K did not mind using the word surrender. He spoke of complete and unconditional surrender to what is. This is Para Bhakti.
Of course K emphasized that the ‘word is not the thing’ in almost every talk. But his description of surrendering to what is matches Para Bhakti.
“I assure you, when there is complete nakedness, utter hopelessness, then in that moment of vital insecurity, there is born the flame of supreme intelligence, the bliss of truth.” (New York, March 11, 1935)
Yes the K approach is to begin with enquiry or logic and examine the contents of the me such as anger, envy, pleasure, fear etc. It a logical investigation into the age old fundamental question ‘Who am I?’. It ends with the perception that the observer is the observed and results in total surrender or silence of thought. The limitation of logic and reason is realized as a basic fact.
“We use reason, logic, sanity and come to a conclusion; which is, through careful analysis and examination come to some conclusion and from that conclusion act. That’s how we are living, which is the pattern of knowledge. We are saying that in that pattern there is no freedom for man - ever. “
(Man is not the Measure, page 211.)
Is there a thought that is not an emotion, apart from the scientific,practical thought.
I would say that in the psychological mind all thoughts are emotions…?
Are the Observer and the Observed thoughts, or emotions ?
Maybe thinking is the movement of emotions, but we prefer to call them …thoughts ?
I’ve had a cold-flu for the last couple of days, so I’ve been watching some Krishnamurti videos on YouTube. I thought this following one is quite helpful in elucidating what he means by the observer is the observed. He takes the example of loneliness to explain how the one who feels lonely is not separate from the feeling of loneliness. If loneliness is me, then there nothing I can do about it (except observe it without moving away from it). So, he asks, can we remain with the fact of the feeling of loneliness just as it is, and look at it “without the observer”? Then, he says, loneliness “disappears totally” (length: 8 mins, 51 secs; although the main answer he gives begins from 2 mins 50 secs onwards):
Am I loneliness, or is loneliness something I must endure or escape?
If my identity is of greater importance than the emotions that torment me, then I can have unwanted emotions but I can’t be those emotions without realizing my identity is a fantasy I desperately cling to.
Did you watch the video Inquiry? - because I feel there is a certain confusion in your question.
One’s identity is made up of one’s previous experiences of loneliness, or not being lonely, and with this previous experience of loneliness or not being lonely we look at the present fact of loneliness, and either we judge it, condemn it, attempt to distance ourselves from it, through escaping it, etc. Or there is no escape: one’s loneliness is who one is at the second of feeling lonely. It’s obvious isn’t it?
One can’t feel lonely and pretend to be non-lonely (or one can pretend, but this doesn’t change the fact of one’s loneliness).
So loneliness and the ‘me’ who feels lonely are not two, they are one. This is no duality (in Krishnamurti’s sense of this term). There is no opposite in the moment of feeling lonely. Non-loneliness - or any “identity of greater importance” - is non fact. There is just loneliness.
Krishnamurti’s suggestion is that if one can remain with the fact of loneliness, one may have an insight that the observer is the observed, that one is not separate from this state of loneliness.
And that in this insight (that the observer is the observed), loneliness ends. Because, after all, loneliness has been created by this “identity of greater importance” (which actually has no importance at all!).
Yes, but the fact is that my identity is of greater importance to me than emotions I can escape or endure.
Krishnamurti’s suggestion is that if one can remain with the fact of loneliness, one may have an insight that the observer is the observed, that one is not separate from this state of loneliness. And that in this insight (that the observer is the observed), loneliness ends.
Yes, every K-school boy knows this, but for how many of us is this a fact?
Could it be that we identify more with our knowledge of K’s teaching than actual self-knowledge?
This is an illusion, a misperception, the result of a lack of awareness.
Our identity is clearly made up of the emotions we can’t escape. It may feel as though we are escaping these emotions, but these emotions are us. They are inseparable from our being. The contents of our consciousness make up our consciousness, whether we like it or not.
It is not a matter of choice. If there is loneliness in one’s consciousness, then even if we feel we can escape from it for a while, this escape is an illusion, something temporary. The loneliness is still there in one’s mind, in one’s psyche.
So one can either escape temporarily from one’s loneliness, which is a waste of energy. Or one can face the fact if one’s loneliness, and find out if that loneliness is separate from ‘me’, from the one who is looking at loneliness, judging it, escaping from it, etc.
Self-knowledge - isn’t it? - is simply learning to observe ourselves as we are and not escape from this observing by creating intellectual problems that have no solutions.
One’s capacity to remain with a problem without escaping it is obviously correlated with how severe this problem is. If it is very acute, such as when one faces deep sorrow or loss, then one may not be able to remain with this acute feeling for more than a few seconds.
