KFA - Krishnamurti Foundation of America

wilbro99 wrote:

Roots, I was thinking of an example of the difficulty in the way JK describes the problem.

In terms of a particular, the problem is the thinker, or the observer, or the experiencer.

In more general terms, the seeker, or the me, or the self, or the ego.

Or again, the conditioned mind.

You have offered one description of the problem, that of the pseudo-I.

Would you not agree that there is no way for the one who is the problem to separate themselves from the problem, as is possible with any one of JK's descriptions?

I'm pretty-much always reflecting on this stuff willy and as a consequence my understanding alters, hopefully grows even. Having said that I think your representation above still holds ok, so far as any attempt at description could anyway. The problem could indeed be said to be 'the thinker' etc., as you say.

But let's see if I can outline my ideas on it all in something of an update:

The brain is at once the holder of 'the grail' and the obstacle debarring therefrom. To this extent I would say your 'grounding in the senses' has some validity. But to gain said grail the brain must be quieted, totally. Such quiet attained to the grail is just simply there; the brain and the grail one. Obviously there can be no 'grail' without a brain and equally there can be no grail in a brain in any sort of employment of (or by) the 'I'. (This, we recognize, requires the drawing of a distinction between psychological brain activity and the ever requisite activity in practical applications). The difficulty arises because ANY attempt to quiet the brain is necessarily and automatically activity of the 'I'. The brain will 'quiet', of itself, when the 'I' is erradicated and by no other means. This is why and how the thinker is the problem.

Various scriptures would have it that attention to the law (or commandments) is the way, and it is fairly easy to spot that the execution of those laws in constancy would lend nothing (worldly) to the 'I', and so the idea may have some validity; the spin-off being that with the 'I' reduced the brain becomes quiet and the grail gained. But it's necessary that one should see that in every instance, the 'I' having gone, there can be no separation such as you mention in your question here, but rather just the erradication of an utterly pseudo duality.

I wonder if that is going to be comprehendable. I always feel that the way I try to put things ought to be comprehendable - it always seems plain enough to me - but I understand the difficulty. Let's see how we go.

wilbro99 wrote:

Were I to say that at the root of the problem is a pseudo-identity that must come to an end, would that throw us off?

I don't think that should throw us off. The way I see it the pseudo identity must come to an end.

Think about that from the standpoint that the pseudo-I, or pseudo duality, is being cast here as an error that one makes, an error that must be seen being made to be ended.

Yes, I see why you are treading warily, because this is the very point of the stumbling block. My latest understanding is this willy (and I feel obliged to say upfront that I don't think it makes comprehension any easier; it's what lends what you have called the 'amorphous' element of K's explication, but it's unavoidable in any real comprehension of the whole business) is as follows:

First up: there is no 'duality', not now or ever. This is why the observer is the observed. Our tendency to think dual, for example in the psychological thought circumstance: I'm angry; I must stop doing this angry thing. K says - and I begin to get it - that the separation of the 'me' and the 'anger' actually creates a falsity. If, instead, a person, finding themself angry, faces the fact that they are that anger, i.e. it is their personhood, the anger actually constituting them in that moment in complete totality (i.e. it is they, and they are it, and there is no other factor or element involved) then they will have created a circumstance in which they are looking at the fact (the truth of what is at that moment constituting their personhood) rather than at a lie which possesses the dubious merit of eleviating their immediate culpability (i.e. the whole trouble).

If you can spot that willy you will begin to comprehend the all consuming power of the 'I' (and then the Job 'leviathen' passages start to make some sense).

I bring it in up front here because I think this point could be our sticky wicket.

Yeah, quite right. Thank you.

Brutality was the beginning of a womans domination by men, masculine brute strength and rape,  the means of taking possession, and owning them the way male lions protect their  pride, and control the female lions in the Pride .Psychologically organized religion, archaic men  established, the beginning of all psychological slavery to tribalism. The orthodoxy enforced female slavery to men, not even allowing them to be schooled or in councils with men .  Most women wanted porotection and to be owned . They  even  accepted chains, and locks, on a womans genitals to ensure chastity and protect the woman . It can be known from the beginning of Adam, and Eve myths inequality between men,   and women was actually born  . Most all traditional religious confusion, all inequality and conflict, between man, and woman, and man and man, and woman and woman, and woman, and man can be known from the  Adam and Eve myths that started religious tribalism. Beliefs in  man on top, man  in charge, as the only accepted and supposedly divinely ordered, and ordained correct tribal, as well as societal, original pyramid, or  heirarchy .  :-)

Last edited by everyone (2012-04-12 12:52:14)

wilbro99 wrote:

I had some gardening in mind for this morning, but the ground is still to waterlogged from the rain yesterday to work properly. So, this note before I am off for the afternoon:

- - -- --- ----- --------

Roots, let me recapitulate.

