When you say “thought is an opportunist”, you’re personifying thought, describing it as a plotting, scheming person.
But if you say, “Psychological thought is opportunistic”, you’re describing thought as it actually is: a mechanical process confused by fusing psychological thought with practical thought.
What is practical thought? Thinking of throwing bombs on people! Thought is illusion practical or none practical. Scientific knowledge is not our concern to advocate in K’s forums.
The flaw is in psychological knowledge .One has to examine and eradicate the falsehood. Don’t you think?
Agreed. I’d like to add a couple of other possible related fallacies :
Going against scientific consensus. &
Thinking that we know more about a specialist subject than the specialists in that subject.
Yes, such as people like Krishnamurti when he talks about awareness and perception 
We don’t know any more “about a specialist subject than the specialists in that subject”, just as we don’t know any more about what K was saying than what K actually knew. Specialists and Krishnamurti are presumably more knowledgeable, more enlightened, than we are, which is why we take them more seriously than our own confused, conflicted thoughts.
It you are conflicted between a scientific theory of perception and what K has said about perception, is this the place to bring your conflict? Unless someone here is as familiar with this theory as you are, can anyone here help you resolve your conflict?
Well is is also important to understand that a mind is conflict means there are two seperate thoughts tryin to find expression in the mind
Which is why there is conflict in the first place but a mind which has clarity will not have conflict at all.
And I suppose that you would be one of those rare persons with complete clarity, Nikhil?
Haha well I think my mind needs to get more clarity, and it comes as one observes itself.
What is ‘observer is the observed’?
It is another way of saying self awareness or awareness of inner thought and feeling
In self awareness it is obvious you are looking at yourself, observer is the observed
Thought gives illusion of division.
Self awareness shows observer is the observed as in it there is awareness of thought, so it is not one thought overcoming another
The first (realization) is necessary for the second (absence of distance). The second is a consequence of the first. In other words, absence of the past/me/ego results in the state where distance/time/space is absent.
Yes, this is certainly one way of thinking about it. It sounds logical. But I feel the way Krishnamurti talks about these two ‘directions’ (both inward and outward’) of understanding or being the observer-observed gestalt, suggests that they are part of the same movement. The inner is the outer - according to Krishnamurti. So it is not a matter of accomplishing the inner first and then the outer (or the outer first and then the inner). Rather that they are part of the same awareness, the same movement of insight or seeing.
In the former case the psychological content is revealed to be empty. While in the latter case (of outward seeing) the same emptiness reveals the fullness and richness of the physical world, of nature.
Does this communicate at all?
It is not a question of accomplishment where one achieves the first and then proceeds to the second. The only issue is being free of the past/me/ego. The me is the center and any distance whether physical or psychological is relative to that me. Inner and outer exist only with reference to the me. However K seemed to be free of the past and hence free from the duality of inner and outer. He is able to describe that state as a single movement without division/limitation.
It may sound a little absurd to say this, but my feeling is that there are two different kinds of ‘me’. I attempted to grapple with this issue on a thread titled something like ‘What do we mean by ‘self’?’
The ‘me’ that Krishnamurti talks about is the psychological ‘me’, the ego, the observer. This ‘me’ is the creation of thought, of the accumulation of memory. This ‘me’ of memory and thought is the time which separates us from the actuality of the Now moment. When the observer is the observed - in the fullest meaning of this phrase - psychologically speaking, the ‘me’ comes to an end. This is what I understand Krishnamurti to be talking about.
However, distinct from this psychological ‘me’, there is also the functional centre of the brain-body. This functional centre is not a spiritual centre, nor is it a psychological centre. It has no self-consciousness at all. It is simply the nervous system and neurological processing of the organism for purposes of physical survival. Krishnamurti sometimes refers to this as the ‘body’s own intelligence’. It is why our bodies are proprioceptive, capable of distinguishing inner from outer, light from dark, hot from cold, the various sensations, subject and object (at the level of organic perception).
