So - shall we discuss - “how we bound to this fear and in what ways fear arises” - and go on from that?
Any action from a centre brings isolation in its wake. The perception of this is the end of isolation. But if the centre is still operating then isolation remains a problem. So this is not about going beyond the dictionary or the word. This is about going beyond the self-enclosed activities of the centre - not as an idea, a definition, a word or a theory but the actuality of living without a centre. Such living comes only from the direct perception of what it means to live from a centre, which is an insane way to live. It is only from the perception of our own insanity that such a thing is possible.
We’ll do it as a new topic once this one has concluded because otherwise we risk overloading this thread with too much to digest.
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I am pointing out there is something to the notion of isolation here which is naturally very difficult. Ordinarily we would tend to speak of it in terms of the isolation or loneliness experienced by the elderly living alone or some such, with loneliness being a feeling or an outcome of social exclusion, or social isolation. I am using isolation to mean something beyond all that. All that is happening in a feeling of loneliness or isolation ordinarily is the failure of the normal escape to function properly. No one it seems is going to abandon a functioning escape.
‘Normal escape’ - yeah it seems so. When what-is is not same of what should be - then this isolation happens.
So the “urgency of change” disappears when life is tolerable? But arises with suffering? But even then it is not for a radical or revolutionary change but just to end or minimize the immediate suffering and then go on more or less as before?
When I am a working escape, what motivation am I to abandon it? And when listening to something may have the effect of undermining the effectiveness of my escape and all others I might be, what might I do when presented with anything of the kind? This talk about dialogue revealing the processes of thought; what would I actually want with that, and how can it do that when I am the active requirement for it not to?
Maybe that the “working escape” that you are has had the insight that you are standing in the way of something more marvelous than you can create yourself?
Not analysis…just not knowing if it’s possible or not possible. I say ‘most likely’ because whenever I think it’s in my hands there’s immediately the conflict of trying to do something…Of me separate from the suffering and trying to act upon it. Truly seeing that there’s nothing I can do may be a totally different insight. What would bring that insight?
Does it present as marvellous though to the brain determined to escape, or is the initial sight of it threatening, and something it feels it must guard against at all costs? In essence anything but that as far as it is concerned, and when it is the ability to mount any avoidance mechanism necessary, then the result is never in doubt.
But the centre does not cause isolation, it is isolation.
Do you mean the perception that the centre brings isolation in its wake ends that isolation. Why would that end isolation? Have you seen the whole movement of the centre and the nature of isolation in its entirety?
Given the centre is self-enclosed, then as has already been pointed out, that is isolation is it not? just as the activities of that centre, such as seeking comfort or pleasure are isolating in nature.
While you are waiting to truly see, waiting for insight, you are still doing something: you are waiting for a result. Is it possible just to wait with nothing else involved?
It is isolation only when it is active. That’s the point. An ambitious centre creates an image to which it aspires; so everything from that moment is bound to a sense of isolation. But if there is no image, there is no centre.
Do you see the trouble around you, for which you are the cause? Or do you see yourself as separate from it? The insanity is your insanity as well as the world’s insanity; they are not two separate movements. To be totally responsible for the insanity of human consciousness that’s what it means to say, ‘I am the world.’ For most of us this is either something beyond our reach or else it is just a catchphrase that we have borrowed. Being out of reach, we invent ways to get to it, which is an enterprise doomed to failure. Or we borrow it as a motto because it sounds so good.
But to discover the fact that I am the world demands no journey, no effort, no cogitation, because I am living with it every single day of my life. I simply have to open my eyes and look; it is all there. My greed is human greed; my fear is human fear; my desires are human desires; and my consciousness is the whole story of human consciousness. There is no-one on earth who can explain this to me, who can make me see it through their eyes and their descriptions. So it is totally my responsibility. Then there is no problem whatsoever. It is only when I absolve myself of responsibility by putting the cause elsewhere that my problems begin.
There’s a couple of things that come to mind here. There’s the belief and ideal of ‘seeing’ and enlightenment. And there’s the problem…the suffering that we seek a remedy for. In my own case, it’s more of the latter. I usually seek, not enlightenment, but a way out of my problem…not an escape, but a solution. The problem may be related to lack of money or lack of any financial or physical security or it could be related to illness or a loved one who is very ill, or it could be a relationship problem…feeling angry with or frightened by someone. When my mind is occupied with the problem, then I don’t ‘see’. There’s just the spinning of the wheels in the conditioned brain. So I cling to the ideal that I can somehow look, observe, free of the conditioning. But the brain refuses to let go of the very pressing issue or issues that threaten its security or the security or very survival of a loved one who is very ill. The wheels keep spinning until I fall asleep or escape to a film or work on a hobby or watch a video of one of Ks talks, or…
That’s why we posed our question right at the start as, ‘What is our greatest problem?’ It is not about enlightenment or lack of enlightenment. It is not about whether I am conditioned or unconditioned. My greatest problem first of all is survival in the midst of a cold and brutal society. Even simpler, it is about my relationships with other people.
This is all a wonderful escape I can go round and round in forever, keeping it all about human relationships, and acting the Daddy and cutting up everyone’s issues into little bite size chunks. How can I have a so-called problem in relationship, without having a relationship, and how can I have a relationship without being at all to begin with? So how can the question not be about that being at all, and about the whole of reality, and about the fundamental isolation existing, that all of this is designed to avoid?
But relationship is isolation. As we live now, that’s all it is: isolation. You and I, we have no relationship at all except through words, argumentation, one view against the other, one opinion pushing aside another opinion. We are relating to one another through a lot of images and ideas.
So however we label the problem - as isolation, relationship, self-centred activity, greed, desire, intellectual vanity, ambition, lack of love, being, non-being, and on and on - we are still never meeting the problem. You have an answer to all this. But I don’t. I don’t want an answer. The answers never work because we have already been through umpteen answers.
And relationship with myself…with my behavior, emotions, thinking, etc. Here’s a good one from K.:
“I hope that you are not merely listening to the words—which is not an act of listening—but are using the words of the speaker to discover for yourself this wide gap between idea and action, this actual state of division between the thinker and the thought, with the thinker trying to control, dominate, change, or suppress thought, trying to be peaceful. As long as there is a thinker, a censor of the good and the bad, there must be this constant division which the thinker creates and which obviously gives nourishment to contradiction. This is a fact which you must discover for yourself, and not merely accept because someone else tells you it is so; and the very act of discovery is the beginning of that energy with which you can approach the root problem of contradiction. There is a vast difference between being told what it is like to be hungry, and the actual hunger which you know for yourself. Similarly, if you merely accept this division between the thinker and the thought because you are told it exists, then it will have no revealing vitality. But if you discover the division for yourself, if you see it as an actual fact, then that very perception of the fact brings the energy that is necessary to deal with this contradiction.
I hope it is fairly clear so far.
You see, when there is a great contradiction in the mind, it brings about a certain tension. The greater the tension, and the greater your capacity to express yourself—as a writer, as an artist, as a politician—the more misery you create, not only for yourself, but for the public also. I do not know if you have observed this fact.”
The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti: 1964-1965: Volume 15: The Dignity of Living
J. Krishnamurti
There is no ‘myself’ outside of my relationships to other people. Look at it and you will see. Everything I think I know about myself has come through that prism.
Yes, I see that my beliefs and ideals and knowledge has come from others. Without that I’d be a blank slate, like a newborn baby. But there’s the thinker/thought split that K talked about in the above excerpt. That’s what I was referring to as my relationship with myself…judging, condemnation, suppressing, rejecting, etc.