The pseudo-I, the glitch, the error, however we tag it, is the whole package and it comes in full living color. It's the everyday person seeking to control itself and find itself and improve itself and give as good as it gets and the whole ball of wax.

It's very nature is an enclosure protecting itself and trying to improve itself, and because that is its nature, that is what it is doing. In effect, the error is trying to correct itself.

Ok, here are some thoughts that made their way to the fore in this matter. I will offer what I see as a way of getting into this matter, toss it your way, and see what you have to say.

There are three aspects to this problem way of being; its past, its present, and its future. The present aspect would be its immediate reactions to what is going on, the future aspect would what it would like to correct of its present condition, and its past aspect is its judgment of how it is doing so far.

You mentioned the reaction of anger and its upshot, and I thought of how that anger played with all three aspects of the glitch that it is. Will this tack help us? Change as you see fit.

I do think you and I are tracking here.

Yes, we're tracking I think. Tres bien!

I don't think I have any issues with what you've presented here but let me attempt to simplify:

One thing separates each of us from the grail (nirvana or whatever), which thing is a disquieted condition of the brain. A perfectly quiet or quieted brain gets the cigar.

Problem: there is nothing we can do to quiet the brain because all and any so directed activity will inevitably be an issuance of the problem itself, i.e. the lie (pseudo personality) which is the resultant of the disquieted condition. (It's necessary to realise/recognise that this pseudo 'entity' is 100% in error; its every movement, regardless the degree of subtilty, is based in error and cannot be other than 100% wrong. This is acknowledgedly a hard fact to grasp but it is so imo).

There being nothing we can do to quiet the brain does not equate to nothing we can do to forward the situation per se, because fortunately the brain's default setting is quiet, or quieted, and this puts a different accent on the problem because it means that all we have to do is discover what is disquieting it, and remove that or those factor(s).

Now then: the quieted condition is in natural accord or alignment with what is not false (or in error), i.e. the true; which is to say no more than it sits in accord with (all the) law of  meta, quantum, and ordinary physics. So obviously the cause of 'disquieting' will be all or any activity which does not accord with those laws; which is to say any activity which aligns itself with the (100%) false and erroneous 'I'; there are only two positions regarding physical laws, in accord or out: try changing your decition to jump of a bridge once you've jumped!

Guess where we find a set of rules that counter the 'I'.

Any good willy? Interested to hear what you might have to say. Sorry I didn't directly address your last; I will if you'd prefer.

Roots, as I was ruminating over, around, under, and through your simplification, it occurred to me that if you and I are simplifying, we should keep that process going, rather than jumping off the platform we have found before we have investigated the platform.

I'll move forward under that assumption, which includes the possibility of finding a common jumping off place, and respond to your post point by point.

<<Yes, we're tracking I think. Tres bien! …>

It sure beats that beating of a dead horse.

<<… I don't think I have any issues with what you've presented here but let me attempt to simplify:

One thing separates each of us from the grail (nirvana or whatever), which thing is a disquieted condition of the brain. A perfectly quiet or quieted brain gets the cigar. …>>

Ok, you are placing the *wedge of difference* between a brain full of unnecessary associative connections and a brain free from those unnecessary connections. This allows us to think reflexively without recourse to an image free of the body. Yes, I see this as a necessary grounding of the platform.

My shtick has been to place that *wedge of difference* between two absolutely different ways to collect oneself, and that because that is how that wedge became apparent to me.

<<… Problem: there is nothing we can do to quiet the brain because all and any so directed activity will inevitably be an issuance of the problem itself, i.e. the lie (pseudo personality) which is the resultant of the disquieted condition. (It's necessary to realise/recognise that this pseudo 'entity' is 100% in error; its every movement, regardless the degree of subtilty, is based in error and cannot be other than 100% wrong. This is acknowledgedly a hard fact to grasp but it is so imo). …>>

Problem: this fact is of such a nature that it cannot be grasped until it is grasped. But that aside, and for later, we are speaking here of an enclosing in which the activity of that enclosure is an enclosing. I am translating this *problem unit*, this glitch, this *existence sphere*, this pseudo identity, into terms of a dynamic.

