Are you having a flashback to the original Twin Peaks? Bob?
Yes, this is the whole point. Buddha, Krishnamurti and every serious teacher has said that the principle obstacle to human flowering - in the deep, non-trivial sense of the word - is the self, the ego, the limited self-interest.
If the self continues, there can be no flowering, no creation (of the fundamental kind), no fundamental freedom.
So to carry water for the self, day after day, out of a sense of fun, using great ingenuity and cleverness, etc, seems so perverse. Am I crazy?
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‘Self’ is a social phenomenon, and human beings will have to live with it because we live in relationship, we’re social beings. Of course we’re born with certain characteristics and as such we both suffer the influence of those that give a certain meaning to those characteristics and we at the same time may influence others because of these characteristics. The problem is not so much the self but the attachment to the image of the self that we mentally build, specially if we stick to a permanent sort of image, not allowing it the capacity to change and evolve. Krishnamurti said that to approach a complex problem we must do it in a simple way. The self is a very complex matter, including this thing of a higher self and a lower self. We can work on attachment, that is the straightforward approach to it.
No this is not crazy….we are witnessing the ‘craziness’ going on on this beautiful planet among our human fellows. That has gone on for thousands of years of killing and brutality.
The ‘self mistake’ is being seen for what it is?
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Yes - but isn’t the issue perhaps that there is no-one, apart from Dev, who can make a clear judgement about the rules for us? So the rules as such depend largely on our common sense, ordinary curtesy, ordinary parameters of reasonable argument and behaviour.
Now I can be reactive and impatient as much as anyone, but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in having a certain expectation that people on this forum - especially those who have been active on it for years - should be able to reply to direct questions without obfuscation. - Especially about words like ‘self’, ‘ego’, etc - which anyone interested in Krishnamurti or the Buddha will recognise as having a certain valence, a certain significance.
This is not just a fun game we are playing (imo) - it is a serious game. We are talking about human consciousness - the same consciousness that is destroying both the planet and countless human lives, in wars so dreadful that one can hardly imagine. So one has to have a degree of seriousness about what we are talking about. As Dan says,
I don’t like to use the word ‘evil’, but (as Dan also reminds us from time to time) Krishnamurti has occasionally said that the self is ‘evil’. I don’t like to use this word - and the Buddha didn’t use this kind of language - but it is clear from both Krishnamurti’s teachings and those of the Buddha that self-interest and egotism are at the root of so-called ‘evil’ human actions.
So in discussing these matters on a forum dedicated to understanding the teachings of Krishnamurti, I would expect from other participants a certain sensitivity to that - not an obstinate and obfuscating defence of being a ‘self’, glorifying the self, and refusing to clarify or analyse the self in a critical spirit.
I may be a little zealous about keeping to the topic at hand (that is my tendency), but I don’t think I’m being completely unreasonable here?
Please tell me why this isn’t concrete enough for you and I’ll try to fill in the gaps. (Ego and self are synonymous.) From 20+ postings upstream in the thread:
The house isn’t burning - it’s rotting? There is no urgency…enjoy life?
I was thinking of the slow burning that’s been going on for eons.
DNA, upbringing, personal history, the psychological aspect
Ok. But this single sentence is pretty much all you have said objectively about the self over several days of discussion (and this discussion exists in the context of prior years of discussion). However, grumbling aside, let’s look at this.
As you may be aware, there is concurrently running another thread on the topic of psychological conditioning.
We have been saying that the natural, physical conditioning has spilled over into the area of the psyche, to which the brain is now attached and defends as though it were an actuality as the body or nervous system is actual.
And yet the self or psyche is not actual in the same way that the body is actual - because it is essentially made of thought and memory, nothing more. It has become neurologically habituated, so that it feels, to the brain, necessary and normal - but the psyche is merely a series of synaptic and neural connections that can be undone in a second: through great shock, by taking drugs, or by being physically injured. So we are inquiring whether there is a non-invasive way of undoing these synaptic connections.
