Krishnamurti, spirituality, egocentricity, and freedom from self

[dwai]

Firstly, you do know self from 'out there' and have confirmed it. Whether you call that localised awareness or something else, you are aware that there is this self and you can direct your awareness to introspection, or extrospection.

 

I was a very diligent self inquirer Jetsun. You are asking questions for which there are no answers and for which there is no basis for answers. I talked about faith, but no one seems to grasp why faith is different to belief. I had faith. Tumbling out of the mirror it really doesn't make any sense, it's like being asked what it's like to be unconscious.

 

There is no need for faith when one is established in the Self. What we seek to do with questions, answers and rationalization are all efforts of the mind. What do you have when there is no mind? That is where Pure Consciousness - The Self resides. The only role that "mind" plays in Self-inquiry and Self-realization is that it needs to be shut off.

[Brian]

Yet you respond to such questions... so if you posit an answer to a question, then the question should have an answer...

“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”

-- Richard Feynman

[dwai]

“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”

-- Richard Feynman

 

The only question that matters in Self Inquiry is "Who am I?"

[Karl]

Yet you respond to such questions... so if you posit an answer to a question, then the question should have an answer...

You answer it then ;-)

[dawei]

The only question that matters in Self Inquiry is "Who am I?"

 

seems an imposed question on the self... when self may not even exist...   it is the self asking and telling...  ergo, just talking with self...

[Karl]

That is true, yet awareness can also become one with the wider awareness . Basically when awareness becomes quiet and still it stops pinging around the mind bouncing from concept to concept its real nature can be revealed, like a wave realising that its real nature is water of the entire sea.

Awareness doesn't become quiet, awareness can be focused, moved, expanded. It can embrace a thought, feeling, sense. Having no awareness needs no description. Awareness must be aware of something.

[dawei]

Awareness doesn't become quiet, awareness can be focused, moved, expanded. It can embrace a thought, feeling, sense. Having no awareness needs no description. Awareness must be aware of something.

 

Are you aware that some folks are simply unaware ?   

[Karl]

There is no need for faith when one is established in the Self. What we seek to do with questions, answers and rationalization are all efforts of the mind. What do you have when there is no mind? That is where Pure Consciousness - The Self resides. The only role that "mind" plays in Self-inquiry and Self-realization is that it needs to be shut off.

Describe the experience of pure consciousness ;-)

 

If you haven't discovered the need for pure faith then I doubt you have gone very far down the road. Go steady. There be monsters.

[Karl]

Are you aware that some folks are simply unaware ?

Only the unconscious or dead ones. :-)

[doc benway]

In my experience spirituality can work in a kind of bait and switch way, so there is a lot of things attractive to the ego in it all, for me it was the image of becoming some kind of open hearted all loving kind of Saintly guy who brings healing and peace to all those around me, along with a few Siddhi's and wisdom thrown in. That and some other stuff baited me in and made me interested in all this stuff and I learned to meditate and read loads of books and went to spiritual events and met teachers. But then when reality struck one moment the realisation clearly emerged that the person who imagined achieving all that doesn't survive the journey, I will never be enlightened, only enlightenment gets enlightened, which was ultimately a blow and a disappointment to my ego and also brought up a lot of fear, but I was in too deep and turning around wasn't really possible. Bait and switch, its all a setup.

 

Without some kind of bait for the ego I doubt anyone except those living in extreme suffering would bother with spirituality

 

That's a good point and the bait can ultimately be real nourishment...

 

The ego that worries won't ever be gone, but it will tells us that to scare us away; and enlightenment is still there... 

 

It is of the same taste

[C T]

Reality is the internal conceptual model. Our sense of the universe at any one point in time. It evolves as we receive new perceptions and make new integrations.

 

Reality and a model of reality is not the same.

 

Reality does not evolve - What seems to evolve are the ever-recurring limits of our senses superimposed on it and a natural intelligence peculiar to our species that gnaws and gnaws and create some kind of false sense of evolvement, thus making a person, mostly unknowingly, do things either all the time or some of the time, out of desperation, craving and an almost maniacal and incessant dissatisfaction with what is. 

 

Are you suggesting we should deprive ourselves of ALL sense information and thus, whatever reality remains must therefore be true ?

 

The deprivation is already present due to habituated and reflexive tendencies which remain mostly unnoticeable or simply ignored, shunned or humoured at under different guises motivated by a thousand different needs. Sense information is also filtered from/through these tendencies, and are therefore limited in terms of scope and reliability so whatever little that remains cannot therefore be anywhere near true. Out of habit we unknowingly choose to take for granted most of the mundane stuff happening here and now, to the extent that we are far removed from reality but not so far removed from thinking we know what it is when pondering over it. So in fact we don't really have to wilfully act to deprive ourselves of anything - our lack of spontaneous presence already equates to being deprived.

 

Careful with that one, it quickly becomes a loaded pistol. There is only one way to deprive ourselves of all sense information. It's a great way to test the theory of the primacy of consciousness though rather permanent.

 

See above please

[dwai]

seems an imposed question on the self... when self may not even exist... it is the self asking and telling... ergo, just talking with self...

