KFA - Krishnamurti Foundation of America

Well, well, and one more well to make that river, if bruce is not speaking to me directly. I shall not look this gift horse in the mouth, as it were.

bruce wrote:

It's the right approach.

  Don't rush to say that saying freedom first has no meaning to the one lacking freedom. The right approach is the right approach.

I see, telling someone that their meaning of freedom is not the right meaning is designed to get them to drop their meaning. Ok, that is logical. Of course, their new goal is to drop their meaning of freedom, which is still an exercise sans freedom.

bruce wrote:

So what can the lack of freedom do to 'get' to freedom? This is the question.

  It needs a miracle. And the miracle is rejecting itself, this lack of freedom: completely rejecting itself brings freedom. Or completely rejecting itself plus a miracle; or minus a miracle-perhaps that is the miracle. But completely rejecting itself must happen either way.

Yes, I will not disagree. It needs a miracle. Why do you not add that caveat at the end of every pitch of freedom you are making to the unfree?

I say that a miracle is conditioned upon opening the door that miracle comes in through. I plant my tomato seeds, provide the warmth and moisture necessary for that miracle to occur, and up comes a seedling, on it way to providing this supplicant with vine-ripened tomatoes that taste like tomatoes used to taste before the growers turned them into tasteless, reddish things that have the consistency of cardboard.

Self-rejection. That is a subject that begins with the miracle, and not one second before. If the self is not free, self-rejection is a transcendental movement, and the same problem adheres.

bruce, if I may, your continual return to the self-negating self-reference as the curative act can only be understood from absence of the self-reference, which means that the presence of a self-reference will not understand what you are saying.

When that self-reference is laid to rest, when questions that demand its presence to be answered no longer can be entertained, then the only way it can be truly approached is by a form that contains the difference between its presence and its absence.

You express that difference in terms of death. Yes, but that death must be known to be properly addressed.

bruce wrote:

Are you in effect saying it's nothing you can do to show the illusion? That there's no action to be taken?

I am saying that nothing I do or say will open the eyes of another to what I want them to see if that seeing is what I think you and I are referring to.

I am saying that I cannot die for you in that other sense of death.

I think the most that can be done is point out that the only way to go is the way of self-understanding, and what that means is something that one must uncover for themselves.

I think that exposes the rub between us; self-understanding can only mean that one comes to an understanding of what that self-reflection means, and that that meaning must, and I mean must, be a private affair.

bruce wrote:

…  Also, can you say that a miracle is conditioned? Or is the mind who wants the miracle, out of sheer greed, and so it tries in a subtle way to invite it? ...

Your first question has no meaning for me. All I was saying that if the window is not open, the miracle cannot come into the room.

bruce wrote:

… That's why I don't talk about miracles: because the human mind tends to use everything in sight, and so it will make the miracle its ultimate goal, which is another form of illusion, of course.

Of course, but it is you and I who are speaking to each other, with the assumption that the other knows of that other death, which means the miracle is the death. The question is then one of whether you can talk another to death.

And, of course, if one has not died that death, and there are many slices of that death, from the step into the timeless, to the bliss where the self-reference itself breaks up, and add the dissolution as the knower loses itself in the vat of unknowing, then the attempt for self-transcendence must be operative.

An editorial: The self is the attempt to escape itself, having found itself in a way that creates the disturbance it must escape, it must lose itself if that thorn is to be removed from its side.

There are two ways to accomplish that loss; give that self to another or come to understand the error.

Yeah, words piled on words, but this is the tomato man speaking.

I shall apprize you of the #'s picked as I pick them.

Stick it in your ear!

wilbro99 wrote:

bruce wrote:

Are you in effect saying it's nothing you can do to show the illusion? That there's no action to be taken?

I am saying that nothing I do or say will open the eyes of another to what I want them to see if that seeing is what I think you and I are referring to.

I am saying that I cannot die for you in that other sense of death.

I think the most that can be done is point out that the only way to go is the way of self-understanding, and what that means is something that one must uncover for themselves.

I think that exposes the rub between us; self-understanding can only mean that one comes to an understanding of what that self-reflection means, and that that meaning must, and I mean must, be a private affair.

bruce wrote:

…  Also, can you say that a miracle is conditioned? Or is the mind who wants the miracle, out of sheer greed, and so it tries in a subtle way to invite it? ...

Your first question has no meaning for me. All I was saying that if the window is not open, the miracle cannot come into the room.

bruce wrote:

… That's why I don't talk about miracles: because the human mind tends to use everything in sight, and so it will make the miracle its ultimate goal, which is another form of illusion, of course.

Of course, but it is you and I who are speaking to each other, with the assumption that the other knows of that other death, which means the miracle is the death. The question is then one of whether you can talk another to death.

