I don’t know if it would be correct for me personally to say anything beyond this process of seeing (without a see-er), because that’s already quite far down the round from where I usually am!
But at least conjecturally, Krishnamurti has said that the mind is “outside the brain”. That is to say: if there truly is this state of seeing (without a see-er), then maybe that is really mind.
In which case it is no longer the seeing of a particular brain, but a seeing taking place beyond the particular brain. And what follows from this is that it doesn’t belong to anyone - it is universal mind. While the brain evolves in time, mind (as pure seeing) is not caught in time. It has no starting point (in time), and no centre (as me, or I). As soon as I recognise it or name it or become consciously aware of it, it is no longer mind but only - as Paul says - thought, memory, with it’s observer-observed framework of understanding.
But this level of speculation, as I say, is way beyond what I myself can competently verify!
Yeah, that’s kind of where I was headed. I am also not in the position to verify or falsify the notion of universal consciousness. I wouldn’t know how to … since neither what I think of as subjective or objective verification seems to apply. A broad (and imo too diffuse) term for what does apply might be: meditation. Or it might be something else. This is for me where “I don’t know” is as good as it gets.
And yet … the question “What is it that sees?” remains with me. Maybe it’s my self-assigned koan?
Is it that by remaining with anger (or greed, etc) - so that there is only anger - the energy of anger flowers; and once it has flowered it is no longer “anger”, but only pure energy. And it is this pure energy - of what before was anger - that is seeing (or awareness) without a see-er?
Why do we call it anger after we have been angry? Or, why do we say, ‘I must not be angry again,’ which is calling it anger before it happens? At the moment of anger, there is only the anger, no naming. This is so, isn’t it?
I don’t think it is about remaining with anger. That is about maintaining a relationship between the observer and its anger. The notion of remaining with anger serves only to strengthen the observer in that relationship. The observer enters either after the anger has subsided, saying, ‘I have been angry,’ or at the point just before it starts to build, saying, ‘I am feeling angry.’ Why is the observer entering into this at all? That’s the question. At the moment of anger there is only anger. So the observer can’t do a thing about it. Therefore he invents the notion of remaining with anger. He has attempted all sorts of other things to bring anger under his control; and this is just another of those attempts.
Yes … but I think it’s more nuanced and messy than that, something like:
At the peak of ‘pure’ anger we tend not to explicitly name what we experience, though we might implicitly (unconsciously). This peak is typically very short, thinking almost immediately barges onto the scene and starts naming or feeling or image-ing.
Yes - I understand what you are saying: I was expressing the same thing in a different way (using the language of “remaining with”). Namely, that
K often says, can you remain with envy, with suffering, with fear, and watch it flower… but language cannot capture a non-dualistic phenomenon, so it always comes out slightly wrongly when expressed (after all, who is saying that “at the moment of anger there is only anger”? It’s not anger, right? - because then it would be a description of anger, which is not anger).
So we take it for granted that anger cannot be expressed. It is - as you say above - a nameless state. If there is an observer of that state, then it is not that state.
So, you, or we, are asking: can that nameless state flower - right?
If you are not asking this question, then I do not know what question you are asking.
The urge to name happens on the physiological and psychological level.
The brain, by nature/nurture, categorizes and names things. This happens lickety split, in an instant.
The egoic I uses the “Name it, tame it” method to maintain a sense of control over the organism. An unnamed experience is potentially dangerous, it is the unknown.
Why is the observer entering into this at all? That is my question. It is an impulse to control, isn’t it? That is why it comes in. So it is trying to capture the essence of anger, but in its own terms.
What the observer isn’t saying is, ‘I am anger,’ – anger not just during the moments of explosion but also before and after those moments, which is the recognition of the whole fabric of the observer as an angry entity. Or as a greedy entity, a fearful entity or a violent entity. It may say this as an intellectual statement – ‘I am anger’ – but it only makes such a statement as another attempt to gain control of the situation. Whereas insight into this really means the collapse of all control and the total dissolution of the observer. This is the flowering. And the source of this flowering insight is the anger itself. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the awareness of the observer.
But the known is far more dangerous than the unknown. A guard dog, tied to his territory, is far more dangerous than a free roaming stray.