The self that doesn't exist asks the Self that exists..who am I? When the answer results in silence, the self disappears and only the Self remains

[Karl]

@CT

 

Eh ?

 

Reality is our current internal understanding of the existent universe as it is. A is A but our internal reality can be in error. Even logic may not be sufficient. For instance; if we think we are Napoleon then it is logical to wonder where Josephine is. When we are very young our internal map of reality is a long way from allowing is the possibility of survival, but as we all know, over time we accrue experience and build a more accurate map which we use to navigate independent from the necessity of having parents.

 

 

It looks to me, by your second point that you are of the school which believes that we have intrinsic knowledge that we are somehow ignoring, that we only need to 'get the mind out of the way' and we will have access to this knowledge.

 

 

Clearly your ideology is an attack on reason and the mind itself, if I understand you correctly. I would describe that as a kind of psychosis.

 

I'm about done on this forum-which will likely come as a relief to many ;-) It was a worthwhile transition.

 

Toodle pip.

Edited November 19, 2016 by Karl

[Brian]

@CT

 

Eh ?

 

Reality is our current internal understanding of the existent universe as it is. A is A but our internal reality can be in error. Even logic may not be sufficient. For instance; if we think we are Napoleon then it is logical to wonder where Josephine is. When we are very young our internal map of reality is a long way from allowing is the possibility of survival, but as we all know, over time we accrue experience and build a more accurate map which we use to navigate independent from the necessity of having parents.

 

 

It looks to me, by your second point that you are of the school which believes that we have intrinsic knowledge that we are somehow ignoring, that we only need to 'get the mind out of the way' and we will have access to this knowledge.

 

 

Clearly your ideology is an attack on reason and the mind itself, if I understand you correctly. I would describe that as a kind of psychosis.

 

I'm about done on this forum-which will likely come as a relief to many ;-) It was a worthwhile transition.

 

Toodle pip.

This is a personal attack, Karl, and a particularly nasty one. If your threat/promise is as hollow as I expect, you should expect to be called to task for your behavior.

[doc benway]

It looks to me, by your second point that you are of the school which believes that we have intrinsic knowledge that we are somehow ignoring, that we only need to 'get the mind out of the way' and we will have access to this knowledge.

 

 

Clearly your ideology is an attack on reason and the mind itself, if I understand you correctly. I would describe that as a kind of psychosis.

 

I'm about done on this forum-which will likely come as a relief to many ;-) It was a worthwhile transition.

 

Toodle pip.

 

This is a wonderful segue to one of my favorite quotes from Jiddu:

 

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

 

He attacked the domination of  mind and thought and referred to its transcendence in one of his book titles as, Freedom from the Known. 

 

By your definition Karl, I am psychotic.

By mine, you are living in ignorance.

Both are a part of the human condition.

 

Here is a video teaching I recently watched which may appeal to some.

One of my main practices is sleep yoga - this is a brief introduction to the practice and its objectives.

It has some bearing on this discussion of the mind, thought, and its provenance, and how this relates to life, sleep, dream, and death. 

 

 

Here is something I recently stumbled on that may also be relevant to this thread.

 

https://peaceandpolitics.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/reading-ayn-rand/

[Brian]

Hmm...I'm not quite sure what to say.

 

I probably shouldn't say anything.

 

So much for normativity...

 

Karl wasn't particularly complementary with his post but the phrasing wasn't a personal attack; it was a statement of judgement as a perlocution.

 

I dunno---to me, you're all kind of in crazy-man's-land because you're squabbling over words without getting into the specifics of how they are being used in the particular context. To a point, nobody has taken the extra steps to really understand what the other person is saying. There is a lot of jockeying and prodding to try and bring someone else's conceptual productions under scrutiny by relating them to someone else's use of the terms that the concepts are expressed in.

 

Maybe I'm just more critical on this point because I can partially feel how mental resources are being activated and shaping the word use. But, that aside, you are forming ad-hoc groups on this thread in accord with personal affinities with other members (which are expressed and articulated through the words that are used that match or are closer to matching your usage and/or schemes of concepts that match your favored conceptual dispositions).

 

Whatever the case, I think there are problems here that are bigger than Karl (though he is not excluded from them).

Sincerely labeling another Bum as psychotic because they disagree with your belief system is a step too far, especially when the offender claims to be some sort of therapist.

[dwai]

Describe the experience of pure consciousness ;-)

 

See! There...that's not so hard is it?

 

If you haven't discovered the need for pure faith then I doubt you have gone very far down the road. Go steady. There be monsters.

There is no need for faith. My Self always is...even the monsters are my own creation.

[Nungali]

.

 

I'm about done on this forum-which will likely come as a relief to many ;-) It was a worthwhile transition.

 

Toodle pip.

 

So, instead of looking at your issues, brought to light by many a poster ... and your own posts .... 

 

your final resolution is    

 

 

[rex]

Part of Krishnamurti's point, imo part of the essence of his teaching, was that "spirituality" just makes people MORE egocentric, MORE self-centered and self-absorbed.

 

....

