The Link #27 - Letters to the Editor

Note for our Readers
Selecting material to include in The Link is sometimes problematic. Do we choose only those letters and articles that strike us as complete in themselves, covering all aspects of a question? Only those with which we happen to agree? Only those which we feel do justice to the teachings?

Many contributions make interesting points, even when the context isn’t entirely clear. In the end, we feel it is better to share certain letters and articles than not, and we leave it up to the readers’ own intelligence to see if anything of significance for them is being said.

The old brain and the new: a reply to Toward Understanding Consciousness

This is in response to Dr. Hidley’s article in Link 26.

For many decades Krishnamurti (K) referred to the self as an illusion. He noted that this illusion is sustained by the movement of thought. Regarding consciousness, K said that the content of consciousness is consciousness. That content neuroscience will no doubt be able to observe and quantify, as it is thought. The following excerpt, from a dialogue with David Bohm (DB) is appropriate here:

DB:: What do you mean by the mind?
K:: The mind is the whole – emotions, thought, consciousness, the brain – the whole of that is the mind.
DB:: The word ‘mind’ has been used in many ways. Now you are using it in a certain way, that it represents thought, feeling, desire and will – the whole material process.
K:: Yes, the whole material process.
DB:: Which people have called non-material!
K:: Quite. But the mind is the whole material process.
DB:: Which is going on in the brain and the nerves.
( J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm: The Ending of Time, pg. 238)

Up to this point, the emerging neuroscience view on self and consciousness and that of K are in agreement. Now the crucial departure from this scientific view is that which K called “the absolutely silent mind”, “the empty mind”, “a state of existing in nothingness”, which involves an actual physical change or mutation in the brain.

K:: Is there a faculty in the brain which can change the nature and structure of the brain so that it frees itself of the past, so that it is alive and new?
(Pupul Jayakar: Krishnamurti – A Biography, pg. 391)

K says that such a new brain is directly open to or partakes of “the mind of the universe”, “the immensity”, “the source of the energy of all things”, “the ground”. Many scientists may well dismiss such a notion as poetic fantasy, illusion or humbug. But K’s challenge to the human brain remains.

One has read reports of brain researchers claiming to have found the source of religious experience. They had stimulated parts of the brains of volunteers, inducing very pleasant visions and trances, which were assumed to be spiritual in nature. They had clearly stimulated the unconscious. This has nothing whatever to do with the absolutely empty mind, as discussed in detail on many occasions by K. Neuroscientists and their associates will then be examining ‘old brains’, not a ‘new brain’, which in any case is exceedingly rare.

In closing, let us invite the physicist Werner Heisenberg to the podium:

One may say that the human ability to understand may be in a certain sense unlimited. But the existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.
(T. J. McFarlane and W. Nisker : Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings, Seastone, Berkeley, California, 2002. Note: this work is composed of sayings by foremost physicists and Eastern sages juxtaposed so as to demonstrate the meeting of science and Eastern spirituality.)

Samuel Gfeller, February 2007

A G Educational Trust is a charitable trust, registered in England, formed by the Link group in the early years of its existence. It allows donations, primarily from UK residents, to be made tax-effectively to Krishnamurti educational projects worldwide. We occasionally receive enquiries from donors asking how and where they might make donations to such projects. If you are such a person, please contact: A G Educational Trust, 2 The Spinney, Bramdean, Alresford, Hampshire SO24 0JE, England; or e-mail KLI@kmail.ch.

A personal response to Toward Understanding Consciousness

I felt a need to respond to Dr. Hidley’s article Toward Understanding Consciousness as I have experience of neurology but from a very different perspective. After having looked after my husband for a long time following a major stroke, and also coming into contact with various neurological disorders, I am fully aware of the function of the brain regarding perceptual and cognitive processes. To see these processes disrupted is a salutary lesson in the very nature of how the brain works. I do not mean scientifically, chemically, but its function at a ground level in our lives: legs and arms do not move independently – they rely on messages sent down from the brain; vision isn’t something that happens by magic in our eyes – the interpretation of what we see, in fact seeing it at all, depends on healthy activity in the brain. Neurology remains a source of fascination to me not least because we cannot explain everything that goes on in the brain. Krishnamurti talked of change in the brain cells: is it possible for this change to come about and affect our way of living? I have seen first-hand how return of function can be effected over time as new circuits are created in the brain.

From my experience the whole human being (mind, body, spirit, psyche, emotions...) will strive to heal itself and, given the right conditions, it will manage partial or total recovery, unless the damage is so severe that the organism shuts down. I see this as the ‘total movement’ that Krishnamurti talked about; order in us and around us re-establishing itself. In essence how this happens is a mystery and cannot be explained away.