My reasoning here is that casting the error in terms of a doing allows us to cease doing it, and opens up the door for that cessation to come about through an understanding. But that is getting ahead of your post…

<<… There being nothing we can do to quiet the brain does not equate to nothing we can do to forward the situation per se, because fortunately the brain's default setting is quiet, or quieted, and this puts a different accent on the problem because it means that all we have to do is discover what is disquieting it, and remove that or those factor(s). …>>

And I see you speaking to an understanding. If understanding is the answer, then the condition of the problem must be such that understanding is the answer.

What this says to me is that we have come across an understanding that has the capability to erase a problem having to do with one's self to self relation, and we are trying to say what that problem must look like to solve as it has.

Of course, what I am presenting here is only how my mind has wrapped itself around the issue of this platform.

<<… Now then: the quieted condition is in natural accord or alignment with what is not false (or in error), i.e. the true; which is to say no more than it sits in accord with (all the) law of  meta, quantum, and ordinary physics. So obviously the cause of 'disquieting' will be all or any activity which does not accord with those laws; which is to say any activity which aligns itself with the (100%) false and erroneous 'I'; there are only two positions regarding physical laws, in accord or out: try changing your decision to jump off a bridge once you've jumped! …>>

And you are presenting how your mind has wrapped itself around the issue of this platform. I see no problem with the difference here. We each see that wedge in the way that it makes sense to us. It is that difference in seeing that creates a whole new set of problems unless we can come to see that we are speaking to the same wedge.

<< …Guess where we find a set of rules that counter the 'I'. …>>

Yes, if we are meeting on the same platform, then it is time to jump off into the solution as we see it.

<< …Any good willy? Interested to hear what you might have to say. Sorry I didn't directly address your last; I will if you'd prefer.>>

Well, if you will allow me to say that the good is given if the understanding is good, and leave the definition of the good up to the definer, we have a deal.

Oh yes, James 1:17-22, my buddy Kierkegaard wrote a very interesting discourse on that passage. If you can find it in your library, give it a read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Upbuil … rses,_1843

Roots, you present me with a problem; that of how to respond to your post. Whereas before, you and I were testing out our in-common notions in this matter, looking for the *yep*, and you have suddenly shifted to the *nope*.

My question to myself was if anything can be salvaged here. Where has this wedge you have introduced between us come from? Is it language, having to do with the way we think, or is it substance?

This I will need to mull over before I respond to your post. I have no idea of how long it will take for my understanding to coalesce in this matter.

wilbro99 wrote:

Roots, on your #85. I did that mull over and came out where I should have come out ('should' here means how it had to come out); we cannot communicate unless we find a common point.

So, I read your post again with the intent of finding that common point. I found it here.

Roots wrote:

… But it seems we are not talking to the same 'wedge'. In fact it seems to me that yours is the only understanding having a wedge or any place to put one. Mine, I would say, has no division, just one and the same brain either understanding the 'equation' or not. Would there be anywhere for a 'wedge' in a schoolboy who, at the beginning of a lesson did not understand a certain issue but at the end of the lesson does? Was he more brainless an hour previous? It's just the same boy isn't it?

Of course, it is a matter of understanding, and solely a matter of understanding. What does it mean to understand? It means to figure something out; it means to figure it out, whatever *it* happens to be.

You and I are engaged in trying to tell each other what we have figured out about *it*, where *it* is that puzzle you and I have figured out absolutely differently. It is at that point where you and I meet; with two absolutely incommensurate ideas of what *it*, and that because we have figured *it* out absolutely differently.

Yes, a play on words, but that play describes perfectly what I see and the difference between us in this matter. If one of us takes their own *it* as gospel, then the other of us not understand *it*.

You have just given me a clear picture of what you have figured out. I shall advantage of that offer and attempt to give you a clear picture of what I have figured out.

So, let me figure *it* out again, and report on my findings as I go along. Unfortunately, since I have to figure *it* out each time I offer *it*, it may take few posts.

Well said.

It all edges us closer to the difference.

Unfortunately, because the word is not the thing - which means that the 'thing' (i.e. the amorphous fact[s] relating to the matter and at which we are driving) cannot be said  - this 'difference' becomes insurmountable; this because such a situation places the amorphous, indeterminate 'thing' unable of transliteration (also) and hence untransferrable.

Evidently this puts us in difficulty: the same difficulty we have always encountered, but happily our more cool-headed approach this time allows it to be better looked at.