But other psychological problems are usually not as acute as that. If it is not so acute that it is literally unbearable, then one can simply “surrender” to the fact of feeling lonely (as @Twocents was saying above), and watch it with care, with tenderness, without projecting onto it one’s fears and impatience. Loneliness has a story to tell, if one can listen to it without judgement.
I posted this video over on the ‘Attention’ thread, but it fits here too. Krishnamurti is talking about giving attention to a psychological problem (in this case it is conflict, but it could as well be loneliness). And he talks about looking at it, listening to its story, as though one were a parent looking at their child. In this looking and listening there is a possibility that the problem shows itself, flowers, and withers away in that looking. I think it is a helpful video if one has 6 minutes (+ 21 secs) leisure to watch it:
Is loneliness (envy, anger…etc). to the mind, what a cold-flu or any sickness it to the body ?
the whole body will respond to sickness
Can the whole mind respond to loneliness ?
Is loneliness seen by the entire mind ? Is this "observe without “the observer” …?
But now I have this question:…loneliness is in the mind, I am loneliness, so loneliness responds to loneliness?
Something apparently happens to the mind when am …100% full with the “what is”.
OR …
“I am loneliness” is referring to the state of wholeness in which the attention is ? Cause, my mind is far larger than loneliness …is the human mind …
So, maybe this fullness that the statement “I am loneliness” refers to, is the fullness in attention…which leads to this statement: “I am attention”
“I am attention” : in this there is no Observer, and “I am attention” dissolves loneliness.
Perhaps it is worth putting all this in different words.
When there is loneliness, can one surrender to the fact that one is lonely?
This is not an intellectual act.
One is lonely, or loneliness is. And can one negate doing anything about it? - realising that anything ‘I’ do is false, is an escape, is an intellectualisation of the fact that at the present moment there is loneliness.
So I am not important. What is important is the loneliness. And can I listen to what the state of loneliness has to tell me? Listen to the story of loneliness, and not what I think about it, or what my interpretation of it is - because I am not important.
Then there is only the state or feeling of being lonely.
When there exists only the feeling of loneliness, and not an ego telling loneliness what it should be, or trying to escape from loneliness, etc, then there is a transformation in that state of loneliness.
Expressed practically, this is what I understand Krishnamurti to be saying.
I’m sorry you persistently misunderstand what I write.
Did you watch the video I shared about meeting a problem with attention?
What do you feel about it?
Yes, I watched the video clip.
This is what I feel about it.
K says that I am part of that conflict, which means to me that when I look at that conflict and I do not try to resolve it, to change it, I am also seeing in that conflict the “old me”.
The conflict flowers, withers and dissolves, along with “old me” which created in the past the current conflict.
Attention seems to act as the remover of the “old me” from a past distorted understating, and attention also “blocks” the involvement of the “current me” in the process of the active looking.
I’m not sure that I grasp your meaning here about the “old me” and the “current me”, and how attention “blocks” the “current me”? I find this language a little confusing.
If we return to our previous example of the feeling of loneliness, then it is clear that this loneliness is part of ‘me’, or loneliness is ‘me’. Loneliness is not separate from the ‘me’. So the ending of that state of loneliness - through paying complete attention to it - is the ending of the ‘me’ in that moment.
But there are other factors in consciousness apart from loneliness, and these factors reincarnate the ‘me’ again as soon as one is inattentive.
If one could be completely attentive all the time, the ‘me’ would not be able to get a foothold. But we cannot be attentive all the time, so the ‘me’ constantly re-incarnates. My understanding is that only a total insight will end the ‘me’ once and for all.
Conditioning along with self images are constantly changing in time.
A year ago loneliness felt differently than today. “The old me” and the “current me” are adjusting in time, depending on circumstances. Of course is the same me, but it is so affected by circumstances.
You use the word reincarnate, it is exactly what I am trying to say.
Attention, as described by K removes this me from memory and from the present. This is what I meant.
So in attention past memories and the present state are seen at once. The old and the current states and “the me” are seen. K would say: the present contains the past and the future.
Rather than past and present ‘me’s’, can we just say that the ‘me’ - which is the continuation of the old - has its continuity in the present so long as there is incomplete attention?
That is: when the light of complete attention shines on the present, the shadows of the past (the ‘me’ with its psychological baggage) disappear.
Of course, we are assuming an understanding of what is complete attention here, and the danger of this is that it becomes speculative.
So it is more accurate to ask:
Can one be aware of the activity of the ‘me’ - which is always a continuation of the old - in the present moment, from moment to moment?
I think this is the real question.
If this continuation is realized one sees that change occurs only in the present.
Yes - the future is now, to use Krishnamurti’s phrase.
But the key word here is “if”; “if this continuation is recognised”.
There is a danger, for me, in living too much in the world of “if”.
This is why I feel the open question “can I?” is more helpful.
“if” invites one to create conditions for things to occur, which means time
“can I” is less dependent on conditions and time, so what about this question: “Can I, in this very moment”…