" Without causation which is from memory, this interval lives by itself and it also gets lengthened." This part is beyond me I’m afraid.But it’s obvious what the interval is that he’s describing…space…silence…attention…awareness…all free from interference from ‘me’.
It’s the space between the thoughts…where each one ends before the next begins. It is almost invisible since our thinking is almost non-stop. To look for this ‘space’ slows the thinking process down. Being in the interval allows the next arising thought to be seen but the exercise is to ‘stay ‘ in the discovered
space and the rising thought is seen as an interference to be dissolved? Voyager kindly posted some of K’s remarks about the “interval”.
It simply means that the interval between thought and awareness is getting larger, that is: more awareness and less thought, so that when any thought arises “thought is examined with greater quickness, anew” by awareness … Completely the reverse of what happens to most of us, that is: too much thought and too little sporadic awareness.
Until we get “rear ended “ and then we’re right there.
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You’re right @DanMcD … although, unfortunately, this doesn’t work for all of us. Sometimes even if we are “rear-ended” we decide to stay “right here”.
I had a friend who had been a Buddhist monk for at least 30 years. Before that, he had followed K’s teachings, he even traveled to Saanen more than once. And we used to “walk together quietly” talking about the life we live, the impermanence of everything and the emptiness of that very life. But when the doctor said: “you have brain cancer” he collapsed psychologically, and began to say “I don’t want to know anything about teachings, no K., no Buddhism, no nothing! Everything is theory, and what is now is the Cancer”. Despite that, he never observed cancer, always lamenting the situation. The last time I visited him in the hospital, when I was about to leave, I said goodbye to him saying that I had to go because otherwise I would miss the train to go home. He didn’t even listen to what I said, angry as he was with the nurses because they had sat him in a chair and he wanted to be in bed. I said goodbye again, with no luck until one of the friends who were in the room said “he is saying goodbye to you.” Then, and without looking at me because he was still angry with the situation, he said “goodbye”. And I left sad knowing somehow that it would be the last time I would see him alive, as it was.
This is not a criticism, but simply an example to illustrate that what you say, even if it is an incredible opportunity that life gives us to change (or put into real practice, what we have supposedly been observing for years) does not work for everyone … not even if we have previously walked a more or less spiritual path of any kind.
Thank you Fraggle for the story. It occurred to me today that what we don’t truly face from the time we are children until adulthood is The imminence of our death at any moment…we see it around us and we ‘know ‘ it can happen at any moment but it’s pushed aside and we live in dreams of a ‘future’. I watch the animals but this coming to terms with our death and those of our loved ones is never as I see it ‘solved’. Is it our curse that we can know it will happen but we can’t know when? And without that total understanding, that we can’t really live?
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I will comment tomorrow because i’m going to sleep now, but we’re touching something important here and i think it’s worth delving into it as it is directly related to the title of this thread: “why don’t we change after all these years?”. But anyway i wouldn’t like go to bed without leaving a question that arose in my mind after reading your words: what’s the role of impermanence/death regarding the core teaching of K.?
Thanks for your feedback @DanMcD!
In that case, how on earth can we get rear-ended? In that interval, there is total 360 degree awareness and we practice defensive driving.
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Not sure what you’re saying - but I would just like to point out that thought does not improve our reactions - like catching a ball or dodging a delivery van, quite the contrary - “conscious” thought is what we use to interpret/judge our decisions, not how we make them.
Because despite the fact that in the distance we may have seen that there is a hole in the road, we are so entertained with our thoughts about how deep it will be, or how we are going to avoid it, or what has been its cause, or why there must be a hole in the road, and so on … that when we come to it we inevitably fall inside.
Now, the question is why is thought entertained by what awareness has seen? Is it not because thought thinks that it was he who saw the hole?
You cannot practice defensive driving (whatever that means) while driving. You are either attentive to the road and other cars or you are not. Practice has nothing to do with that attention. I would even say that it has more to do with inattention than with attention. While one belongs to the field of effort and is therefore prone to distraction, the other does not. I have never taken a driving test because I don’t have a driving license, but if you have one, you already know what I mean.
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Thanks to you voyager for the quotes on the interval between thoughts that you have posted.
