Due to time constraints and the continuing deterioration of my parents health, I am unable to efficiently monitor my forum as topics have become too diverse.. I appreciate all who have posted and hope the best for Kinfonet to continue to provide a place for people to talk about what they think about Krishnamurti. With this I am closing the forum to further comment.

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: phil K wrote: This you point out ?If my attention can catch the origin and ending of each thought(reaction), then conditioning has no grip on my subsequent action and behavior. The important point here is to be attentive(a movement) till the reaction is over.? This is where I would ask the question as to ?How does one turn attention without intention?? Phil Sir,if you turn attention towards something with intention, won't that become concentration (a thought generated activity)?

Yes. that was exactly my point to your statement which is what you quoted here. My statement was a question at the end. I was pointing out that you were conditioned in the first place with your example and so your intention was thought produced with emotion in the first place. Now intention that is not conditioned is needed in all cases of directed thinking. Otherwise thinking is random. If I don't set a destination (intention), then I just go out for a walk. K asked that people go with him on his walks because he would get lost. He didn't want intention, I presume, while enjoying nature.

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Sir, let us try to understand different levels at which thought occures.Perception of environment can take place from different levels (or depth) of mind

Ok..Perception does not take place in the mind but at different places in the body as in the senses. The memory or the elements of the mind are formed after perception and this happens only at the subconscious level. Perception of consciousness known as self consciousness is at the instant, also, at the subconscious level probably and only reaches consciousness after the delay too. The whole process of conditioned thinking verses unconditioned thinking just has to do with what emotions are attached to what concepts. The self and self image are just two of these processes. They have to do with certain concepts and are supported by the emotion of the self protective process. They are not, however, the whole ball of wax. I think the new poster Elizabeth A has pointed out totally clearly the ending of the self image and I would refer readers to her posts for clarity of what I call the right brain self. I, in my forum, am trying to bring up the self that exists only in verbal thought and also, the continuing challenge of change that occurs even after the ending of the selves.

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Sir, self is the result of operation of the mind in darkness.It starts getting weakened with attention and is dissolved in awareness.To live in awareness is to live in insecurity but that turns out to be the best kind of security later.The self will dissolve only if one is living in awareness as there would be no need to achieve the kind of security the self wants.Also, there is no energy available to fuel the activities of the self.

The self is not fueled by anything. It just exists as ?a? thought supported by feeling and feeling is, in essence, the thing that the mind is there to worry about. Think about that last statement. Why does the mind ?worry?? It worries because something is a danger. Now are all the thoughts we have that go down to the amygdala and cause a response in the adrenal glands with cortisol really things we should ?worry? about? I think not! I think that thought has been conditioned. Not conditioned by anyone particularly but by the process of non advancement of intelligence of mankind. Reread that statement. This does not mean, we went a wrong turn but that we just aren't intelligent enough yet to understand the entire process of the mind. How does that intelligence come about. Maybe it needs more information. Maybe it needs more understanding of what is going on. Maybe one needs more introspection. And maybe one needs to end the mistakes that it has already made like the fact that thought does not need to have fear to give it a reality. The reality is in life. In the nature of the world. Man is just an interpreter of that. Man's mind has just come along and developed senses beyond the senses of the other animals even though we have lost certain senses like smell, seeing and acute hearing. What man has developed is an advanced cortex which is the gray matter above the limbic system and in that gray matter there are massive connections that allow for a thinking process beyond all other animals. Everywhere on this site people are criticizing mankind and his mistakes. But it is only mankind that will solve the problem. If we think that we have created the problem and that somewhere we went wrong and we only have to return to the past, we are totally delusional. We are at the top of the world but at the same time as being able to destroy the world, we could change the world to be the best place in the universe. Yet, we will never do this as long as we remain separate. We will never do that as long as we don't listen to people like Elizabeth A.

I have been at this a lot longer than Elizabeth and I know the dangers of naivette. That is, I know that I don't want to jump in to the water and tell people I have changed (transformed). I tried that early on and saw what it got me and I did it in Ojai! I knew that this would cause the abuse she received at the hands of the Kinfonet geniuses. The male ego, which is a feeling, reigns supreme. Women hate it, yet they too have no solution for that or their own misbegotten images created by biology and the mistake that feeling creates in thought and then the subsequent responses.

Sir, when I reply to your post, I try to describe what actually takes place inside my brain.I appreciate your reply as it makes my understanding clearer.-Regards Maybe, Sudhir, its time to stop looking at how you ?are? working and look at how maybe you ?could? work. I think this would mean just asking questions. I know that was the beginning of the end for me when I stopped telling K how I think I am and should be and try to figure out what the hell he was talking about. I think I always had doubt. There was something wrong. How the hell could these people around me be telling me the truth when they constantly lied to me, only for me to find out later the truth in thought. I was always suspicious and always in doubt even of K. But the day that I decided to open up and ask the right questions and look in to myself, the answers were there. I think Elizabeth would agree to this. The freedom from that day on has been amazing. Yet, it is not a process with an end. There is no enlightenment or truth that can sustain me tomorrow and I am not a guru or can I teach anyone what I know because I cant know it as such. But I can answer questions? However, the answers are in thought and will die the moment I have said them because they are not the answers to your questions except for the moment you propose them and in time for me to answer, your questions may have changed. That is the problem with the internet. I have a friend who asked me questions day in and day out and finally I answered one that made sense and he changed. Was that my answer that made sense or his understanding that made sense to him? Obviously, the latter. I don't make any sense whatsoever. Look at all this shit I talk about about the brain. It totally makes sense to me, but it will only make sense to someone else when they are in the right place at the right time that it hits them. That is the entire body of work of K. I am writing stuff for the intellectual mind to understand and change. If I were an artist who changed maybe I could just paint pictures or if I were a musician, I would compose a sonata that would make sense.

The futility of this process of teaching in this case is astounding to me and that is why I seek other avenues as the brain studies because I do know that someone who is searching and I am searching at the same time will come along and maybe something that is said will be a light in to oneself. Not my light but a light from the words which are not the thing but the truth. They only remain the truth for the moment. But change is something that happens in the moment in all cases with all investigations.

Sudhir...you seem genuinely interested in pursuit of something as I was. Yet the educated doctor mind may be looking for answers within its own system. Observation within the system will lead only to results within the system which is what I read in your posts. We go back and forth and I try to explain things but it always leads back to your process of your looking into yourself. Maybe you need a break to see if the person looking is not a representation of the self itself in some form. There are three of you: One that thinks it can solve the problem and one that feels that it can solve the problem and then one that holistically understands everything but itself. Jesus, I don't know where I came up with that last statement but I think it is true. None of this is ever going to be understood by anything within us that already exists as the reality that it thinks it has. Doubt all...question wherever is possible and seek within oneself....biblically speaking: Seek and ye shall find! Good luck...lol.

I am so glad this stayed on topic for the days I have not responded to Sudhir's post. So I will start with what I had saved.