 

Please share your thoughts if you have any.

 

This may be of interest (it's long!)

 

Narcissism –The shadow of transpersonal psychology

 

Abstract

Narcissism comes ,in two ,variants: Ego-inflation and the Moses complex. While the former is exhibited by pathological grandiosity, the latter is marked by excessive self- devaluation and lack of self-esteem. In group contexts, both are found in the symbiotic appearance of charismatic,leaders and worshipping,followers. Both are subtle forms of spiritual defense mechanisms,against the true spiritual task of finding and transcending one’s “true” self. Because of its specific topic transpersonal psychology is particularly likely to attract people with narcissistic problems ,and one should ,be aware ,of this. Some practical implications are pointed out. Key words: narcissism, self, spirituality, self-esteem 3

 

[Jetsun]

Most of the genuinely highly realised beings I have discovered or met seem to have an element of devotion in their path, devotion to something outside of themselves, which maybe counters the increase in potential self egocentricity.

 

Even the most ardent non-dualists like Ramana worshiped a mountain and Nisagadatta would sing devotional Bhajans, even though on the ultimate level they knew these things weren't seperate or outside of themselves they still continued these dual type devotional practices.

Edited November 21, 2016 by Jetsun

[Nungali]

I have found that, regardless of any level of realisation or awareness , we still hold ( each to their own level) a certain amount of 'emotive conditioning' .

 

My take on this is, although we live in a modern world,  the development of our minds and psychology have only been effected by that for a few hundred years , while previously, we had a different perception / understanding of things built up over 10s of 1000s of years .  Most of this seems lodged in the unconscious.

 

So regardless of conscious operating modes and levels, we can still utilize such dynamics .... even though we consciously comprehend and understand them .  That is why, I think,  such things as 'offerings' . 'worship' , singing devotion, leaving things out for 'the little people'  etc .  can work well for some , regardless of their 'outer' realisations and 'developments' .

[roger]

 

This may be of interest (it's long!)

 

Narcissism –The shadow of transpersonal psychology

 

Abstract

Narcissism comes ,in two ,variants: Ego-inflation and the Moses complex. While the former is exhibited by pathological grandiosity, the latter is marked by excessive self- devaluation and lack of self-esteem. In group contexts, both are found in the symbiotic appearance of charismatic,leaders and worshipping,followers. Both are subtle forms of spiritual defense mechanisms,against the true spiritual task of finding and transcending one’s “true” self. Because of its specific topic transpersonal psychology is particularly likely to attract people with narcissistic problems ,and one should ,be aware ,of this. Some practical implications are pointed out. Key words: narcissism, self, spirituality, self-esteem 3

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing this.

 

I had a friend who always felt guilty and was obsessed with how "evil" (his exact word) he was. He would always talk about how wrong his thoughts and behaviors were, and even had scrupulosity (the obsessive fear of going to hell).

 

I eventually saw that he was very self-righteous and competitive, and even though he told me that I respected him so much that it made him uncomfortable, he nevertheless was very judgmental and critical towards me.

 

My point is that I agree with you that low self-esteem and self-degradation can be a sign of pride and narcissism.

 

"Specialness" and guilt often go together. If someone feels overly guilty about making a mistake, it's like it matters so much that THEY messed up, that THEY aren't perfect. Pride can make people intolerant of themselves and their failures.

 

The truly humble thing to do is forgive yourself and know that it's okay that you're not perfect and make mistakes.

[Small Fur]

On November 14, 2016 at 0:53 PM, roger said:

Part of Krishnamurti's point, imo part of the essence of his teaching, was that "spirituality" just makes people MORE egocentric, MORE self-centered and self-absorbed.

 

When I look at my own path, at myself, I see this.

 

It's like MY path, MY life, MY experience, MY enlightenment, have been of supreme importance to me.

 

Is that good?? Maybe it is, the truth is I really don't know.

 

We have to care for and tend to our lives and paths, we should CARE about succeeding.

 

But what about "freedom from self" and "dying to self"?

 

Is the kind of self-concern people have good?

 

Please share your thoughts if you have any.

 

Yes, Krishnamurti felt strongly about this matter and spoke out about it with consistency. 

And from a psychological and sociological stand point, his point is often made apparent and so well observed.

 

You say we “have” to care and “should”  care about “succeeding”. But when you feel that clinging, desperate, self-imposed imperative to “care” about this supposedly definable end point of ‘success’- do you actually feel liberated and well in this pre-conceived belief of striving and attainment?

 

Why are you so adamant and possessive about the inherency your being? What do you fear will thwart the “you” that already is?

 

Your self-identification with the ideas of how things must be and this self-possession fixates you in a myopic (if not un-intentionally petty) sense of boundary and stress and that keeps you from the very expansiveness of self-liberation that you are actually seeking. 

 

Is the self-concern good? Only in so far that it has nourished, guided and supported you this far. But here you are, at a small impasse in questioning your foundational habits of mind and behavior and I encourage you to delve deeper into your assumptions to create new ways of navigating through the flowing of life.

 

Edited January 14, 2018 by Small Fur