Whatever people ‘believe’ about self or consciousness and whether science can trace it all back to neurons firing in the brain, essentially is all one. It seems to me that belief and analysis stem from the same source: the field of consciousness from which we view and analyse the world being only a small corner in the vast field of intelligence, the unknown.

The brain is essentially responsive to the environment it is in. This is why we start physical and general rehabilitation as soon as possible after a neurological episode to prevent bad ‘habits’ from setting in. Whatever is happening, physically or otherwise, if it goes on long enough the brain will start to read it as normal – hence the term ‘brain washing’. We are the world we live in, in a very real sense, and we are in many ways the sum of our conditioning... and yet... Intelligence, love, can operate in the field of the known and in my experience that energy, that intelligence is transformative and it is healing.

We are all wired slightly differently and therefore some of us are inclined towards an intuitive or a scientific approach. To divide us up and reduce us to scientific certainties is dangerous: it denies the mystery of life – the unknown – in us and around us. Out of humanity and deep appreciation of the diversity within us, I would like to see scientists acknowledge the bigger picture, the totality of the human condition. That may be when true understanding and perhaps real change can take place.

Louise King, September 2007

The self of thought and the self of insight

Prof. Hidley’s article in Link 26 challenges us. He says: “... just wait until science proves that the self is nothing but the complex activity of chemicals and neurons.” But what do we mean by the self in this context?

Suppose that one day I see my friend Mr. Jones in the street and that when he sees me he bursts into tears. This event bothers me and I ask myself why. This ability to ask why constitutes the very consciousness of myself, i.e. the sense that the same unitary centre of consciousness confronts the separate phenomena of Mr. Jones walking, seeing me and bursting into tears. I then think about it and cast about for explanations.

As K used to point out, first we cast about in memory for past events that resemble the present one and we imagine an explanation, e.g. “Mr. Jones is frightened of me; he is unwell; he is deluded; I am hateful to him; I have been mistaken for someone else,” etc. We try to project past events into the present one and we do so by adopting a viewpoint over and above the particular instance.

For example, after watching a series of things fall to the ground, one concludes that in general objects fall to the ground. In this way one finds a place in consciousness where one feels that one is partaking of the lawful nature of the world, i.e. of the general rule covering all instances of a given type, which is a way of looking down from the general on the particular. But until we find an unequivocally true explanation, we have to live with questions. We have to seek until we have an insight into the true meaning of the given phenomena.

Later I learn that Mr. Jones’ brother, whom I resemble, died a week ago. So the incident had nothing to do with the circumstances of our meeting but only with the fact that I reminded him of his dead brother. I now feel I have an insight into the incident. This capacity to have an insight constitutes my self-consciousness in a truer sense than merely thinking a response from past events. The self that is merely the automatic response of images is not at all the same as the desire for true insight. The memory or conditioned response is self-enclosing and potentially neurotic. The true insight, on the other hand, gives me the true Mr. Jones and also my true self, i.e. the self that is the capacity to have an insight.

Now we come to the question of the nature of brain chemistry and cell functions. To begin with, these are sensory phenomena. The neuroscientists use brain scans to determine the correspondence between thoughts and brain responses. But to identify the brain responses with the thoughts would be to confuse things, for no brain scanner can see thoughts or consciousness, but only objects and processes, i.e. matter. So all one can say is that when Mr. X thinks this, the brain scan does that, and then seek out the patterns and connections in it. But these patterns and connections will, in fact, be insights, and insights cannot be seen by brain scanners but only, as the word implies, from within.

Some day it may be possible to see why the brain behaves as it does when I have either a repetitive remembered thought or an insight into something. Perhaps one will find that the self of repetitive memory-based thought is inextricably bound with brain chemistry, but that the self of insight is not, although it may produce an affect that may then be observable as a brain scan.

S.A. Moore-Bridges, February 2007

The importance of emotion

After reading K again, it occurred to me that K was probably well ahead of his time in understanding the impact of the computer revolution on our concept of thought, in psychology better known as “cognition”. Currently I see the focus in psychology shifting from thought to the relevance of emotion. All the new brain studies using fMRI scans seem to question both the importance of thought (which shows how right K was) and the existence of a self. They emphasize the predominance of emotional evaluation, often not conscious to the thinker, which then generates conscious judgment and decision making, i.e. thought, thus creating the illusion of a self relying on rational thinking when it is actually driven by a neurological network of emotions.