This psychological conditioning (with which our brain is identified) has created - in K’s words -
our idiosyncrasies and tendencies… the fears, the anxieties, the pain, the depression, the elation, the intense sorrow, the loneliness, the uncertainty of the future, all that, and the fear of death and the continuity
all of which comprise the self, the ‘me’. And we have been asking whether the brain can empty, dissolve or dis-identify from this psychological conditioning - through creative insight - so that it (the brain) can act and perceive freely (i.e. so that its awareness can ‘expand’).
Subjectively the ego is who-what I think and feel I am.
We have touched on this already: feeling something doesn’t make it the truth. One may feel immortal - as we do especially when we are young - but this is not an actuality. Most of us (at least by the age of 40 or 50) have seen family and friends die. They felt as real and significant as you or I may feel, but their bubble burst - with all the anguish and disillusionment of that - as will my bubble and your bubble (and everyone else’s) eventually.
So it may be an act of intelligence for us to die to this bubble of psychological self before we die physically. If we do not doubt the feeling of ‘me’, then we may be blocking our own natural intelligence.
This doesn’t mean that there are not challenges to dissolving this sense of ‘me’. As we have been discussing on the conditioning thread, there may be aspects of experience (of consciousness) that are deep buried, and that we find it difficult to become aware of. And there may be aspects of our experience that are so habitual, so deep rooted, that ordinary superficial awareness doesn’t have any effect. - Which is why a creative insight is necessary.
These are the lines of inquiry that interest me, or that I feel are relevant.
And behind all these, there is the ‘feeling’ that I am in control, always there…When there is the realization that this is actually not the case then the ‘watching’ without choice is possible. The ‘I am’ feeling has been erroneously identified with the physical body and all the ‘sensations’ (?) K lists above?
What is loneliness say, when there is no ‘me’ being lonely?
Can we find a non-invasive way to undo the synaptic connections that form our psychological conditioning?
Well we know that the brain is quite plastic, capable of structural change. And we know that there are ‘hacks’ that can enable specific changes to be made to our memories and our conditioning. Some hacks are more invasive, others less, though I’d say that any change we make to the foundation of our brain content/tendencies is by definition invasive. Mildly invasive possibilities that seem to work:
Traditional therapy – talk, EMDR, exposure, CBT
Alternative therapy – hypnotherapy, visualization, past-life regression
Meditation and mindfulness
Neurofeedback and neuroplasticity
Creative insight
Is it an act of intelligence to die to the bubble of psychological self before we die physically?
Assuming you want to die to the self, it’s probably intelligent in a Pascal’s Wager way for you to do it now rather than wait for physical death to take care of it. Should the self persist after physical death, its negative effects will likely persist. That would mean physical death won’t magically ‘fix the problem,’ in which case: Solve the self problem now (the present lifetime) or risk its continuing forever(ish).
These are the lines of inquiry that interest me.
I would add to the investigation: What is the relationship between self and feelings? Do feelings reside wholly in the realm of the self? Mostly? Partly? If feelings also reside elsewhere, where-what is that elsewhere?
Yes, the sense of ‘I am’ is implicit in every psychological movement - of fear, loneliness, depression, suffering, longing, etc. So where there is an ending of fear or loneliness is also the ending of the sense of ‘I am’ implicit in these states.
Meeting oneself as one is - i.e. meeting fear or loneliness directly, without judging or condemning - is perhaps the most intelligent thing the brain can do.
Yes, this is a key point. A generation or two ago the consensus was that the brain (with its psychological conditioning) is more or less fixed. But as more recent discoveries about the brain have shown, this is not in fact true. The brain can change, the neurological/synaptic connections can be made and unmade - and not necessarily as a result of anything traumatic. As Krishnamurti often said, insight can change the brain.
If one is habituated to the continuity of a self-centred point of view, then of course any alteration must be perceived as invasive! But if the habit of self-centredness is itself an invasion, then the undoing of that is an act of healing, not harming.