Sudhir, I think the unconditioning can come about from intention and intention is different than attention in the moment. A goal in the usual sense means a beginning and an end, but when applied to conditioning there is probably no ending as one would always be subject to being conditioned as long as the mind has the ability to attach feeling to thought. In your example in post #273, you talk about seeing a man you do not like on the other side of the road and then being aware of your reactions when you meet up with him. This you point out ?If my attention can catch the origin and ending of each thought(reaction), then conditioning has no grip on my subsequent action and behavior. The important point here is to be attentive(a movement) till the reaction is over.? This is where I would ask the question as to ?How does one turn attention without intention?? If my intention is not to respond to people whom I don't like this is really a movement in thought and doesn't go much beyond ?anger management? as the psychologist would say. What we discuss is ending the conditioning that causes the reaction in the first place and is a much tougher goal. Granted as even K said, we must at least understand this all intellectually as anger management is certainly better than the alternative which is the wrong action. The problem is that one still has the ?reaction? as you point out and possibly attention from intention will not always dissipate the reaction.

In reference to your statements about the self in post #273, I would say that the self is not something to screw with in a manner of speaking. It either ends or it continues to add to reaction as I think its source is the self preservative instinct which will always turn the attention to perceived dangers as well as real dangers and one cannot help but react in this state of consciousness. Even conditioned states that are protected by the self preservative instinct are dangerous as not liking someone.

The semblance of hope I am referring to is that hope is referring to others. I would presume that K's continuing to talk for more than 60 years must have had some semblance of hope that the rest of us could understand his basic premise of ending the self. Anything short of that is just putting band aids on the problem, isn't it?

Ok, that gives my response to put along with Prasanna's. I would like to say one thing about the fragmented consciousness. Consciousness as I see it is nothing but fragmentation and can't be made whole. If consciousness is its content, where is there a whole to that since all memory is fragmented?? Awareness is not consciousness. Self consciousness may exist in a state of awareness but not when the consciousness calls the state of observing content ?me? the observer or calls the ?I? the thinker. ?I think, therefore, I am? is the Descartes mistake. I feel therefore I am is the conditioned state of self. I feel therefore I think I am is the truthful illusion but this comes from the moment of observing thought and feeling at the same time and then making the mistake of naming this process as the ?me.? Awareness attacking this entire process will become the ending of the self in mankind. But as I have said now many times I don't think this ends the self image or ego as feeling.

Therese...once again I cant answer you....i definitely need more philosophical background to get your jist...lol...

sorry I have not been posting but have had too much holiday occupation...I started three posts answers and just saved them to finish later..maybe tomorrow...

Ok...looks like people got in their last statements on this topic. Back to the daily quotes please. Private emails are the place to take care of grievances and please keep them private and dont quote what someone has said to you in an email without their permission.

thanks......PHilK

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Sir, awarenness is either lighting up the perception of environment or is observing the thought process.When the mind is functioning in this manner, then conditioning can not take roots.Neither the past conditionings can influence your responses.The conditioning will be operating and taking new roots if awareness is not present right in the beginning of any action.Is there anyother way to avoid getting conditioned ?

Therese commented on the first part so I will take this part on.

I have no clue how I can stay aware although I agree with your first sentence. Conditioning, however, can have its own roots already. Yes if I am totally free, conditioning cannot take root when I am aware but if I am conditioned and in an aware state at the moment, it appears to me that the conditioned part of the mind is stronger than awareness. The mind takes off in the conditioned state as it appears the input is dangerous or pleasurable and I must respond. I, personally, have not reached any state to fight off conditioning. However, I think in a selfless state, one can tell that even in a conditioned state of action that there is something wrong. The self always lives in the mistake that all of it is real. Without the self, there is some semblance of hope. Hope dissipates, though, as the world around you seems to be collapsing. I still think that freedom from conditioning is the goal of the individual man. It certainly is mine.

Now, I totally missed your response 266 to my 263. I love this, we finally can get things answered. I will do this tomorrow.

Sudhir, thanks for clearing up your statements. I do hope you go back to my time post #263 and comment on it as I would like to go in that direction if possible but will keep on with this too. This is our problem with this type of forum as we so quickly go from topic to topic so lets see if we can keep the two going. I liked the way you referred to a number post and think that is a great way to keep things straight.

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Do you still feel that this way is not sufficient to avoid getting conditioned by others or by the knowledge of oneself?

I am afraid I have to be real K like here in response to this so if this sounds totally familiar, don't blame me...blame K! There is no ?way? to avoid getting conditioned. You either are conditioned or you aren't. If you are conditioned in a certain way, then what those say around you that are words or pictures to your mind will continue to add to your conditioning. You can do absolutely nothing about that because what these people say seems to be true. I have no idea when I am responding in an unconditioned manner. As I speak right now, have I been conditioned by the words of K. I have no idea. It appears what I say is fresh to me as I understand what I am saying. It is very clear to me and I am expressing it in the moment from words that seem to be created right now. But people in Ojai accused me of memorizing all of K. I think that is impossible because I just have a normal memory and to me it does not appear to be something I memorized.

Now how does one know he is conditioned. For me that is the problem and that is easy. On the contrary, if I am having no problems with communication or when thinking, meaning I ?feel? no reactions to what I say and I have no reactions to what others say, I may be living possibly in the illusion that all is well. I have seen that if I create a wonderful world of people around me who agree with me and a life that is not full of very many stressful situations, then I don't have those ?feelings.? Frankly, I think this is what people do most of the time. They organize their lives to keep from having lets say ?negative? feelings and try to have just the ?positive? feelings. Now in these states, you will not find your conditionings.

What I think happens is to put yourself in ever changing environment and situations which challenge your responses. If those responses are felt, then your are conditioned. I leave it up to each individual to figure out the ?feelings? that are real based on biological need and those that are conditioned. That topic is one I am willing to discuss as I am trying to do with my time post. So one can never know the state of non-conditioning, only the state of conditioning. Does that make sense?

May I ask that this topic stay with its intention and talk about the daily quotes. I have just read these last several posts and it seems that the topic is becoming an exchange of disagreements not about the daily quotes but of other subtopics which could be taken somewhere else.

I allowed the Bohm topic of Bob's to go where it went because it in the directions it seemed to go but when Bob started this topic, I thought it would be easy to stay with the daily quotes which change daily and probably only need a few comments each.

Sorry, I havent been reading but I just have so much time and my own quotes are very time consuming. Lets see if we can get back on topic here and if people want to take the Bob arguments on, just go back to the Bohm topic.

Galaxy, I don't quite understand your post here as using the word ?paradox? or what you might be referring to as ?a way back to intelligence.?