K has not laid much emphasis on emotion, except when he asks for passion as a necessity if the inquiry is to be more than mere intellectualizing. He describes, for instance, the coping with fear or love as concepts that thought creates using its conditioning, a conditioning that in turn limits thought. But he tends not to emphasize the immediate emotional reaction (a nonverbal physical and mental process) as something that evaluates prior to thought. In this way, thought does not create; it interprets. In fact, thought then has only one function, namely to verbalize what has already happened and to give it an overall accepted meaning. So do we need to look a lot more at emotions, emotions as the root of being?

Wolfgang Dumat, January 2007

Considering self-inquiry

My general impression after having read some of the articles in Link 26 has prompted me to share the following reflections.

To me, there are some facts in this field that are important to be aware of. In order to avoid unnecessary difficulties, they should be considered when we experiment with ourselves, when we reason or communicate with one another.

We have two groups of normal senses, those directed towards the outward world and internal senses ‘reporting’ the state of different aspects of the body. All senses report to consciousness, the superior sensing ‘organ’. They are continually giving us actual information as to how things are now. The senses do not have the ability to escape from the now.

Information from the senses is always actual. Unfortunately, this originally ‘pure’, observed information from the senses is mostly interpreted automatically and unconsciously by responses from our psyche. Therefore, we see what we see through a ‘spectacle’ coloured by our unconscious psyche. This colour is a response from our past life.

Time, the imagination of past and future, is the main dimension of thought, though it can also operate without past and future being involved. Thus, observation and thinking are quite different and seemingly mutually excluding functions. In spite of this, both time and the now are present in consciousness nearly all the time!

There is no thinker separate from thought, only a thinking process projecting thought into consciousness. “The word is not the thing.”

There are two types of feelings: feelings as sensations, such as hunger or heat; and emotions, such as anxiety, longing, ambition, hatred, etc. Both ‘report’ to consciousness. In addition, there seems to be a third and more profound group, including love, empathy, responsibility, etc. Emotions have the special quality that they can be imposed on the psyche and ‘deprogrammed’ from the psyche. Thought can create emotions and emotions can create thought.

All that happens, all doing, all seeing, all thinking, all feeling and all understanding take place now. Thus all changes in the psyche happen now.

Conscious life is the current stream of information of all types through consciousness. Life takes place now all the time. It is the paradox of life. As we have seen, parts of this information may come from the senses and therefore be actual, or from thought and either be actual or mostly tied up with future and past.

The unconscious psyche consists, among other things, of registrations from the past. It shapes our life and character. Most of the content of the unconscious psyche is inaccessible. This registration and accumulation take place during the entire life. A stream in the opposite direction is practically non-existent.

Our subtle or strong reactions are responses of the unconscious psyche to external or internal occurrences. Through these responses the unconscious psyche exposes parts of its content and makes it observable and understandable.

There are two types of understanding: the intellectual and the direct. Direct understanding is when one sees what is actually going on without verbalising, without the interference of thought.

Consciousness is the ultimate sense ‘organ’. Consciousness has different states of awareness. In states of extreme awareness, consciousness can also observe thought, emotions and any movement of the psyche. In that state thought withers away without effort. It is a discipline without internal conflict. In that state any movement in the psyche is a consequence of something happening and not an action of will. From that state it is possible to observe what is actually going on in the psyche.

This passive and attentive seeing has in itself the ability to transform what is seen, to create order and clarity. Observing these reactions from that thoughtless state of awareness in daily life creates an emptying process in the psyche. This process may also eliminate the coloured ‘spectacle’. This state cannot be found by any action of thought, as thought cannot find a state where thought is not. Therefore one has to come upon it. Perhaps we can make it more likely to happen by re-discovering our outer and inner senses.

Johan Lem, March 2007

On the wordiness of The Link

Words are inadequate to explain how a person can move from confusion to a state of discovery, where the person is face to face with his or her own thoughts from moment to moment.

This transition does not take place at the flick of a switch. It involves a lot of learning. It creates a lot of pain and makes the person very vulnerable. This vulnerability creates a lot of insecurity in those around. Both the family and society want security and will feel very disturbed in the presence of such a person. So it is not a path of rose petals.

K’s talks over the years were an exercise in looking at the problems of life from many different angles. He never gave a solution in one long discourse. He looked at one problem at a time. This has changed the lives of many people. Now they have to let go of his words and continue the enquiry by themselves.

I request that articles in The Link be short and sweet. Not long theses, which are impossible to digest.

Prem Kumar Balaji, March 2007