If one has been habituated to feel fear or shame or hurt - because of some prior trauma - the potential dissolution of the wound may be perceived as a threat by the part of the brain that has been accustomed to the wound. But the dissolving of the wound itself is an act of healing, not harming.
Yes. Although one doesn’t have to believe in a literal reincarnation or afterlife for immediate action to have value. If one looks at the world with a kind of bodhisattva’s eye (as Krishnamurti encouraged in his listeners), then the continuity of one’s own suffering or ill-will can be understood as inevitably creating harm for present and future human beings (who are essentially oneself - ‘we are the world’).
It depends on what one means by ‘feelings’? Jealousy, greed, hatred, grief, as I understand them, are all modes or expressions of the psyche, of the ‘me’.
But love, tenderness, compassion, beauty, ecstasy - these may be beyond the scope of the self.
And he arrived at that insight without using any fancy scientific tools!
Agreed. The argument can be made that we are all practicing (in the Buddhist sense): reinforcing our worldview (both consciously and unconsciously).
Ja! I struggled my way to: Feeling is the affective aspect of experiencing. I guess the question is: Is the act of experiencing necessarily ‘accompanied by’ self?
Though it’s not an everyday feeling, if one takes a state like love (in Krishnamurti’s sense), or non-referential compassion (that they talk about in Buddhism), this would clearly seem to imply an affective dimension, a feeling aspect.
However, according to them, this does not imply a self who is ‘doing’ the feeling, who is ‘being’ compassionate. There is no sense of self as distinct from other - but rather a state in which the other is oneself, a feeling of unity with all life.
That is, they understand compassion to go beyond the self, the ‘me’; and even to be incompatible with the presence of self-consciousness (‘where the self is, love is not’).
Whereas in most of the feelings we ordinarily experience the affective quality is tinged by self-consciousness.
Selfless love, literally as in absence of self, not conventionally as in putting others’ needs above yours. Love that is unconditional and unconditioned. Speculating: That love would be experienced and felt but there would be no experiencer/feeler. Loving, compassioning.
Agreed. I’d go further and propose that virtually everything we think, say, do, experience, feel is at least tinged with self, often saturated with it!
Yes. For most people this is just the way things are; they say we cannot change the human condition, self-consciousness or egoic consciousness is all that can be, so we should just accept it, embrace it, enjoy it, make the most of it.
And then there are others who ask if there can be a different way of living, a different way of being, in which self-consciousness, egoic consciousness, is not the ground of all action. Maybe we ask this because a few people have broken through and have found a different kind of consciousness, and have planted the seed of inquiry in human consciousness? Though what we do with that seed is up to us.
I think this is where ‘silence’ , the quiet, still brain comes in. Nothing has to be ‘added’ to that already addled organ, it needs to be emptied; to ‘put the house in order’? The human brain comes to maturity when it does what it is capable of doing (if it hasn’t become too perverted) and that is to resonate with what we are calling ‘mind’? For that it must be unconditioned and have a like quality of stillness? This ‘stillness’ or ‘silence’ results according to K, not from a ‘doing’, but from an understanding derived from watching choicelessly, our conditioned behavior.
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What I like about that laying out of the situation is that it is not exaggerated or sensationalized. The drama and black-and-white thinking that you often run into in popular awakening circles really turns me off. If something can be cheapened, even something as potentially sacred as awakening, humans will cheapen it, and the cheap sexy version will probably sell. Skepticism and doubt are I think must-have tools for the discerning 'Awakening or bust!'ers among us.
Agreed. There is too much acceptance of superstition and hagiography in religious and ‘spiritual’ culture generally. We have to use our wits. Most religious beliefs can be entirely junked.
But at the same time there can often be an overreaction in the other direction, and one can become skeptical to an unnecessary degree. I suppose it is healthy discernment that can tell the difference.
Doubt is a purifying fire; but left unchecked it can burn everything to the ground. There are times when it is appropriate to be open and listen vulnerably to what someone else is saying (I am thinking of someone like Krishnamurti for example, or anyone one feels is really worth listening to in that way - or maybe everyone is worth listening to in that way sometimes?).