Yes - we can continue this conversation in more detail privately. Although, as this seems to be a significant point being made (you are questioning whether “thought is present during attention”), it is worth clarifying it a little bit here.
I think it does depend on what we mean by thinking here. What you are calling “low-level cognitive events” I would call aspects of the brain’s perceptual mechanics, or perceptual cognition: i.e. with perceptual information, and how the brain receives and interprets this perceptual information, through stored implicit and explicit body representations, proprioception, perceptual inference, etc.
This is why I made the distinction between the evolutionarily ancient hardware of our brain-bodies, and the evolutionarily more recent software of our thoughts and memories.
Naturally, the brain cannot function without the machinery of perceptual cognition. But this is not what I understand Krishnamurti to be calling thought. What K is saying is that the brain can live without psychological memory.
Perhaps it may be useful to share a couple of extracts (because I know how much everybody loves extracts!) from The Awakening of Intelligence on the relationship between direct perception - i.e. the touching, tasting, seeing of a thing - and attention.
We only see very partially, we never see anything completely, with the totality of our mind, or with the fullness of our heart… We never see a tree; we see the tree through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree…
We never see, or actually hear, what another is saying; we are either emotional, sentimental or very intellectual—which obviously prevents us from actually seeing the colour, the beauty of the light, the trees, the birds, and from listening to those crows; we never are in direct relationship with any of this…
So it is very important to understand that the act of seeing is the only truth; there is nothing else. If I know how to see a tree, or a bird, or a lovely face, or the smile of a child—there it is, I don’t have to do anything more. But that seeing of the bird, of the leaf, listening to the noise of birds, becomes almost impossible because of the image that one has built, not only about nature but also about others. And these images actually prevent us from seeing and feeling; feeling being entirely different from sentimentality and emotion…
We have never looked at anything completely, with the totality of our mind, of our heart, of our nerves, of our eyes, of our ears. To us the word, the concept is extraordinarily important, not the acts of seeing and doing. But having the concept, which is a belief, an idea—having this—conceptual living, prevents us from actually seeing, doing…
And this seeing is not only seeing through your eyes and nerves, but seeing with your heart, with your mind, and you cannot see completely in this way if you are living, functioning, thinking, acting within a fragment of the total mind…
You cannot see, if you are not sensitive, and you are not sensitive if you have an image between you and the thing seen. Do you understand? So seeing is the act of love. You know what makes the total mind sensitive?—only love…
So, the seeing is all important. The seeing is the understanding; you cannot understand through the mind, through the intellect, or understand through a fragment. There is understanding only when the mind is completely quiet, which means when there is no image…
Observe for yourself a tree, a flower, the face of a person; to look at any one of them, and so look that the space between you and them is non-existent. And you can only look that way when there is love…
When you have this sense of real observation, real seeing, then that seeing brings with it this extraordinary elimination of time and space which comes about when there is love…
If you can see, you have nothing else to do, because in that seeing there is all discipline, all virtue, which is attention.
(‘The art of seeing’, from The Awakening of Intelligence)
To listen to that crow, to be aware of it, to feel its movement, to have no space between that and yourself (which doesn’t mean identity with the crow, as this would be too absurd), but that quality of a mind that is highly sharpened, attentive, in which the observer, which is the centre, the censor, with his accumulated memories and tradition, is not…
When you give your attention completely, that is, with your mind, with your eyes, with your heart, with your nerves—when you give complete attention, you will find there is no centre at all, there is no observer, and therefore there is no division between the observed and the observer, and you eradicate conflict totally - this conflict brought about by separation, by division.
It only seems difficult because you are not used to this way of looking at life. It is really quite simple. It is really very simple if you know how to look at a tree, if you know how to see anew the tree, your wife, your husband, your neighbour, if you look anew at the sky with its stars, with its silent depth—look, see and listen; then you have solved the whole problem of understanding, because then there is no “understanding” at all, then there is only a state of mind that has no division…
This attention can only come about easily when you know how to look, how to listen—how to look at a tree, or your wife, or your neighbour, or at the stars, or even at your boss, without any image.
The image is, after all, the past—the past, which has been accumulated through experience, pleasant or unpleasant; and with that image you look at your wife, your children, your neighbour, the world; you look with that image at nature.
So what is in contact is your memory, the image which has been put together by memory. And that image looks and therefore there is no direct contact. You know when you have pain there is no image, there is only pain, and therefore there is immediate action…
That is why it is important to know the art of looking, which is very simple—to look with complete attention, with your heart and with your mind. And attention means love, because you cannot look at that sky and be extraordinarily sensitive if there is a division between yourself and the beauty of that sunset.