When I say something is a mistake in consciousness, I am talking about when thought accesses an emotion like stress/fear incorrectly. I stand by thinking that consciousness is making mistakes when we respond with emotions that are not supposed to be attached to that emotion. I think when intelligence is used and by this I would say the use of non-conditioned memory acts on incorrect concepts, there is an ending to the conditioning and the mistake is ended. As I remember from ?Commentaries on Living,? K in talking to people who came to visit him would break up these individual conditionings by using his intelligence and explanation of the problem. Of course, this intelligence was his understanding and not the persons. People left mostly changed in the moment but returned shortly to their old lives, I am sure, as each person has not only to zero in correctly on their problem but also, be aware and acting from intelligence at the moment of understanding the mistake their minds have been making. For example, I could state what insult is as a mistake in feeling attached to concept, but I doubt anyone would change that has come to this site. I actually have brought it up a few times and no one has commented on it. Now in ?Ending of Time,? K criticizes this kind of change as ?becoming? and offers us another approach which he talks about here. The Ending of Time discussions were, I think, a new level he was venturing in to with Bohm. I am not sure of their validity but if there is a validity, it has to do with this time thing.

I hope people go back and read my post #263 about time and fear as I really want to go in this direction for awhile. Pleasure and fear are our great conditioners and if time is somehow connected to fear, we might understand K's book ?Ending of time.? If you read pages 68 through 70, I think you will see what I am interested in figuring out. It is the section where he asks ?Can time as thought come to a stop. ?

I think we have done a good job lately and appreciate the responses on all of our topics. I have especially been following the daily quotes about noise, concepts and awareness and think it is time to post something I have been holding back on.

I would like to post something here that I have not resolved and see what happens. I think everyone struggles with time, and we are probably complicating it beyond what it is. I am not talking about time in the sense of physics and movement but time in the sense that it is a learned psychological process. I am talking about time that contributes to the interpretation of what is and how the human perceives and organizes his thoughts. The Now or Awareness as we observe has no time. This would be obvious. Individual memory has no time as it exists in all its facets of sound and pictures in the moment. The human does not exist in this time except for when we conceptualize the individual in our own memory and then he exists according to my perceptions of him. In the nature of the animal, those moments of the existence of time are measured mostly as the moments of survival from danger, of eating, of sex and rest or sleep. Nothing about tomorrow is even within the realm of memory of the ordinary animal. And why would an animal care at all about yesterday as an event outside of memory of danger or location? Yet man puts a great deal of importance on the memories of the past that have to do without almost anything. Time as we conceive it can have its many definitions but it seems to me that there is an element of feeling involved with it as we use it.

Obviously, we have taken this whole thing to another level from the animal and probably may have taken it to a different level within the span of modern man. Somehow in this new extended size of the cortex, we have developed an interest in yesterday, today and tomorrow. This we call time which is a sound as we name it. Time is not conceptualized by the right brain very well. (if you don't believe that, smoke some marijuana but don't inhale..lol). So time is probably mostly sound and concept..... mostly a left brain phenomenon. So if that has any validity we have to see how it evolved. Sound of course was a vital part of communication in animals as you listen for the sound of a dangerous animal and then you pass the information on in sound. Loud sounds also seem to be an irritation to the animal. My father doesn't like any sounds. He turns off the television. He rarely talks to people and he doesn't listen much to people. He, also, is the person I have observed with the least stress in the world. He has outlived all of his relatives by a minimum of 20 years. And the doctors have given him another ten to fifteen years to live. So there might be something to be said about quietude. K certainly loved his walks!

The question is how and why have we taken this process of sound in to the body and turned it in to such an important perception. It appears that time as we have made it more important in our consciousness has become the one thing we can sight as the reason for our progress. We can plan for the future with our understanding of time. We can look in to the past and put order in it as to what happened when (fallibility having been proven here). Without this kind of time, we would not have any of the progress. I remember one thing from a movie I watched about monkeys. The clouds came to the sky and they got upset and rattled the leaves because they recognized that rain was coming. The rain came and they sat there and let the rain hit them and they looked miserable. The commentator said they knew that the rain was coming but they didn't seem to know what to do about it. Well, these monkeys don't have the advanced cortex to recognize the passage of time and put it in to order, meaning they can see and compare to memory when the clouds come and the noises of thunder are heard that it is a danger and it is going to rain and they rebel but nothing in their little pea brains can figure out that this may happen again!

How do we do this? Is it possible that we do this and have created this higher cortex to avoid the stress of danger and discomfort in this thing we call the future. To avoid stress in the future, have we created stress in the present with a concept of time remembered in the sound system? Stress is feeling. It is the response of memory going in to the amygdala and sending messages to the adrenalin glands to excrete cortisol which gives us the feeling we call stress. Could it be we have made a huge mistake and in trying to figure out the future and the avoidance of stress, we are using stress incorrectly in the present?

Has time, a sound become stress, a feeling? Is our concept of the future based on how much stress we have now in the present and/or how much stress we may anticipate having in the future? If so, has time as we conceptualize it become a state of conditioning that needs to end. A possible example might be: I see a bunch of papers on my desk and I get a feeling of stress and then weigh how long I am going to stress while I am doing the paperwork so I procrastinate. Food for thought!

I am afraid, I have met my match finally and that is in these last two statements of Nick. Nick is asking why the brain has made the mistake to not rid itself of the mistaken process of conditioning. You know that is not a question that K was ever asked. Was it?

So...let me tackle it and see what Nick says.

In the evolutionary process, there is the genetic reasons for a species to come to the top of the situation. Obviously, we got to the top 100k years ago when the brain created an expanded cortex which is the brain we are talking about here. The lower brain function is experienced with the monkeys. We start separating from the monkeys when we started experiencing the past in a self reflective way which is a huge subject we could go in to. But at this point and with the genetic ability to imitate which video I posted somewhere on one of the topics, we began a different approach. It seems that brain function in the actual sense has been supplanted by what the brain's memory can do. Not only what it can do which it does in other animals but what it can do when there are brain structures that can review the memory. So we have to say to answer Nick's question that if the brain operates intelligently in creating new brain functions, it has developed a brain function as in self reflective consciousness that it just hasn't learned how to use yet! Lets look at five clinical trials before releasing a drug. Lets look at working with tools until we figure out the best tool. Lets look at the left brain which is the cause of this whole new thing we have in consciousness and progress. It is experimental and it tries things out and works on things until it figures out the best approach. Well that excuses the left brain and your question: Just give the left brain some time and enough talking about these things as we are doing and it will work better. But I am still struggling with the right brain. It is extremely primitive in its perspectives and its interests. It would love to just walk in the woods, listen to music, draw, have sex, and smoke pot. Why would we need progress if we were all just right brain all the time.

So, Nick, you have posed absolutely correct statements about conditioning as to asking why hasn't the brain ended this process. I propose it has not done this because half of it just wants to do what is above. Why should we give up addictive conditioning for the purpose of logic?

Max...I think my statement about the chemicals eventually creating life is a little Frankensteinian in nature. AI is trying to creating the thinking machine that won't be alive but will algorithmically be able to perform as human as we can. Only thing to say to this is God help us when they do. Living is in the now isn't it? And if somehow a scientist eventually creates life using his memory and experimentation....is the thing going to be any less alive than us. Now I don't know about the AI machines. I suppose I will talk to them. I am already talking to Kurzweil's canned people on the phone when I call most all businesses. I'm glad they don't hear me yelling at them.

