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Bright Light. Big Questions. (split from bobby & irene)

watercrystal said:
But, if not thoughts, then what would we have been left with?!
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If not thought, thought being static, past, dead -- then there is learning, which is dynamic, moving, renewing itself. Say, for instance, you are a scientist studying a species completely new to you -- something you've never experienced before. Do you watch it one day and then spend the rest of your life trying to put any behaviors, talents, skills, etc., it possesses within the confines of the knowledge you gained on that one single day? Or do you watch it's every move, constantly learning what it does, how it responds, prepared to put any hypothesis from yesterday aside if the experience of today shows it to be in error? Each day your little organism is fresh and new to you and your learning remains dynamic. If we are honest and admit each to himself or herself, that our most vital interest is ourselves, then doesn't it make sense to learn about ourselves in this same constant movement of learning we would use for this new species our scientist discovered?

And I'm really sorry, I'm trying to type all this with an 8-year-old peering over my shoulder waiting for me to finish, so if something doesn't make sense, I'll take another try later.
 
I'll add that the self, or thought, is limited due to the fact that it can't comprehend what it would be like if it didn't exist. in the end, it either imagines itself in extreme isolation, alone in a white room or something like that, or it imagines a world in which it is someone else. it can't for the life of it see a state in which it is absent. so thought, being insecure, can't bring about clarity and understanding. but there are times when, without asking, the mind becomes silent and there is no thought. next time you see a spider crawling on your sleeve, observe what happens. right away the awareness of it is there, but only after that split second does thought react. it comes in and wants to get caught up, like it's late for the party. it wants to know what just happened, but what it can know is limited to what the mind is aware of. so I would say that awareness is what underlies thought.
 
I've been following this thread with interest but, as novella mentioned, it seems like an intrusion to interject anything here.

Most of my views on life have already been expressed in various ways by previous posters. But just a note to the seekers out there: Krishnamurti's writings or anyone else's for that matter can't be used in and of itself to fix what's wrong in one's life or to show you the way to some 'better life'. It can be one tool to open oneself to different ways of thinking, but if you don't get it, you're no more or less than you were before. We all get to where we're going to in different ways and at different times.

OK, I'll go away now.
ell
 
I agree. all paths traveled with honesty and clarity lead to this. it can't be learned, not even from someone like krishnamurti who never claimed to be a teacher, because then it becomes a belief, and belief gets in the way of clarity. now that I've said that someone will come in here and say, "ah, but that's a belief, too." but it's not. to that person it is, but only because it can't be understood verbally. there's something lost in the translation. I don't know how else to communicate it, though. I know it sounds corny, but if you've ever had a color described to you that you've never seen before, you know it's almost impossible to comprehend. you might have an image of what you think it is, but it's usually not the thing you thought it was once you see it. it's that belief that's the problem. it's basically thought trying to replace perception. it creates a screen that limits everything you see around you. if you believe that belief is put together by thought, because that's what david bohm or krishanmurti said, then you still aren't seeing it as a fact, you're just remembing what someone else said. you might have this powerful argument, but eventually you'll hit a ceiling with it, even if it's a really high one, because your understanding is second-hand. it's not like you have to be interested in eastern philosophy or martial arts to get any of this. I've read books by christians who had a definite understanding of what compassion and oneness is. however, their definitions of "god" and "prayer" were not the backwards concepts associated with religion. they were just different words describing energy and silence. I don't use them because of their limited associations, but, like I was saying earlier, clarity manifests itself differently in each person. the words aren't what brings it about. they're just tools.
 
novella said:
RitKid, I must tell you that I really like your posts. In fact, your post this morning on the Memory of Running thread was really touching, and I'm sad that I have not read that book yet and can't participate.
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Thanks. You really made my day. The feeling is mutual. I appreciate the time and thought that you put into your posts. You have a great vocabulary. That was pretty intimidating when I first got here. :)

Lots of time has been spent on the posts in this thread, and it hasn't gone unnoticed. Thanks, Bobby and Irene, for getting this thing started.
 