(‘The sacred’, from The Awakening of Intelligence)
ChatGPT: Krishnamurti often emphasized that true perception goes beyond conditioned thoughts and beliefs. For him, it was about observing without the influence of past experiences, allowing a direct, unfiltered awareness of the present moment.
What did Krishnamurti mean by thought?
ChatGPT: Krishnamurti viewed thought as a tool that can be both beneficial and limiting. He often emphasized the need to understand the nature of thought, highlighting its role in shaping our perceptions and actions.
The difference between looking at an apple for the first time and looking for the first time is that in the former, attention goes to the apple, and with the latter, attention is on the whole act of looking.
The PC brain doesn’t know what looking for its own sake is because it is committed to being separate. It can acknowledge the concept of wholeness, selflessness, being nothing but a brain in contact with intelligence, compassion, love, etc., but can’t experience it without losing all it knows, i.e., its false identity in an imagined world.
I find that this passage from Krishnamurti (Saanen, 1972) gets at one of the key problems of our attitude towards attention (and meditation, choiceless awareness, love, happiness):
“… in that state of attention there was nothing, there was attending. Then thought comes in and says, ‘That was a marvellous state - I’d like to have more of it, a continuous momentum of it’. Which is, thought has made that attention into a pleasurable thing which must be continued.”
We’ve all experienced this, right? There is attention (meditation, usw), little to no presence of self, and then thought jumps in and starts spinning its story: I can do this! I’m so spiritually talented! I’m a superior being! I want to be able to do this any time I want! I want this feeling to last forever! Or the opposite: That was sooooooo boring! Why am I wasting my time doing such a silly thing! Non-duality is stupid! Nothing is better than anything else! Where’s the tv remote?!
We like to think that the brain’s awakening to actuality (losing its grip on its content) will be a wonderful experience, but it may be that by the time the brain is capable of awakening and remaining awake, it has undergone so much change that it may be like nothing more exciting than awakening from a night’s sleep.
I feel, Inquiry, that you have reified psychological conditioning and turned it into a solid block that nothing can break down. As we have been saying, psychological memory is part of the brain’s evolutionarily recent software. It is not hardwired into perception like seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, etc.
What K calls psychological memory is simply memory that projects habitually due to the lack of attention, lack of awareness. It is not inevitable like Thanos in Marvel’s Avengers. It is evitable.
So, for example, one may have become accustomed to projecting an image of someone, and this image is emotionally charged. This is all that psychological memory is. If there is sufficient attention or awareness of this habitual image, it is either modified in the moment of active awareness, or it is dissolved as having nothing to do with the actual present perception.
I’m sorry you feel that way because that is not what I believe or am trying (and failing) to communicate…quite the opposite, actually.
This is all that psychological memory is. If there is sufficient attention or awareness of this habitual image, it is either modified in the moment of active awareness, or it is dissolved as having nothing to do with the actual present perception.
I can see how you see it that way. Please pardon me for my lack of “active awareness” and my reifying. I’m here to learn, to inquire, to find out what’s going on.
Yes. This is what Dan began talking about up-thread:
This is an important aspect of the investigation, but I still feel it is worth remaining with the issue of attention itself before moving off into other matters.
What is the state of attention itself? Isn’t it a form of global perception? (by this I don’t mean planetary!, but rather something holistic; a holistic perception or awareness - I want to use the word ‘open’ awareness, but I know this may be interpreted in a specific way by some people).
K sometimes talked about being aware with all one’s senses.
I’m not criticising you in a crudely personal way, I’m just pointing out something as I would point out something to Rick or Douglas or Dan. For example, one of my tendencies is to be long-winded - so I find that unless I pay close attention to this habit, I will just go on being long-winded. That’s all.
Isn’t one of the things here that can get left out is the main image that comes between whatever is being perceived, the image that we have of ourself? Who we think we are? Is there an awareness when we think, look, hear, taste anything that the thinker, looker, hearer, taster is not separate from those actions? How can this contact that K talks so beautifully about come about when there is an image of ‘me’ between the senses and the world?
So the next step is - we may not have discovered a state of pure, total attention; but can we at least take the sense of attention we may have gathered through the process of enquiry, and bring it to bear on our daily life, our daily ‘what is’?
If there is no separation in a universe, everything, including thought, the separator, is inseparable from everything else.
So why is the brain confused about this? Could it be that the self-evident, obvious fact of wholeness, unity, is shouted down, overtaken by the persistence of thought?
This is obviously very subtle stuff - so I’m no longer sure whats what.
In a moment of pure attention, facing a table with an apple on it, am I :
Aware of the objects in front of me? I think we said yes (“perception is not thought”)
Know what those objects are? It seems we are saying No - I don’t know the apple is a kind of fruit for example, I’m “seeing it for the first time”.
