What am I? Am I more than an image or images in consciousness?

Kinfonet Discussion
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“When the observer realizes he is the observed…the images…then conflict ceases.” (K) Saanan, Talks and dialogs, 1967
Is that it? I am an image…images…and nothing else? We usually hold on to the idea(another image) that I’m a separate entity of some sort…a ‘me’…a self…a somebody. Is that all just more imagery? If so, then perhaps I really am nothing, as I think K has himself said on more than one occasion. Is that all that I am…image/s?

“Krishnamurti: No! I’m not going to go back into that, Sir. We have gone into it sufficiently. You understand what we have said so far, that between the observer and the observed, between the image which the observer has created about him- self and the images which he has created about various things there is a separation, a division, and hence, between himself and them, there is a conflict of like and dislike and reaction. And he is always doing something about it. Now, when the observer realizes he is the observed - the images - then conflict ceases. That is, when I realize I am fear - not, that there is fear and me separate from that fear - then I am that fear; I can’t do anything. Follow this closely. Because, what am I to do? I am part of that fear. I am not separate from fear. Therefore I can look at that fear without any form of escape. I am that fear, I am that pain which I have now in the tummy, or in my leg, or whatever it is. I am that fear. So I don’t rebel against it or accept it or run away from it - it is there. So all action, which is the outcome of the reaction of like and dislike, has come to an end. All right - you follow? Now what has happened?”

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From same talk:

"Krishnamurti: That’s right, that’s right. You’ve got it. Then when the observer is the observed image, then there is no conflict between himself and the image. He is that! He is not separate from that. Before, he was separate and took action about it, did something about it, reacted to it. But when the observer realizes he is that, there is no like or dislike. Sir, don’t - you examine yourself Sir.

In this awareness, because it has exposed everything very clearly, there has been no choice (choice only exists when there is confusion) and so this awareness has removed every form of conflict; therefore there is clarity. And this clarity is attention. Don’t agree please! This requires actual doing, not just agreeing. When there is this attention, in which there is no observer nor observed, this attention is intelligence. In this attention there is no conflict whatsoever, therefore there is no demand for anything. And, this attention has its own activity, its own action. So there is an action which is not born out of the observer. When the observer acts, his action is always separate. Sir, look. We cannot go further into this matter unless you have actually done it - actually do it. Then you will find that attention, being intelligence, is beauty and love - which the observer, separate, tries to imitate - then the mind has no limit. 7th August 1967

Krishnamurti: Watch it Sir, you don’t have to ask me. Watch it yourself. The moment there is a choice in this awareness, then there is a direction directed by this observer. Right? But when the whole pattern, when this whole structure has been understood, conflict has come to an end; and therefore the mind - because the mind is this awareness - has become extraordinarily sensitive, highly intelligent. Because sensitivity goes with intelligence - there is no intelligence without sensitivity, physical as well as psychological - the mind has become highly intelligent and sensitive! Because that intelligence is not put together by any conflict. There is the intelligence which has been put together through conflict, which is the observer. The observer separate from the observed has its own intelligence. I don’t want to go into that."

From Sept. 6, 1973 Brockwood Park:
K. So my question is: can the mind free itself from the image?

Q: You become aware that it is just an image and not a reality.

K: Now, are you in realising that, are you free of the image?

Q: If you actually see the image…

K: Not ‘if’, this is your question. It is your problem. Are you free of the image?

Q: If you see it…

K: Not ‘If’. I come to you, sir, I say, ‘Look, my friend, I don’t know how to get rid of my image, I have got so many images, tell me what to do’. And you can’t answer because you don’t know what to do. You say, well let’s talk about it endlessly, and I die by the end of it. My problem is I want to end it.

Q: Sir, who is this ‘I’?

K: Sir I don’t want to go… You see. Can your mind be free of an image which prevents observation? Stick to that thing. Not who is ‘I’. We’ll go into that.

Q: I am that image.

K: Yes sir. Then what? You are that image. You are the image. Now how is the mind to be free of that image, which is you?

Q: If I am the image…

K: Are you? Sir please, the house is burning! I must do something about it, I can’t everlastingly talk about the man who put the fire - has he red hair, brown hair, white skin, black skin, purple - the house is on fire.

Q: By accepting the image.

K: So you accept the image. It is there, why do you accept it? You see how you are totally unaware, if I may most respectfully point out, totally unaware of what you are doing, how your mind is operating.

Q: It comes from fear.

K: Fear. Is fear preventing the mind from putting away the image?

Q: Thought itself it preventing it.

Q: Sir, what is this image? I mean, I don’t know - does anybody see this?

K: Sir, I’ve told you what the image is. Image is a prejudice, a word, association of words - I am a Christian, or I am a Communist, I am a Catholic, I am a Protestant, I am a follower of some guru - those are all images.

Q: Sir, but the idea, the idea that there is something to see gets in the way of seeing it. You know, if I say I am going to see how - you talk about being a Christian for instance - if I am going to observe myself as a Christian, that very idea to see something would stop me seeing it.