It is a matter of considerable interest, and on that account I will open a new thread to make an offering regarding it for the forum.

wilbro99 wrote:

Roots, I sense something subtle going on here that must be addressed. I'll let my addressing of that subtle twist say what I mean.

<Well said. …>

I immediately began looking for what I have said that you have misinterpreted. I did that because I cannot see you saying that if you understood what I was saying. That is all I had to go on here; a sense of a disconnect. I think I have found the culprit, but let's see.

<… It all edges us closer to the difference. …>

This suggests that the culprit is the culprit. I am speaking to a difference that is born of the process of figuring *it* out, and I sense you speaking to something you have tagged as *the difference*, something you and I have moved closer to, like we are closing in on an *it*.

<… Unfortunately, because the word is not the thing - which means that the 'thing' (i.e. the amorphous fact[s] relating to the matter and at which we are driving) cannot be said  - this 'difference' becomes insurmountable; this because such a situation places the amorphous, indeterminate 'thing' unable of transliteration (also) and hence untransferrable. …>







I found what mean amourphous, is a form less type of any think we want to discribe is it?

Thus, *it* takes on the cloth of the ineffable. The meaning I have given to the *it* of figuring *it* out and the meaning you have given to the *it* of figuring *it* out are not of the same order; your *it* is beyond words and my *it* is in the words.

<… Evidently this puts us in difficulty: the same difficulty we have always encountered, but happily our more cool-headed approach this time allows it to be better looked at. …>

Yes, I was offering another view of our difficulty and you see it as the same difficulty. My premise of that subtle twist still holds. 

<… It is a matter of considerable interest, and on that account I will open a new thread to make an offering regarding it for the forum. >>

And your opening of that thread deals with that thing, which by its nature, is amorphous and indeterminate, tells me that I erred when I said:

willy wrote:

You and I are engaged in trying to tell each other what we have figured out about *it*, where *it* is that puzzle you and I have figured out absolutely differently. It is at that point where you and I meet; with two absolutely incommensurate ideas of what *it* [is], and that because we have figured *it* out absolutely differently.

I did not see that you would transfer the notion of a separate puzzle into the puzzle over that which is beyond words, over that which is *the* amorphous and indeterminate. This transfer allows you to see what I said about my *it* into the category of your *it*, which is where I was trying to drive that wedge of difference.

If that does not make sense to you, give a holler and I will find other words to say the same thing. Well, maybe this will suffice:

I see the puzzle as how to properly find ourselves in the world we are presented to via our senses, and not some amorphous and indeterminate other. I am looking for process and you are looking for a mystery. I say find oneself first, and let the mystery be that finding.

I think that should drive that wedge between us into the quick of things.

If I have misunderstood here, please correct me.

Roots, I suspect that there is at least one question left here; why should I get this effing thing? Does the quality of life change with its getting, and, if so, how? And so on and on…

If you answer as I think you shall, that it lifts a burden from life, why should your elixir be any better than the one I partake of? What if there were one drink that tasted different to each of us?

Of course, I bottle UF, and it’s an attempt at a generic solution.

I trust this bit of humour does not bother you. My first question above is serious.

joe sez: "I get it Willy...I, like roots, had an awakening that I placed in the mystery department long ago, and it seemed oh so real in that department, as though no other answer would fit it.  Eventually that awakening awoke and that second awakening dispelled the mystery end of things.  I suspect yours was never placed in the mystery box at the start."

Thanks, joe, that offers a different slant of this for me. I let the notion loose for my noodler to work on, my noodler being the faculty that thinks for me while I get on with what needs be done, and in this case it was garden work.

I have a pair of male mocking birds whose territory seems to overlap at the bird bath, and who frequently do a duet for me. I think of them as my reflected pair, for they mock each other from time to time. I am not sure which of the two was the original mocker, in either sense of the word, but they do reflect upon each other.

That reflection, in any sense of the word, got into my noodler and spat out a form good enough for me to fill in; which I shall now do.

There are two faces within the transition from the first to second subjectivity, and I'll use that notion of a shift in subjectivity here because you and I have already hashed out what that shift means; in effect, a double awakening of sorts.

Ok, to the form. In the finding there is the losing and in the losing there is the finding. The shift offers two faces, the positive face and the negative face.

Depending upon which face is seen in that reflective mirror, the description of the shift is thus given; and, given that those two faces are absolute opposites, which means that the reflection upon that shift is capable of creating two incommensurate descriptions of a singular shift, a difference of a different nature is thus given.