But, impulses to control are the same as the observer itself. Think of your example from dialogue earlier Paul of a car crash. The collision occurs and “I” with my intentions arrive with the collision, late to the event and in a state of shock, I find myself as being interrupted and impeded. That feeling of shock is accompanied by the temporal feeling of “lateness,” right? Then “I” take control. That “taking control” is the birth of “me.” The “I” is this feeling, (or “felt” in Bohmian language–past tense) of taking control of myself with its proceedings which were already underway. That is where we first take stock of ourselves and ask questions like, “why did this happen to me.” Not before collision, after it. There is where I assess the damage, fumble for insurance papers, talk to policemen, soothe my upset and shaken passengers etc. There and then is also where I begin to the point my finger at others as they likewise point there finger back at me. Obserever-self enters of-with indictment. “Who? Me?”
Essentially, you’re explaining that the observer “enters into this” because the observer “enters into this.” Or, the impulse to control occurs because there is an impulse to control. Which is a circular argument that begs-the-question, because the “impulse to control” is the same as the observer itself. Neither of these statements explain why the eruption or emergence of “observer-self” occurred at its origin. Which, I may suggest, originates out of an interruption of relationship that was always-already underway in its endeavors. Driving a car for example and there we say that self was identical to the activity which was the driving itself. Then, Bam! Collision!
But I am not seeking an explanation. I am an impulse to control; and there is no freedom or love in control. So there is nothing to explain. I seek explanations only when I don’t see the fact of what I am.
Stick with that. Don’t move from there. In that response of ‘Huh??’ is the entire structure of control.
I am an impulse to control. This comes out as anger, frustration, jealousy, envy, a thousand different varieties of conflict with the world. This is what I am. The desire to explain or understand what I am is still an impulse of control, to put myself into the field of the known as a separate, identifiable entity.
Ok. But in the discussion we had reached a point where the observer is absent: we said “there is only anger”. You have reintroduced the observer in the discussion, calling it an impulse to control. But if the observer is absent (and therefore the impulse to control is absent) there is only anger. Right?
So we are asking: is it possible for this state, this energy, this thing we have labelled “anger” to flower? Not the “dissolution of the observer” (which is no longer operating); but the flowering of the thing we have called “anger” (which in itself is nameless - the word is not the thing, etc). Right?
We are not talking about insight (a word you have introduced), but only observation (without the observer). We are not attributing “awareness” to the observer (a notion you have introduced). We are discussing a choiceless awareness in which “anger” flowers; or, put differently: a choiceless awareness which is the flowering of that thing we have called “anger”. - Right?
So when you say (in reply to Philip)
you are really articulating (expressing through language) the movement of the observer in relation to anger - right? But if “we” (which is a façon de parler) have set aside the observer because we have seen its irrelevance, then there is no impulse to control, but only that nameless impulse which has no name (we have called it “anger”)… then what happens? That is the question I am asking.
So, either we are asking a question about the nameless impulse (existing without an observer), and whether it can flower - or, we are asking a question about the nature of the observer. - Right?
So which is it? Which of these questions are you asking?
My concern is that you will reply to this (if you do reply) with a further semantic twist, that either adds or subtracts from what has been expressed (apparently to create a sense of opposition or disagreement?), but which is not a direct response to the question I have asked. - Am I wrong?
At the root of it is, I think, fear. I am afraid to be nothing. Terrified! Without the various somethings that I am – my personal CV – in this very moment without reference to the past or future, I am nobody. But, you see, I need to be somebody, somebody special, a unique one-of-a-kind ME!
No, the observer is never absent while he is talking about anger. You are missing it. It is a very simple point. Is it not possible to be angry and let it go completely? Not to remain with it, not to let it flower and all the rest of it, but to do absolutely nothing at all about it. Then the observer doesn’t come back in.
Along with the seeing hearing etc there is this imagined entity that is apart, separate, existing. This is the source, though illusory, that is imagined to ‘be’, the ‘me’, to exist and one day in the ‘future’ will ‘die’, disappear, be no more. Without this entity there is only the seeing , hearing, smelling, touching and the only real fear would be of the tiger or the snake etc ?