So the space between the body and a tree, the distinction of inner and outer physical space, I would suggest occurs because of this functional centre. This functional centre ceases to exist at physical death, and is necessary for physical survival.
But the psychological self, the psychological ‘me’, which also creates space between myself and the tree (a psychological space), and which creates a psychological division between inner and outer, is not necessary to the survival of the body, and can come to an end through insight - such as the insight that the observer is the observed.
Then, as you say, one may be
I hope this makes some sense to you.
What ends is the knowledge/the idea of envy. The fact of envy is finally faced by awareness alone ( the past is not interfering in the observation ).
Envy is observed in the same way a sunset is observed. Meaning, envy is seen without the past, without a distance. Such seeing gives rise to an action that marks the end of envy.
Observing without the observer means: the observation is done by awareness - ex: looking at the sunset without the memories of past seen sunsets
“when the observer (#1) is absent, then the Observer (#2) is the Observed (#3) “
#1. Here the observer refers to the old me, the outcome of my past experiences
#2. Here the Observer is Awareness
#3. Here is Observed is the fact.
Basically this is saying that when the old me is not interfering awareness is acting directly on the fact.
“ When the observer is the observed - in the fullest meaning of this phrase - psychologically speaking, the ‘me’ comes to an end. This is what I understand Krishnamurti to be talking about. “
Yes.
The body has its own intelligence but it is not identified as “my body’s intelligence”. The identification and naming process (such as my body, the tree and their physical distance and so on) is the activity of the past/me.
Relevant passage below.
So we are asking as you are sitting there: can you observe your senses without any identification? Identification with the body - look, it is very, very serious what we are going into, if you don’t want to listen don’t listen, think about something else. But if you listen, listen with your heart, with your mind, with your whole being, as we are going into this question of releasing the tremendous energy, which is now canalized into a very, very small narrow prison, from which we act. And there is not only the identification with the senses, therefore with the body, then identification with the name, of course, even if you give yourself a new name, or a new number that is still identification - which the monks do and so on. Why does thought constantly identify itself with something?
(Saanen, July 9, 1978)
Yes. The language is confusing sometimes.
As I wrote previously, the two meanings this phrase (the observer is the observed) has for me are:
and
In the first case the result is the ending of envy (if one is able to remain with the fact that one is non-different from one’s envy).
In the second case there is a heightened perception of the sunset, without any ‘me’ looking at it: there is only the perception itself, only the sunset.
What is it that sees that I am my envy? What is it that perceives the sunset so holistically? It is attention isn’t it?
So in attention (complete attention) there is no ‘me’, no separate ‘observer’, and no ‘observer-created observed’: there is only pure observation, pure experiencing.
The language is baffling, but I think it makes sense in the end - intellectually I mean. It is another thing to actually be so attentive in this way that envy ends, or that only the sunset exists.
Yes, I agree with you.
This is a key question I feel.
It may be better to say when there is no me/observer there is attention. Freedom from the me is the central issue. Many have embarked on missions trying to be attentive in the hope of ending the me.
I see what you are saying, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Krishnamurti seems to start at both ends of the problem.
On the one hand he talks about understanding thought, the self, the ‘me’, and ending thought-self-‘me’.
And on the other hand he talks about seeing, listening, being aware, paying attention, without thought interfering in that attention.
Sometimes he will say (I’m paraphrasing): ‘Be aware, attentive, and do not let thought interfere in that attention. Now, with this attention, be completely attentive to the fact of fear, sorrow [i.e. different aspects of the self, the ‘me’, thought], and end the fact.’
So, on the one hand it is only when the ‘me’ is absent there is attention. But on the other hand, unless there is attention to the ‘me’, then the ‘me’ (as thought, fear, sorrow, etc) will continue.
This may be the meaning of his phrase “freedom is the first and last step”: freedom being the freedom to observe, see, be aware, pay attention.