Good call on the split. I was just about to ask you if you wanted to do this. Great minds think alike.

I picked up Freedom from the Known last night. It took a dedicated search. Some of Krishnamurti's books were shelved in the Hindu section at Borders while some were in the Buddhist section. Anyway, the first chapter was very easily digested. As I said before, the thoughts are strikingly familiar to me. I have to say thanks again for turning me on to this book, Bobby and Irene. I can already see it will be a great starting point. As K says, it's not a step by step guide or recipe. I've already found about two ideas that I either disagree with his language or his idea (even thought I see where it comes from), but I see the book as a point of reference.

He speaks of feeling a renewed energy in your life when you throw off certain ideas. I have felt this twice in my life, once while reading How To Make Yourself Happy by Dr. Albert Ellis and now while reading this thread and Krishnamurti's thoughts. Science and philosophy, how far are they really separated?

I feel a need to further explain that "energy" because I would rather avoid ethereal or esoteric terminology. A few months ago I had a really heavy feeling settle over me. Suddenly, I felt as if I would be going through the motions for the rest of my life, running my life as a business, almost mechanically. I didn't really get depressed over it. I just told myself, "That's the way it is; that's life." Recently, I've been seeing that there is so much more to know, that there is so little I have done both inward and outward. It's rejuvenating, and there's a spark there. The energy seems to have appeared out of the absence of something from my mind. It's the relaxation you feel when you walk out of a large room of people, and the dull roar falls away. You can hear yourself, and this stress you didn't even know was there lifts out of your shoulders. For me, the corners of my mouth turn up of their own volition, and life is good. Now, maybe you understand why I said thanks.

That being said, you can see how sharing ideas is very helpful. Do any of you keep a journal of your thoughts? I feel compelled to start one.
 
bobbyburns said:
. . . there are times when, without asking, the mind becomes silent and there is no thought. next time you see a spider crawling on your sleeve, observe what happens. right away the awareness of it is there, but only after that split second does thought react. it comes in and wants to get caught up, like it's late for the party. it wants to know what just happened, but what it can know is limited to what the mind is aware of. so I would say that awareness is what underlies thought.
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bobby, you have a real gift for drawing out these kinds of concepts.

If I may continue to probe this: the way that I conceive of the above experience is as nonverbal thought.

In the way that you describe the thought process 'wanting to get caught up' I experience that as the mind trying to match language to experience, which is a very distinct, primary function of rationality.

But there is also the nonverbal thought experience, which is by nature indescribable yet happens to everyone.

For instance, a person is faced with a difficult problem, maybe a deep ethical conflict or a difficult nonverbal conceptual problem, such as in physics or math. He tries and tries to put it into a verbal form and 'solve' it, because that is the 'rational' way to deal with it, but it doesn't work. He say, let me put this problem aside. He falls asleep. He wakes knowing the right way to proceed, perhaps not the answer, but some little nonverbal idea has fallen into place because he has relaxed his verbal mind and walked away from the struggle.

I see this as a process of thought, but not one that is easily described; its process can't be traced, its mechanisms are obscure, the way that it happens seems somewhat inexplicable. But haven't we all experienced something like it?
 
novella, I think this idea is rooted in the fact that we have developed two parts of our brain. We have a rational thought center, and we the part of our brain that will supply primal urges, flight or fight type responses. If you get slapped, you don't think, "I'm pissed." However, you're filled with rage, or if the guy that hit you is a professional lineman in the NFL, you run if you're still conscious. As Bobby described, you don't put it together until later. There's a balance to the two sides. If the nonverbal side is yelling, the rational side is quieter and takes a while to kick in. I think maybe some of what we're talking about may require understanding and subduing some of our impulsive feelings with our rational side.