Nick, yes you are correct the word blame does have emotional content and was loosely used to define an action that we cannot take as an ?I.? I should have said each brain has the task of figuring it out which can only be done when awareness is operating. Otherwise the sense of self in the conditioned response will continue its strengthening itself. This next statement of yours needs to be asked and answered. I would like to see it pursued.

Nick said: (i cant quote when editing reply)...

"The brain is operating intelligently with regard to bodily function, but not with regard to conciousness when it retains memory that serves no vital or practical purpose. Such retained memory has the effect of working against the best interests of the body.

So why, then, does the brain operate intelligently in one area and unintelligently in another? Our K-conditioning tells us the answer is conditioning; that the brain is conditioned to retain and accumulate memory that serves the purpose of building and maintaining personal identity, ie., self. But why doesn't the brain's intelligence kick in and kick out the conditioning? Why doesn't the intelligence that keeps the body healthy, act to keep the mind healthy by purging the toxic accumulation and ceasing henceforth to retain and accumulate that kind of information? Why doesn't the intelligence of the brain awaken to the unintelligence of preserving and perpetuating the self?"

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Phil Sir, two things are happening when someone is communicating with me. He is saying something to me (the contents) and I am paying attention to what he is saying. The contents appear on the background of this movement of attention in my mind. Both the things are occuring in the active present. Now,I do not want what the other person is saying to condition me. If I choose what is being told to me as either fact or fiction, then conditioning has taken roots. Is this correct ?

One has no choice in the conditioning of another being passed on to you. If you are conditioned in an area, the statements another says adds to your conditioning. If you are not conditioned then the statements another makes are either viewed as fact or fiction. You have no idea about any of this. Until conditioning is ended, you are at the mercy of others. No intent will change any of this because the intent will come from conditioning. Attention is not something to play with as it is automatic and comes from a state of danger. The ?I? cannot be attentive and you can have no action from that ?I? so I cannot accept that you can do anything about any of this. It just happens. This is the answer to your second question too.

I thought more about this reply last night and the use of the word attention. I think my objection to the word "attention" would be the same as to the word "concentration." Teachers are always saying "pay attention" or "concentrate." I remember K said never let your children concentrate. I hear people say that kids only pay attention when they are interested. All this seems to me to be talking about conditioned states which would mean that your attention is directed by emotionaly connected memory. I guess I just really think we need to use the word aware. If I am aware in a moment then I can see the conditioning come in. I remember K mentioning something about this once as he heard people talking about awareness and they didnt notice something important that was happening in their environment. He seemed amused by this. Also, we might say the guy killing birds with a shotgun was attentive to his shooting and to his conversation but certainly not aware of what he was doing. (example in K's recent daily quote).

I am sorry but I cant respond on here....the subjects go too fast. I will respond in email to the individuals tomorrow.

I would like to look at this a little differently. The brain is always operating intelligently as it is there to keep us alive. It does a really good job of that...dont you think? The brain is certainly alive as it is made up of the chemicals that are represented in living things as opposed to rocks. Of course, all those chemicals are in other things but the grouping and the battery type chemicals certainly end up making something we call life. The advancement of the brain has brought us to the confusing situation here. Self reflection, which can be explained in the existence of advanced parts of the brain not in other animals, has created illusions and mistakes. Animals have it easy as they don't think they are responsible for anything but their own existence. Well, the dogs think they have to help us men out as their best friends. Man obviously has evolved to think it can save not only itself but mankind. How many heroes do you have in the animal kingdom outside of the genetic family responses?

There is a part of the brain that has the power of reviewing memory and it is that area of the brain that is our evolutionary destiny but our curse. It is not the brain that is at fault but the perceptions as recorded in memory that have turned upon themselves. They have turned back into the system and have caused reactions to what is in memory instead of reactions to what is in reality in the moment. What danger does man have as top of the species? Practically none. But the memory has created excessive amounts of danger based on its incorrect perceptions. The worst is the fact that it thinks there is a thinker and the second worst is the fact that it thinks there is an observer. (well, I dont really know which is worst but it sounded good when I wrote it)!

I have spent an evening of answering posts where blame is put on something other than where the blame really is.

That is: the blame is on each of us for not understanding how we are working. If that takes reading K and looking at ourselves for change or understanding neurology and how our brain works or in having some mystical experience like Kundalini in order to look deeply in to ourselves...this is the only issue.

That's it for tonight. To all a good night!

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Phil Sir, if I want to retain and accumulate what is being communicated to me by someone, then conditioning is sure to take place. If I move on with no desire to accumulate(letting go), then understanding is taking place as it is always instantaneous, NO?

The process of accumulating knowledge from someone who is conditioned is easy and you will accept what is given to you as fact or fiction based on your present knowledge. The truth is that fact or fiction may change daily. If one has an ego, there is no choosing but conditioning goes on based on comparison of first the person speaking to someone you accept as an authority and then to how the information will effect your self esteem, self confidence etc. This, of course is a terrible process and listening in the true sense of sound allows the "noise" of the individual in or rejects it based entirely on personal perspective without letting the semblance of truth change the mind. All correct learning is instantaneous change of the unconditioned mind in the area of unconditioning. True learning rarely can take place in the mind conditioned with the selves as after a few years of strenthening the grip that the selves have over the mind, the person will reject input that is not supporting the premise that "I am what I am thinking and feeling."

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: phil K wrote: The passing of the picture to the left brain for review or comment is certainly going to have prejudice in it if the right brain is conditioned which of course it is at the subconscious level. Sex certainly may be the example here. Again, isn't the solution to this problem is to let the attention move in the active present. Then the left brain is commenting from its conditioning but despite this, one is free of the conditioning.

I have no idea how this can happen from intention from a conditioned mind. Attention is in the active present and it comes about during times of danger. Awareness is a different story but it is not directed by the mind. I absolutely dont understand the last sentence as how can the left brain be commenting from its conditioning and one be free from conditioning?

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Sir, here I want to ask you something. Once a person has understood the nature and limitations of the functions of left and right brain, then does it not become easy for him to free himself from conditioning ? If I observe that a conditioned response of the left brain is causing stress in me, then I simply start interacting with my environment from right brain or non recognising occipetal area. When the left brain is by-passed in this manner, then have I not gotten rid of stress ? Is this escape or intelligence of avoiding a trap ? (I have experimented with this and find it quite effective. Important thing to remember is to undertake the whole exercise with playful intentions).

I am really glad you brought this up. I think here is one of the major problems people have with K and his life and understanding him and change. You said in the first paragraphy that one can free himself from conditioning. Does this mean ending conditioning or moving to escape it. If the left brain is causing you stress and so you move to the mountains and escaper your left brain have you changed or have you escaped the left brain world and gone to live in nature and just be right brain? I am afraid that there is no change here and those who become hippies will do nothing about the problems of their own brains or the problems of mankind.