K: No sir. No, sir.

Q: The idea that there is anything to see gets in the way of seeing.

K: No. I am a Hindu, a Catholic, a Communist, that is an image, a verbal series of conclusions, ideologies, dogmatic and so on, those are the images that I have built by words. I am asking, can the mind free itself from that? So that it observes without any distortion, otherwise I can’t learn.

Q: When I see a prejudice, the only way I can work is to go on seeing it and not try to change it, because that is another prejudice, but to go on seeing it.

K: Now do you see your prejudice? Is the mind aware of the prejudice it has?

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“I” am nothing but a human identifying with an image, a story, a pack of lies, misunderstandings, ignorance, insensitivity, and a fierce determination to remain so.

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The mind that has built the images cannot see the truth of what it has built until it is a very different mind. That difference comes about as the mind inquires into and questions everything it does.

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All of the above is only imagery, however. Feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken.

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Perhaps the mind is free – it is the psychological ego that is dreaming the impossible dream of being free from itself.

I would say the mind, not having identity, is inherently free and as such there is no question of being free “from” anything. Freedom only has meaning to the imprisoned.

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Yes, that’s what we’re saying. One’s self is imagined. We know this because we’re constantly reminded by events that show we are not who and what we think we are. We don’t know who/what we are because we aren’t aware of what thoughts, ideas, beliefs, biases, and unconscious cravings and aversions are determining our behavior. We lack this self-knowledge because we’re not interested enough to find out how we operate and why we depend on our ability to imagine ourselves rather than our ability to acknowledge our behavior in the moment.

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The mind, the cognitive faculty, is inherently free to carry out its function, but if the information it has to work with is no good, it is free to be mistaken, contradictory, and confused.

What you call the “psychological ego” is a vast body of bad information, i.e., the fictional character, me, I. This character is real to the cognitive faculty, so its thinking is incoherent. At least, this is the theory it operates on after studying what Krishnamurti and Bohm arrived at in their dialogues.

The question is whether the mind, so deeply conditioned to assume the actuality of this fictional character can awaken to its unreality. Krishnamurti said that it can, but only if the mind seeks nothing more ardently than to question its own activity.

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Interesting post…thank you. It’s incoherent because it’s based upon memory …upon the past which no longer is, and is therefore ‘fictional’…based upon pleasure and fear? My memory of you is not you and visa versa…therefore, conflict and contradiction. My memory of ‘me’ is what you’re calling the fictional character…and it always creates the observer/observed division.

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Memory is not always reliable, but we couldn’t do anything without it. Misinformation and falsehood is worse than unreliable - it’s disruptive and destructive.

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Memory, when it creates an image of you and me (other than practical images such as your phone number or where you live…you’re a dentist and I have a toothache) is divisive and destructive. It’s always false, because it’s based upon the past and limited by memory and experience.

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Usually when people read this stuff about images, they think it is about images, and that it is all an image, and that there is nothing. The brain feels challenged to realise some bliss of nothingness, and so clings to normality. But what it is saying is that there is a thought process of things, reality, all that, and it forms images in the brain. This is a division, brain and thing. It is this division of images, a complexity of internal and external, we are working with in a process, and we take as normal. This talk about images points to a process of images, and asks to be effortlessly, directly, looking, free from a process.

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Free from a process? Not totally sure what you’re getting at, Peter. Free of images of right and wrong, good vs bad, like vs dislike, me and you? It’s the image that divides internally and externally, right? Are you pointing to a process of looking through the image/s and trying to say that we can look free of images?

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I think Peter is describing the fallacy.

The deluded person has a deluded view of what is going on, doesn’t like his delusion, and would like a different delusion - which is in itself merely part of the delusion.

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And his idea of being free of delusion is just another delusion? Well, an idea is not a fact. K always said that observing the fact…not reaching out to an ideal or non fact…is crucial. How the deluded mind will actually observe itself free of delusion is another issue.

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Impossible! For one thing the deluded mind cannot see facts - this is why its called a deluded mind. It must immediately surrender all hope of deluding itself out of its own delusion.

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That’s the point. There is now an image of delusion.

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Ordinarily, when looking, it is not looking at a specific picture of something. I am not looking at picture of the pet dog, I am looking at the whole scene, in a room or in the park, and I see my dog, among other things. While I am familiar with the parts in a scene, and see them distinctly for what they are, it is not exclusively looking at the parts. During the course of an activity I might attend to my dog, or anything, and be closer to this.
Yet when thinking about what someone says, or I am reading, it is the words, or specific pictures I am thinking about. Then there is a focus on the parts, the words and ideas, and I am thinking about images. The point, looking at the scene without parts, is what I do ordinarily, and it is only the thinking process which looks at parts exclusively. This point, looking at the whole without parts, which is what we do ordinarily, is apparently very difficult to grasp, because of the way thinking works, but you have to wonder why the communication is resisted. I’d say it is an attachment to ideology.