To give an example, I saw recently where they did some research into human sexual behavior. The test looked at different responses made by men and women to sexully explicit images. The interesting thing was that when shown homosexual images, even if the heterosexual participant felt neutral, the brain showed a "threat response." Althought not thoroughly investigated yet, this is more evidence of people being threatened by foreign ideas, that which we do not understand, and proof that we can have a reaction that we may not even be aware of. This is partly why I think the reflexive responses by our brain could possibly be toned down by exercising rational thought. Some terms for that would be prayer and meditation.
 
RitalinKid said:
novella, I think this idea is rooted in the fact that we have developed two parts of our brain. We have a rational thought center, and we the part of our brain that will supply primal urges, flight or fight type responses. If you get slapped, you don't think, "I'm pissed." However, you're filled with rage, or if the guy that hit you is a professional lineman in the NFL, you run if you're still conscious. As Bobby described, you don't put it together until later. There's a balance to the two sides. If the nonverbal side is yelling, the rational side is quieter and takes a while to kick in. I think maybe some of what we're talking about may require understanding and subduing some of our impulsive feelings with our rational side.

To give an example, I saw recently where they did some research into human sexual behavior. The test looked at different responses made by men and women to sexully explicit images. The interesting thing was that when shown homosexual images, even if the heterosexual participant felt neutral, the brain showed a "threat response." Althought not thoroughly investigated yet, this is more evidence of people being threatened by foreign ideas, that which we do not understand, and proof that we can have a reaction that we may not even be aware of. This is partly why I think the reflexive responses by our brain could possibly be toned down by exercising rational thought. Some terms for that would be prayer and meditation.
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Yes, those automatic, instinctive mechanisms exist and are powerful, but what I'm talking about is a more time-consuming nonverbal knowledge-sorting process, not a sudden impulse.

An immediate emotional response to a threat is something quite different from the brain's ability to nonverbally process complex and sometimes 'unknown' (not consciously known) data over a long time, without the concious overlay of a language-based thought stream.

It's closer to the process of getting 'in flow' while creating something or doing something physical. You know it's right, you can feel it's right, and you know it's working better because you are not 'thinking' (ie. thinking verbally) about it.
 
there's definitely something there. they even had a thing on coast-to-coast a few months ago about an inventor in canada who had no scientific knowledge or background, yet somehow built an electro-magnetic beam that can see through walls like superman, detect stealth material and stop any electronic device dead in its path. it's insane. what's even more insane is that the idea came to him in a series of recurring dreams. there's no way he could have built it on his own anyway. he had to call scientists at MIT to figure out what it was. anyway, what I'm getting at is this, that there are psychological abilities which can't be explained. what zen is saying, though, is that none of this is important. it's neither the problem nor the solution.
 
only if I get my name written into a fancy book by a wise old man with a beard when I die, and in heaven shaquille o'neal is there shooting three-point shots.
 
bobbyburns said:
only if I get my name written into a fancy book by a wise old man with a beard when I die, and in heaven shaquille o'neal is there shooting three-point shots.
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Does O'Neal have to be making the three pointers? Novella is the one true one, but you're asking a lot if you want him making them.
 
bobbyburns said:
only if I get my name written into a fancy book by a wise old man with a beard when I die, and in heaven shaquille o'neal is there shooting three-point shots.
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All that, plus a lifetime supply of Snickers.

Of course, that would have run out if you are dead, though.

And we're gonna run a video (high-def!) of Shaq because he's not really allowed in, personally, to heaven as yet. But Michael Jordan is allowed in, if you want to switch. He has an excellent vocabulary and smells nice too.
 
bobbyburns said:
all I ask is that shaquille, the court and the ball be one.
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One what?

You know, bobby, I'm thinking maybe you can worship shaq on the side, as provided in the God-Doll Belief System Book of Flexible, Spurious Rules. He can get his own hagiography thing going. I just feel like he is competing in MY religion for attention, when he can just as easily get HIS OWN.

That gives me a great product idea. "How to Start Your Own Cult or Religion." It will teach the basics of sucking people in, getting your image sorted out, rules and regs, tax codes, what foods are good for rituals, all the important stuff.
 
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