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: phil K wrote: So just tell me what heavy metal bands, rappers and the impressionist and cubist artists trying to say to me? Are they trying to condition me to their way of perception as the left brain is doing? Sir, why should I think that they are trying to say anything to us ?When I look at the picture or listen to music, I should be observing what my brain is telling me as its reactions.The brain will get conditioned only if it is trying to seek or search a pattern or form some concept. What they are getting out of their art only they can know. To avoid getting conditioned, I am observing my reactions without any desire to accumulate or find a pattern in them.--Regards

That's wonderful. Now can you do that in a left brain state when you are trying to succeed financially or academically or with sound in this mostly left brain world?

David and Max, greed is not the cause of anything. It doesnt exist. It is a word. All the things you mentioned about what happened to you is conditioning by a mistaken society that has no clue what it is doing or the direction it is going because it does not understand the mind. Culture did not even create the feeling that we call greed. That feeling is in nature and all animals have it for survival reasons; probably the feeling is there for sexual reasons as jealousy, a word, is closely attached to it.

All that happened to you is caused by culture and culture is a creation of the mind in concepts. End the concepts and you end conditioning which will in turn destroy culture. End emotion attached to the wrong things and you end the mistakes of the mind. We can't keep blaming the words for the things that are wrong with us. We must get to the bottom of this. We will only know how to deal with accumulation and what is the right amount of it in anything from goods, money, children, etc., after we are free from the emotions that are incorrectly supporting our ideas, beliefs and concepts. How can we change if we are pursuing pleasure and escaping from stress for all the wrong purposes?

The mice chose to stimulate the sex zone which is what the word greed represents instead of eat and they died from starvation!

Man is the only dreaded animal to the lower animals yet man can make pets of most animals. All animals are dreaded to one species or another as all are prey for another animal. Man has an advanced cortex which has been developed to move us in to some future of maybe saving the planet eventually from asteroids or the sun ending or something else. The dinosaurs are gone because they didn't stop the asteroid.

I have no fear of man unless he has a gun and its pointed at me; however, I would fear a bear worse as I might talk the man out of shooting and with the bear, I am up to his mercy. Men dread other men because of their knowledge of what man can do. Man does these things based on conditioning and not because of his nature. Men can dread men afar and kill them with nuclear bombs for fear of what they ?might? do. I think men should just fear themselves because of the conditioning of culture that has taken over their minds. If that were the direction of man's fear, change could come about rather rapidly. If man could see the process of the mind and how it actually works, he would no longer take the actions he does that causes one man to hate another.

I am going to stick to my direction in reviewing sound as I have. Is it possible that K and I are saying the same thing about noise? Is noise the conditioned sound? Whereas, when sound is not attached to conditioning it is not noise but is clear and right action is taken. Left brain thought is mostly sound and the left brain is the most conditioned part of us with all its concepts. We have invented the words to describe our conditioned states like greed or anger or insult but is this what all these things really are or are they brain functions in all animals (see my greed post on daily quotes). Man who should know better but doesn't because he is acting like an animal who has not progressed to have the ability to create toilets and sewage systems as well as rockets to the moon that may someday save us from the asteroids or the sun burning out. It is not the things that man does badly that we need to focus on but on why man has taken the goodness of what he has developed with the advanced cortical structure and see how to end the conditionings that keep this progress of the brain from going in the wrong direction because of misguided thinking.

Sometimes I wonder if K didn't overdo it a little in talking about how bad man is in trying to get people to listen to his real messages. It might have been somewhat a process of hypnosis and then he could get his point across. I know that I did it with my tennis teaching and it sure worked.

Gentlemen, I have to refer you to Jason Zweig's book ?Your Money, Your Brain? chapter 3 called ?Greed.? It doesn't seem that animals do not have greed as they have the brain structure for reward which is involved in creating what we call greed. Anticipation and expectation of reward is actually what man and animals are looking for as a survival technique, but man should know better. The nucleus accumbens is the brain structure that is largely responsible for this process. It is highly involved in experiencing sexual pleasure. Rats have been know to be ?greedy? to the point of pushing a button that stimulates this part of the brain over eating food and thus they die. Man and animal have the same structure but man has an advanced cortex and has taken the movement of greed into higher forms. Man accumulates things in anticipation of reward and that accumulation can be things, money or maybe in Tiger's case women. What he is actually accumulating is thoughts. Nowhere can we say that accumulation is the cause of greed. It is the desire to accumulate which comes from the mistaken conditioning that when you accumulate you are getting something at all. In fact, when you get the things, you always want more because the high comes from the illusion of thinking and not from the actuality.

Accumulate away for a reason, just don't enjoy it!

I completely missed post number 60 of Sudhir which he emailed and reminded me about. It got stuck on the previous page as the last post. I think the only way to avoid this from happening is go back to the last post that we have made and then catch up. I have done this before. I am going to quote Sudhir's entire post since it is on the previous page.

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Phil Sir, when you stated in your post that thought is sound, I have been paying closer attention to the origin of thought within myself and I would like to share my observations with all. Sir, before man could speak properly ( Before language came in to existence),he must have been capable of producing distinct sound to express a particular emotion. This was his way of communicating with others.If the primitive man observed something dangerous, he would shout to alert others.No language was necessary to warn others. So, the sound and memory of this sound was helpful in communicating with others. The same thing is happening now also.I am observing and getting information about my environment in the active present with the help of my sense organs and also interacting with my environment. I want to share all this with others and I do that by speaking.The memory is supplying the words for my speech.This is possible because we have devoloped language to communicate. So, sound(speech)is basically used to communicate with others - a) what one is observing in the active present. Spoken words come from memory. Speech is the verbalisation of thought. The need to communicate to others what one is observing is one reason the thoughts come in to existence. b) at a later time by recalling the events that have happened earlier from memory.Here also the thoughts stored earlier in memory are verbalised. c) When observing in the active present (a), if the person has no one near to communicate with, he starts communicating with himself by producing thoughts in the mind. In this way, a natural, useful function of the mind has become a source of wasting energy .This quality is going to cause a lot of problems for the individual as he is now incapable of observing with clarity what is happening in that moment.His awareness is compromised.These self communicating thoughts are also stored in memory and can be retrieved again and again at later time either as thought or as speech. What I want to point out is this-The thoughts are generated and stored in the mind to produce speech ( sound) that helps us in communicating with others.To my mind ,they are the precursor of sound(speech) and not the product of sound. Observing and commenting on what is being observed to communicate with others is necessary.But if speaking is not going on, then the person is communicating with himself by forming thoughts which can become spoken words later on. So,are they sound or precursor of sound ? You will have to throw some light on this issue, Phil Sir.--Regards.

I think you have stated all things correctly but I am going to reiterate my position on this. When thought comes up not as picture in the mind, I am saying it is sound. So I have equated thought to sound directly if we take out the pictures as being thoughts. Yes when I review a pictorial memory, I am using sound to think about it as I would think, hmm...I think I will go to McDonalds at the corner for lunch. This might be after I had the feeling of hunger which one could call memory too if it came from seeing food which I directly observe or it could come from just picturing the McDonalds on the corner. My point is that sound has become the majority of out thinking process when it comes to the left brain and I think man has the ?sound thought? that sound is something more as when we talk about consciousness and think it is something more important than the senses operating with memory.

