we can’t have access to it now. Perhaps you stored it in your HD?
Anyway I have no motives to doubt about its authenticity. K. said a lot of strange things especially when he was young. “The unadorned naked awareness that is always there, rarely heeded, is what you always have been, always will be”. This is not a news, it’s just what a number of other Indian gurus have said. I’m fine with the idea that also K. stated that.
K. strived not to create a new religion but sometimes he forgot about this and betrayed himself in making religious affirmations which could be turned into beliefs. We must not forget that is not the way to truth.
This quote by Stamp was from his autobiography as well as posted on kinfonet…it was a meeting with K shortly before he died. I see that there is a video of Stamp at Brockwood speaking about his relationship to K fairly recently
I can’t watch it because of tech problem here but look forward to seeing it.
Thanks for the answer and the video. Actually I remember having watched that video long ago, but I can’t remember what he said. A good chance to watch it again.
Don’t you think it’s much better to go and look for yourself rather than trying to understand what another person has said? You have a brain, are you not aware of its needs and reactions?
I’ve pondered it thoroughly and, unlike others here, I don’t feel compelled to draw a conclusion. It’s just one more of the many things Krishnamurti said that can’t be explained without interpreting.
Sorry Inquiry, but you didn’t see my point. Look, it’s very simple. K. talked about YOUR brain, right? Therefore who can know better than you how your brain works? Why bother about interpretation of someone else words? Either you don’t feel any need for security or you do. In the first case you can reply to Dan, no I don’t agree with K. or with you, because I don’t feel this need. Finish!
Neuroscientists. If you knew how your brain works, you’d be the most extraordinary human ever to have lived.
But we are talking of simple things which each one of us can and should know! We are talking about the need for security, I can’t believe you don’t know what it is - we had another discussion on this topic remember? As I said either you feel it or you don’t, why this mistery?
Let’s take another thing. Don’t you feel the need to be loved, appreciated, cheerished? Do you need a neuroscientist to tell you if you do? The need for security is as simple as that but of course there could be the possibility that one is not aware of it. No problem.