So it seems we perceive shapes and contrast and depth maybe, but we don’t project any interpretation onto these intial experiences
If I’m getting this right, my question is what happens to pure awareness if I suddenly recognise that part of what I’m perceiveing is a fruit, or that another is a piece of furniture very similar to one in my grandma’s dining room?
What usually happens to pure attention, and must that necessarily be the case?
It becomes less pure, I’m thinking, or it is destroyed or retreats in the face of more complex (less immediate) thoughts/interpretations.
Must this necessarily be the case?
Is there a possibility we are overthinking this Douglas?
I’m trying to grok what the issue is here - What I think you are concerned about is that if the brain is able to tease out the ‘fruitiness’ of the object “apple”, this implies a downgrading of the state of pure attention, right?
So it seems you are worried that pure attention will be downgraded or vanish if the brain becomes aware of the fruitiness of the apple, correct?
The drawback of only thinking about these things is that one leaves out the ‘common senses’ (as we might call them). As Dan was saying earlier on up-thread, attention with respect to an apple is not limited to a single sensory dimension, but is multi-sensory. It involves
and so on. Pure attention is not an mode of blank, soulless perception in which we revert to the dullness of a perceiving algae: it involves all the senses fully heightened, the awakened intelligence of the whole organism, perceiving with the whole brain-body: both our senses of touch, taste, smell, visual and auditory perception. And also perception through the mind as the quality of love.
The only issue is that this pure sensual attention may become so overwhelmingly intense that ordinary or secondary practical and physical concerns (which are necessary for daily survival) may be significantly impaired.
Perhaps some extracts from K’s journals can shed some light on these aspects of pure attention (btw, just so this doesn’t become an issue, K has said that in writing down these events afterwards, the words he uses - such as “parrots”, “magnolia”, etc, with their implied recognition of objects and events - are provided automatically from memory in the moment of writing the event down, but they are merely descriptions and nothing more).
Do look at that river - the morning light on it, and those sparkling, green, luscious wheat-fields, and the trees beyond. There is great beauty; and the eyes that see it must be full of love to comprehend it. And to hear the rattling of that train over the iron bridge is as important as to hear the voice of the bird. So do look - and listen to those pigeons cooing. And look at that tamarind tree with those two green parrots. For the eyes to see them there must be a communion with them - with the river, with that boat passing by filled with villagers, singing as they row. (The Second Krishnamurti Reader)
It was a magnolia flower, not the large variety, about the size of a small rose; it was still attached to its leaf, long, sparklingly green and beautifully shaped… As it lay on the leaf, it was designed to contain the structure and colour of the earth and heavens and there was space within it, not the space that’s measured but it was endless. You saw it in a flash, a swiftness that the eye and the heart could not follow… it was an explosion without the time fuse and you were left marvelling that such a thing should be. (Notebook, March 4th 1962)
A curious thing is happening; there is a heightening of sensitivity… The blade of grass was astonishingly green; that one blade of grass contained the whole spectrum of colour; it was intense, dazzling and such a small thing, so easy to destroy. Those trees were all of life, their height and their depth; the lines of those sweeping hills and the solitary trees were the expression of all time and space; and the mountains against the pale sky were beyond all the gods of man. It was incredible to see, feel, all this by just looking out of the window. One’s eyes were cleansed. (Notebook, August 3rd 1961)
However, sometimes it seems to happen that the state of pure attention becomes so intense that the very nature of perception changes, which places ordinary practical considerations ate the periphery.
We were going up the path of a steep wooded side of a mountain and presently sat on a bench. Suddenly… All space seemed to disappear; what was far, the wide gap, the distant snow-covered peaks and the person sitting on the bench faded away. There was not one or two or many but only this immensity. The brain had lost all its responses; it was only an instrument of observation; it was seeing, not as the brain belonging to a particular person, but as a brain which is not conditioned by time-space, as the essence of all brains. (Notebook, July 17th 1961)
Isn’t it already implied, when we use the phrase ‘pure attention’, that the sense of self, or me, with its self-image, is wholly absent or at least in abeyance? As K says in the extract I shared with you from The Awakening of Intelligence,
If you like, any image that interferes in the seeing of the sunset can be called a form of self-image - so what is being pointed to is a perception in which all images are absent.
Yes - nearly, I’m worried about our ideas regarding these issues - about our conclusions regarding “pure attention”
I’m worried about how our conclusions might affect “the quality of love” ie cause discrimination.
I’m saying that the frontier between sense perception (colours, taste, smell etc) and thought might only intellectual.
Are we saying that there is more hard truth in one than the other or some fundamental differences between biological and psychological experience that cannot be embraced/dissolved by awareness?