So my only difference with your statements is how I would use the word thought not as a whole but as the individual systems. Take your statement ?what one is observing in the active present. Spoken words come from memory. Speech is the verbalisation of thought.? I would say speech is sound ?in? the thought process of which visualization is a part. So thought is not a special class as I think we believe but is just the system of recall of all memory and all the systems that produce thoughts. Maybe, instead of saying I had a thought, man will begin to say I had a sound thought, a picture thought, even a feeling thought. Wouldn't communication become a lot more precise in this case. Right now people say, I feel like going somewhere. What does that mean? Maybe, it means I was sitting around and I was picturing something like the Mall, and then I had a sound come in to my head that said I think I should go look at those shoes I want to buy and then I would picture the shoes and then I would get a feeling. Unfortunately, if we are living with someone and we told this much truth, they might not let us or want us to go because they know I am broke and will have to charge the shoes!

Max: Burton has said that the seeing of a baseball as it passes the plate is memory, the image being projected to the consciousness as backwards in time because it has already passed the person and is in the hand of the catcher before consciousness has the ability to review it. The self as just a parcel of memory functions, I think, the same way as we function and say ?I? did that but the action in the now was just action in subconscious memory so the statement ?I did it? is the memory called ?self? being projected backward in time as description of what happened. This is because we respond in feeling when taking action and the feeling is what we call the ?I.? I feel therefore I think I am.

Burton's next statement on page 73 is: ?This aberration in the fabric of perceived time has been hotly argued as representing everything from evidence for noncausality to intention preceding awareness.

There is really nothing wrong with memory unless it is attached to emotion. A baseball coming in to consciousness after the fact can be viewed as being in the now to the mind without causing much harm. But the feeling that ?I? can see it and the attempt to do something about it causes a complete distortion of the present watching of the ball. It is memory operating when not necessary and that happens at the moment of danger caused by our own internal mistakes in emotion that takes us out of the now.

Now is the state of awareness.

Sudhir: I will just answer your statements in a written response. I think it flows better than quoting.

Speech may be taking place ?now? in you but do we know if it is coming from conditioning. Speech will be understood now in the other person but do we know if he is conditioned. If so then the representation of speech in the consciousness will be effected by conditioned thinking and the response in speech will be continuous attempts to condition the other person. And no matter what, there is a delay backwards in time in to consciousness. This phenomenon of the brain is why we need to end conditioning. Otherwise, communication becomes very dangerous as a means of passing on conditioning.

Attention through the eyes is more pure ostensibly than hearing as hearing involves learning a language and meaning before it is significant. Observing can be pure, but certainly isn't in the distorted or maybe even the conditioned mind as memory gets mixed or even filled in at the occipital lobe levels. Think about Van Gogh paintings. Or maybe that Spanish guy Salvadore Dali. Did these people see the world the way they painted it? Not exactly the paintings of Norman Rockwell! The passing of the picture to the left brain for review or comment is certainly going to have prejudice in it if the right brain is conditioned which of course it is at the subconscious level. Sex certainly may be the example here.

I am not sure what we should call the exchange between right and left brain. But lying is one of the things that the left brain does when it has no clue what the right brain is doing but is trying to save its own ass! There is a wonderful example of this in all the split brain literature. A split brain man is shown two pictures, one to the left brain of a chicken's claw and the second to the right brain of a snowman. The subject was told to point to related pictures and the corresponding arms to the left and right brain pointed to a chicken's head and a snow shovel. The left brain was then asked why it was pointing to the two items and since it is the only speech zone it said turning the head towards the picture of the chicken's head ?I saw a chicken's claw so I am pointing at a chicken.? Upon turning the head to the other picture of the snow shovel, the left brain said ?And the shovel is to clean up the chicken coop!?

In ordinary vision both brains see the entire object as there are two fields of vision in each eye, the left half going to the right brain and the right half going to the left half. In ordinary, people there is an exchange across the corpus callosum quickly after this happens but one would imagine it possible that each brain may send a distortion with what it has seen but I am not sure of this. I think in the conditioned state that the two brains may be trained and working not in conjunction at all with each other and this has been seen in split brain research. The man who was trying to kill his wife with a knife in one hand and had to restrain that hand with the other one certainly was not having much cooperation between brains except in the war going on inside his brain. The conflict is resolved inside the normal person before action is taking but I would say a lot of stress can be noticed at the personal as this would be observable during the process of resolving the problem.

I find the blinking of the eyes as interesting. Of course, I have not experienced this and I thought that ?eye? blinking was to keep the eyes moist and not a brain function.

I will be interested in your comments on how the right brain tries to calm down the stress of the left brain because, as I said, as a whole I think the conditioning of the right brain is constantly adding to the left brain stress in order to get what it wants and since the left brain has little understanding of the right brain, it doesn't know what is going on and is just guessing like the example above. Also, without language it is very hard for the right brain to communicate to the outside world. Are those people drawing pictures or singing songs which are totally right brain processes trying to communicate their right brain consciousness to the world. I would think so. So just tell me what heavy metal bands, rappers and the impressionist and cubist artists trying to say to me? Are they trying to condition me to their way of perception as the left brain is doing? I am afraid we are just beginning to touch the surface of the problem with our discussions about consciousness and the left brain memory.

That was really strange, Averil, I read your quote yesterday but the daily quote was something different and now this morning, we have the same quote. I guess the servers update differently from country to country so now we know. I am glad they put that quote up because of the statement about the depth of conditioning going to the subconscious as well as the conscious. We spend a lot of energy talking about the conscious part whereas our true deep problems are not transferable to consciousness. I just mentioned this in the post to Sudhir on the topic of consciousness. It puzzles me how the brain which has a destroyed hippocampus and amygdala as in Damasio's David's case can remember enough to dislike the researcher who was not nice to him. There is obviously more memory being formed than by the hippocampus and fear. To me this subconscious is what is the hardest to get through to as the consciousness of memory cant touch it or be a representation of it.

Consciousness I think is nothing more than memory and that is not in the ?now? as it is a half second delay with perceptions coming backwards in time. Burton in his book has described this on page 72 and 73 using a baseball player trying to see a pitch from the pitcher. Various studies have been done on this with ping pong, squash and cricket. To keep this simple, basically you cannot see the ball. You are striking at the ball you think is going to be there and when people think they are seeing the ball it is really the brain projecting backward in time the memory of the ball going past. This means the now to consciousness is never the now. So when K says that mind is not going to solve from effort the state of conditioning, I think here we are talking more and more about the futility of consciousness. If consciousness is so futile because it is after the fact and a projection from the past into the future, then we can see how memory which is also conditioned through and through is never represented to us in actuality of the now. We can safely say, I think, that consciousness is nothing but memory since it lags action. Of course, the very statement has to be reviewed by the now and the cortex to see if there is a validity in truth. The schizophrenic brain that sees people that are not there cannot be relied upon to pass information on for use by others. Can we say that the conditioned mind cannot, also, be relied upon to pass on information that is the truth. This then would be our test. I hear someone say something like ?Do you see that man? But I don't follow him until I look and see the man myself. If I do not see the man, then I think...hmmm...this man must be hallucinating. But what do we do in conditioned states when someone says ?That man insulted you because he said your ideas were all wrong?? In this case, we listen to that person because we are conditioned by the same words and we believe we have been insulted and we react. Basically culture is just a bunch of schizophrenics in essence passing on their hallucinations. If, however, you have broken down the concept of insult and seen in the ?now,? the emotions that kept the concept alive, you will find yourself listening differently when someone makes schizophrenic cultural statements to you, and then there will be no reaction in the now. However, and this is the big, however, warning of K, you cant figure this out through thought especially if the the self still exists as one of the conditionings because the self is always coming in to take credit for what is learned and stored in memory. Even though it is not a true statement, the self thinks it is doing all this.