Now, the question you have raised has to do with whether or not any two of us came in through the same face, as it were, the same door, if you will, and if we did not, what difficulty will ensue in this matter of attempting to communicate about the shift itself.

Ok, I can see that this leads to a labyrinth, and that I will need to lay out the twists and turns of it, which means that this post needs to be truncated here. Let it be the form in general, you can suggest a name for it, and I'll toss it back to you as is.

Of course, Roots, or any other, if the form catches your eye, please comment.

No probs with the humour, laughter's good for the soul they say don't they?

wilbro99 wrote:

Roots, I suspect that there is at least one question left here; why should I get this effing thing? Does the quality of life change with its getting, and, if so, how? And so on and on…

In the 'Ending of Time' dialogues, at one point an onlooker began a question, "How would you approach a person who . . . . ". K cut him short, with, "I am not interested in approaching any persons."

The people who comprised his gatherings would come of their own volition from far and wide and often at considerable trouble and expense. In comparison to the populace of what we might call such a 'catchment area' of course the numbers where extremely small, just as the numbers interested to involve on such a site as this compared to the populace of its 'catchment area', are extremely small. There is something within the constitution of the people who make up these 'small' audiences that causes them to be drawn to the gatherings or the forum: an indefinable connection.

Considering those who are not so drawn, should we say that they ought to be? I think that we should not say that. What we have here is a central thing, called the truth, which is a fact countering nothing more than the false ideas fed to homo sapiens by a quirk of his brain due to the developmental nature of that organ. This truth is singular because the cosmos, which it constitutes the description of, is singular; a singularity containing no division. To say that an individual or any number of individuals should be drawn to it when they are not, is like telling a kangaroo that it ought be a chimpanzee, or a baby that it ought to be an adult. It (the kanga) simply is not yet where the chimpanzee is. Most human beings are (sort of) happy where they are in the dark. They do not know they are in the dark and they do not feel any immense pressure from that darkness such as was my experience. For my first thirty years I could see nothing but a nonsensical futility in all that surrounded me, and my unavoidable participation in that world resulted in a series of frustrations the likes of which lead many to suicide. But I was lucky, my eyes got open and low and behold there was sense to be made, which 'sense', as you here (after a fashion) correctly surmise, lifted a huge burden from me and sustains me still.

For this reason then I know it to be a good idea, this 'eye opening'. People further on than me (I would reference Si and Babu; if the court will allow) seem to intimate that the pleasure of the situation increases with deeper involvement. I think it takes away the strain of the illness of neurosis that we otherwise just contend with, believing it to be the norm.

If you answer as I think you shall, that it lifts a burden from life, why should your elixir be any better than the one I partake of? What if there were one drink that tasted different to each of us?

There is only one 'truth', patently, and it does not come in flavours. Knowing what it looks like I am able very easily to see when others have it. I have told you for a long time now that Si and Babu have it (though I suspect Babu may have slipped the mortal coil; I can't see that being a concern), and I have a personal friend who has it; those are the only ones I have ever known. People who think they have it when they do not place for themselves the biggest barrier of all.

(The edits I make are sometimes due to my time allowance being split into two 1 hour sessions).

Last edited by Roots (2012-04-20 09:41:40)

I guess this is dessert.

The either/or reached is that the problem is either built in to the evolution of the entity, which means that moving through the problem to the solution is also predetermined, as it the solution itself, or, there is something in the finding of oneself that leads to the wrong relationship with the found in the finding, which means that each of us must solve, or not, the finding.

If the former, the either, there is one problem and one solution, and unless the finder has found that one solution, all other solutions are ersatz, or pseudo-solutions.

If the latter, the or, then there is as many problems as there are finders, and each of us must solve our own problem, which, by its personal nature, has as many solutions as there are solvers. That does not say that there is not some general principles in this in-common problem, and that it is those general principles that can be communicated amongst us.

If you are an *either*, you will not be able to communicate in this matter with an *or*, other than to say the difference is a dead horse. If you are an *or*, communication with another *or* could be very dicey, requiring much tossing back and forth of the individual solutions in an attempt to find general principles of the solution come upon.

Are you an *either* or an *or*? Which do you find yourself in? Is there someone out there that is both, or neither? Hey, step up folks and claim your seat on this bus that is the forum. Or not.

Hi RJ, thanks for your contribution.

My scutellaria lateriflora is in bloom; beautiful flower, it is.

My echinacea, yellow, white, and purple, are perhaps a month from bloom.