In The First and Last Freedom Krishnamurti wrote the following:
“Our problem is how to be free from all conditioning. Either you say it is impossible, that no human mind can ever be free from conditioning, or you begin to experiment, to inquire, to discover. … Now I say it is definitely possible for the mind to be free from all conditioning – not that you should accept my authority. If you accept it on authority, you will never discover, … and that will have no significance.”
(Jiddu Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom , “Questions and Answers: 20. On the Conscious and Unconscious Mind”)
I feel that the above quote is very significant. It’s an invitation to “experiment, inquire and discover”. Considering thought is with us every day of our lives, doesn’t it make sense to look into this? Is there ever an interval between our thoughts?
Yes, it’s very significant, and an invitation to “experiment, inquire discover”. And that’s the reason why I joined this discussion and this topic. As I have said I have had the impression that this practical aspect of K.’s teachings has been neglected.
I’ve experimented this interval many times. It’s not difficult both in daily life, especially while walking, or sitting and observing one’s thoughts. In most cases the problem arises because we are absorbed by the content of our thoughts to which we give importance. So, from what I gathered from K. (and stated elsewhere in this forum) one needs to devaluate thought and thoughts. Remember in the first and last freedom he said there must be a revolution of values? If we keep on giving importance to thought and to the content of thoughts which we perceive as real, any attempt at choiceless awareness will be vane. Another factor is that usually the flow of thoughts is too fast, so it’s impossible to perceive the intervals. And of course, the two most disturbing factors for this observation are fear (or better anxiety) and desire. I’s impossible to keep still and observant when there is something which worries us or if we have an important project we want to realize. That’s why K. in all his talks first tackled the problem of fear and desires before tackling meditation.
When the conditions are favorable, the passive observation of the flow of thoughts (which we can call choiceless awareness) slows down the flow and so we can “feel” that there is an interval.
What happens then? K. attributed a great importance to this interval, saying: “the full experiencing of that interval, liberates you from conditioning”.
But every time that I perceived that interval that did not happen. Why? Because for us that interval is “nothing (no thing)” and so we don’t give importance to it. We are attached to all the things of the mind, we are used to deal with them, but in that interval there is nothing to deal with. So again there must be humility to stay with that interval…
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Good points V. So psychological thought is conditioned to believe in its own significance, if I can put it that way. As you say, the interval is nothing and hence not considered by thought to have any value or significance? Can thought now see that by overlooking and being unaware of this important ‘nothingness’ that it has been going in the ‘wrong direction’?
Exactly so. That’s is what I meant to say.
“Can thought now see… it has been going in the wrong direction?”
This is the point. But I don’t want to tackle it from a theoretical point of view. I prefer to stay personal, to refer to my personal experience. As I wrote in my previous post which gave start to this new thread, I know I have not changed because I didn’t want to, and Jony Mitchel’s song explains well the reason why.
I’m all the time swinging from my spiritual research to the pursuing of the things I desire. (I suppose we are all like that…). I think I’ve enquired a lot into the question of why images are so important to us, but I could not get rid of their influence and power. I feel my life is empy without the things I value most, I feel I’m not living if I don’t pursue them. When I happen to be in a fine observant state and watch to the flow of thoughts, on one side I manage somehow not to give importance to them, not to react and let them go, on the other side the interval has no significance to me. This of course shows that I’m still enslaved into the set of values that thought has created.
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Yes…you expressed my feelings too here voyager. It’s good to be honest and not pretend to be ‘spiritual’ when we’re clearly very worldly.
Just revisiting this thread today and I’m coming across your posts for the first time voyager. You seem to express my own feelings precisely in some of your messages. I was thinking of Dan’s posts about the interval the other day and had the same thought you express above. And to attempt to keep still only leads to increased inner conflict.
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And that seems like quite a solid discovery, conclusion, etc…but it is a ‘distraction’ from the ‘interval’ that came before and after it, isn’t it? I’m not saying that it’s not of value to share that with us or what I’m attempting to share right now. But the point K made regarding ‘conclusions’ being the termination of insight (conclusion or fact?) seemed appropriate to bring in here? I may be wrong.
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I hope that we all see that “silence” or “the ending of identity and its interpretive narrative” is essential.
But the understanding that the “goal” of wanting to achieve this silence is also “noise” - thus counterproductive - just the striving of the confused self - is also essential
Awareness, curiosity, acceptance must be for its own sake - not in order to get anywhere.
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