The self cannot do a thing because it is a thought projected backwards in time. Not only does the baseball player who says I can see the ball not really see the ball, but he doesn't even exist as the ?I? as the ?observer? of the ball.

Paraphrasing K here: ?What happens to the mind that realizes this??

Sudhir: Thanks for your comments.

I find what you say above to ring mostly with the truth as you go back and forth in your explanation as you see it. Let me just state some of it in my own words.

I think what we have with the left and right brain is two systems that work differently. Left brain thought using the system of sound primarily and right brain imaging. Thought by the left brain is originated by sound primarily even though it moves in to abilities with picturing once we develop written language. In fact, the very fact that we have two zones in the left brain, one for writing and one for reading shows us that we have specialized the entire language system up in to a multitasking event. The communication between the two brains or even the communication within the left brain systems is not known as far as I have read. So I am not sure how visualization really works although they do know that in visualizing. the same occipital lobe that is used in actual seeing is used in visualizating. The question would be if something is sent to the occipital lobe for visualization in the present which lobe is sending it for review and why? Are the lobes trying to communicate with each other because one needs the other? Are the lobes working together or are they conflicting? Are we really two people inside the same body? Is there a struggle for control? These are questions that the science has not answered as far as I have read. In fact, there was a great deal of interest in all this at one point in the mid 80's even picked up here by schools in the 90's but it pretty much has dropped away. I read very little that puts much significance upon it now. I am not sure if this is because they just don't understand it and cant explain it or if the neurologists have decided there is nothing to it. I think though there is still significance from my personal observation of how I perform. Like this thing about David and the formation of liking or not liking people without having conscious understanding why. If the memory system is destroyed in someone, how can he remember that he doesn't like someone? Obviously, there is something in there that makes memory outside of conscious memory.

When I formed this forum, I was hoping that someone else would be out here in cyberland who has been following K who would talk about some of this from research he has done, but it looks like I am the only one. I have read in The Link some people who are looking at some of the issues, but they don't seem to be reading my forum...lol. Anyway, lets just keep plugging away at it and I will do my best to interpret what I read. I am glad you are asking questions though.

Now just to finish up with your comments. I don't really think the right brain is helping with the stress of the left brain unless it just takes control and says..lets go for a walk...or lets play golf and forget all this stress that you are causing the system. I am sure that the right brain loves to take us off to have sex but I would say that does not relieve much stress as the sex system uses stress in more ways than you really want to know or I want to talk about! And sometimes I wonder about when it takes me off to play golf and I hit a bad shot...I am glad you are not around to here what I say!

I think to answer all the posts that have been made, I maybe should just expand on my understanding with some brief comments on specific posts. Sudhir, your areas of experimenting with your own brain do appear to have validity but I would wonder how you see into your brain unless you have extended powers of attention maybe developed during yoga practice. I know K, Bessant and Ledbetter did yoga and could maybe access such powers but having a western mind, I am afraid I cannot comment.

Averil, Thanks for the K quotes.. I will address noise and time in this post. I find it interesting what you said about dropping of concepts from your evening dialogue. I think this is a significant movement in the ending of conditionings and would like you to tell us about this maybe over in the conditioning subtopic.

Max, we have been addressing things in emails which is helpful so I wont respond to your statements in the interest of saving some of my writing, but needless to say some of my statements I make here will be coming from thinking after our exchanges.

First, I received a side email from Daniel Moru about my post, as I sent it to him on the side, and he said something that struck me about music. He said that music is used to create emotions in movies. Well, music is sound and I find that music does emote reactions in the chemistry of the brain. Of course, we put words on these emotions which are not the thing and I think that the music itself might have to be listened to more than once lets say to create the reactions. I find though that when listening to music or going to a movie, one has to ?let go? to allow in the sounds and pictures to have these emotional reactions. But the intricacy of music certainly is an example of how we can allow sound to create emotion.

Now K talked, in the piece Averil quoted, about noise and the listening to sound. Let's see what this might mean. If one is listening to the sounds of another person speaking, it may be creating a noise that will be interpreted by the brain as a dangerous noise. This would be the noise of conditioned thinking. In other words, I cannot listen to someone if I think what they are saying is a dangerous noise. When noise is quieted, you can understand what the person is saying. That would mean that you would not be responding with emotion/stress. I think, also, with music, one has to be very careful with the understanding of the emotional reaction. You see if you let go to the music, you may experience what we call depression. You see many of the artists are depressed when they write their music and their music is therefore resonating the parts of the brain that release the chemicals we name ?depression.? This is not depression but after you have the feeling, you may start having what we would call depressive thoughts as in pictures or words like thinking about someone you loved and lost or someone who died or other things that may have happened in your life you would consider bad. If one does this, those thoughts will lead to further depression and cause an extended time period of experiencing the emotion. The funny thing is when we hear the music we may say it is exhilarating like a Beethoven sympathy but when put in a setting of a movie with depressive pictures, we might interpret it as depressive and I think it was sometimes written during the depressive states that Beethoven might have been having.

One thing I would like to straighten up about the word ?thought.? When I have now said that thought does not exist, I mean it does not exist as what we think it is. So I came up with thought is sound, but I, also, said that one might consider thought to be pictures which is how the word is sometimes used as when I say I had a thought. I could have had a verbal thought or maybe a picture. I could have both simultaneously, as when I am describing a picture I have in my mind to someone who wants directions lets say. My point is that we make the mistake of thinking that thought is consciousness and that there is a thinker doing the thinking. But thinking is nothing more than memory in its many forms sound, image, and feeling. I think in breaking the word thought up demystifies it. By the way K said the content of consciousness is consciousness. Well that means consciousness as what people are looking for does not really exist. We are conscious as alive and that is about it. If consciousness is just a bunch of sounds, images and feelings, it really has no more significance than calling it memory. Consciousness=memory. So now the question is ?are you a memory??

I am going to post something I think is significant about time on my classic conditioning topic.

Sudhir...i see you have resurfaced on my topics. I only have time to answer this one tonight. First and foremost the left and right brain things I say here are my theories and I have no proof from the research as to the validity of what I say.