And, of course, if one has not died that death, and there are many slices of that death, from the step into the timeless, to the bliss where the self-reference itself breaks up, and add the dissolution as the knower loses itself in the vat of unknowing, then the attempt for self-transcendence must be operative.

An editorial: The self is the attempt to escape itself, having found itself in a way that creates the disturbance it must escape, it must lose itself if that thorn is to be removed from its side.

There are two ways to accomplish that loss; give that self to another or come to understand the error.

Yeah, words piled on words, but this is the tomato man speaking.

I shall apprize you of the #'s picked as I pick them.

Stick it in your ear!

Giving that self to another is not an option: it is still the self operating, and so there's no giving up, except on the surface. Understanding the error is the only option.

  You said earlier that the condition for the miracle to happen is to...that's why I mentioned the fact that such a miracle cannot be conditioned upon. But I think I know what you mean: the miracle itself has no cause, you may agree, but its operation on a certain brain may be conditioned by the healthy operation of that brain.

  This slightly creates an expectation in the mind, though: I open the door and now I'm waiting for the miracle to happen. But what am I waiting for? Can I wait for something completely new? Or am I waiting for the image of the new, which is the old? So I discover that I can only wait for the old, and as long as I keep waiting(for the old) the new cannot happen. I mean the miracle happens all the time, just not in my brain, which is sort of closed off to the new. That very waiting is an action of the old, and as long as the old is in operation the brain is not available for the new.

  Seeing all this I begin to watch myself waiting, and that alertness removes waiting-not my will to not wait.

  And much later, after the miracle happens, that alertness, which continues, makes the brain indifferent to its coming and going(with a certain blissful intensity). And then, that indifference 'makes' it 'stay', so it's not an intermittent thing.

  I don't know if all this conveyed anything at all.

bruce sean wrote:

...looking around demands freedom first otherwise looking is quite meaningless. So firstly, I'd be concerned with freedom, not looking, because the blind can't see...

I am looking around. Are you?

wilbro99 wrote:

bruce wrote:

...  Seeing all this I begin to watch myself waiting, and that alertness removes waiting-not my will to not wait.

  And much later, after the miracle happens, that alertness, which continues, makes the brain indifferent to its coming and going(with a certain blissful intensity). And then, that indifference 'makes' it 'stay', so it's not an intermittent thing.

  I don't know if all this conveyed anything at all.

Yo, bruce, spruce up, and enjoy the juice.

Your words with my comment inside them: "Seeing all this I begin to watch myself waiting [which means that I am now in the *lab of self*, so names because I am watching myself do what I am doing], and that alertness removes waiting-not my will to not wait."

"And much later, after the miracle happens, that alertness, which continues, makes the brain indifferent to its coming and going(with a certain blissful intensity). And then, that indifference [, which signifies a change in the relationship to this that I am [that] could be described as a movement from a troubled subjectivity to an untroubled subjectivity], 'makes' it 'stay', so it's not an intermittent thing."

And yes, this loss of the troubled self is a high, is it not? It's the place from which one may wonk and enjoy the juice...

Ha!

[edit]

So the lab of the self is thought becoming aware of its actions. I know you wouldn't phrase it this way.
  And one another problem: this 'high'. Is it personal, in the sense that that's it, there's nothing more , I can go live on a mountain? What is the origin of this 'high'?

Yes, the doer is a set of memories.

  Thought is the doer, so thought must also be the undoer, not some magical trick from the sky.

  And the high you did say it from the beginning: you can look at it either as death, or as life, as a breaking up or as an explosion, etc.

  But I didn't mean that. What is the origin? Does it come from the skies or 'from' somewhere else? What is it, first of all? It is energy, right?

Energy. Suffering is energy. Is this 'high' different from suffering? I know what Eden would say!

Life is energy.

night wrote:

Life is energy.

We are talking of the energy which one can be in touch with.

bruce sean wrote:

Tom wrote:

I am looking around.

It only has meaning if there is freedom first: since you are looking around, do you see this? That looking around has meaning only in freedom.

Yes, but that's just a word at the moment. I am looking around. Are you?

bruce sez: "No. If I'm looking, looking is not. Looking must happen, not 'I'm looking'-that's an illusion. It must happen, it needs insight, not my willingness to look.

  So no looker, that is essential."

I happened to be looking in the direction of the accident, but since I was looking, I cannot tell you what happened because I was not looking.

I am looking at what I have just written, but since *I am looking*, I am not looking.

The moral here is if you want to see something, leave your looker behind.

On leaving your looker behind? Simply open up your mind and short out the two chartreuse terminals, being sure that nothing else is disturbed.

La Commedia è finite!