I truly doubt that the left and right brain send communication back and forth to each other with emotional content attached. One thing is known and that is the two separate hemispheres can read the emotions of the body and then have their own interpretation of the emotion. So I would guess that each side of the brain acts instantly to the emotion of the body as it interprets the reason for the emotion using its own power of interpretation whether it be sound or picture. Also, I am not sure if the left brain sends a thing to the right brain since if you look at the research, the left brain doesnt know much about the very existence of the left side of the body let alone the right brain that runs the left side. Now if I am right and the right side sends a picture over to the left side, the left side can react in the moment to the picture as it has its concepts of the picture. I would dare say that sex may be involved in this part of it but again a theory of mine.

My whole left and right brain theories are based on the conflict and the concepts that I see the left brain developing in verbal thought to handle what the right brain is doing. It is known that when the right brain steals the cookie from the cookie jar, the left brain rationalizes and lies for the things that the right brain has done wrong. As an organism, I would say the left brain doesn't want to get punished anymore than the right brain does and so stress is avoided by the left brain using rationalization to the outside world.

good analysis of what I wrote, Max. I would say too that blind and deafness would be questioned too but I had thought about the sight or the sound, they are able to produce their own sound and sight internally and in the case of deaf people they can still talk and put together some pretty incredible speech without knowing what speech really sounds like. Still hoping others will go back and read my post and reply.

opps...i missed averils post...i really hope you come back and let us know what your group had to say....yes we cant have belief but we have to see why....what protects concepts of sound to think that there is such a thing as a belief? Or what is there in any forms of memory that allows us to trust the biochemical representations in the brain to have a reality beyond what we perceive in any given moment i.e., how can I even believe that my car is in the garage unless I am looking at it? Maybe we should just throw the word out of our vocabulary. To really question this, we might even look at a schizophrenic who believes a person he sees is real yet no one else sees that person!

Ok...here is what I promised....my big insight. I have decided to post it under Max's consciousness topic.

Well, I have always said that thought doesn't exist and my perception of it has been that maybe someone will come up with what it is but I knew that thought cannot be material as such because the word thought is the definition that man and K put on memory and that it appears to be something in the mind and not the body. That has been pretty obvious to me that thought cannot be real since it is a part of the mind and that it really has no location. But what it really was has escaped me. You see these books on consciousness and everyone trying to figure out what memory is and what the things we are thinking are and where they might be has just not put its finger on it. Religion bases its entire premise on the fact that we think and we have these ?thoughts? which we can observe and therefore we are something important because of this ability. But without the self, thought takes on no significance. Memory is always the recreation in the present of the past and we need this but it can be so distorted by everyone who thinks that thought has a reality. So I would just say thought is not real. It is not like a glass. I have dutifully been trying to get through Torey thinking maybe he will give me a hint as to what thought really is or where it might be. Is memory material? Well here it is and it is so simple that only Krishnamurti could have figured it out if he had studied the brain.

Thought as when you are thinking and noticing that you are thinking is nothing more than sound. The organism is exposed to sound all the time and in the advanced human cortex we have learned to specialize in sounds just as dogs specialize in smell and hawks specialize in sight. Our total advancement as animals has been to figure out specific sounds and turn it into a system of language which allows for communication. So sound is a biochemical representation in the brain of something we heard and then we are able to convert that back into sound and pass on our biochemical representations to others.(we can investigate this with examples but later).

I am not eliminating here our other senses like picturing which works in a biochemical way or proprioception etc. but the issue is that other animals can picture maybe but they certainly can't pass that picture on to someone else. Only humans can tell you what their bedroom looks like in detail. So the advancement of mankind has been through our ability to use verbal thought which is pretty much what K talks about when he is talking about thought. Now it is a slow process, yes, as sound is much slower decibel wise than most other ways of communication. Also sound does not have the quality of a picture. That's why the very statement ?A picture is worth a thousand words.?

Now lets look at the ?self? as I have been talking about the left brain ?self.? I think now I can safely say that the ?self? is merely the sounds ?I,? ?me? ?myself? ?mine.? Well, the sounds are real when spoken and when they are thought biochemically in the brain. Thought is material in the sense it is the chemicals that create the representation of sound in the moment of a new sound to the brain and it is material as in the moment of the reproduction of a sound when I speak to someone else and say ?I?. This is absolutely the material part of thought. Yes you feel, ?I? because you hear it in your brain. That hearing is as real as when someone calls your name! The question now to ask is ?Are you that sound? Or maybe another process in proprioception or picturing takes over and attaches one system to the other creating this illusion/mistake.?

To understand how the brain can mix up perceptions, you may want to study synethesia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

Hope this gives someone some thought and I can get some questions and input.

Well, my two days is up so open to comment. I think I will just add this little tidbit as in how conditioning may end and maybe tomorrow I will throw in an insight I had about a theory of thought.

Just after writing the post on conditioning, I was sent a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJSXfXep4M

In this video around 18 minutes into it, through 23 minutes is a section on the limbic system and how we perceive dangers and pleasurable events. The speaker, David Rock, who is a ?brain coach? for businesses says that we are constantly accessing the limbic system and expecting it to make decisions as to whether events are danger or reward events. He says that if something is determined to be a reward event the limbic system has positive reactions for a short period of time. (I am not sure how the limbic system accesses postive reactions but it is probably through a system that releases the positive neurotransmiters.) Yet David Rock says that if you see someone for example who has attacked you verbally at work for your ideas, you will respond badly and as you think about it, it will get worse and you will go deeper in to negative response from the limbic system sending out messages. From other research, I am assuming here that the fear zone or amygdala is stimulated causing stress.

So here we have the very cause of conditioned responses. The thinking in its concepts of what is good and bad will send these messages for positive or negative responses. (the limbic system doesn't make the concepts, that is done in the higher cortex functions). Now, I like his example about the guy at work who is attacking your ideas and would like to take this as my example of ending of conditioning. Would you not say that your ideas which are concepts are being attacked by other ideas or concepts and also ?you? are being attacked by another human who is presenting the differences. Now, what could we say is conditioned here and by this I mean we have learned something that is causing a response that is not necessarily the true response in nature. Remember the limbic system is there to evaluate real threats and respond with fear/stress/cortisol when something is threatening us physically and after the problem is solved we go back to homeostasis and wait for the next threat or pleasure. Instead in the above case, you are upset or angry for a long period of time until you work out the problem mentally based on your concepts. This means you have to change your concepts to fit the other guys concepts or you must win a debate that you are right and he is wrong. But what doesn't seem to change is your attitude towards the person. You tend not to like them ever again and stay away from the person permanently. I would say here, you develop an image of the person which is a process of ?self image.?

I think though, there is a much better way to go about this and that is K's response. Have no concepts that are beliefs and secondly see that a man who is supposedly attacking you is really not attacking ?you? the body, but instead ?you? the concept. You believe in ?you? too. I think K calls that the self, and don't forget the self image which keeps the long term disliking of someone

I think the problem is that people don't know how to end concepts or don't believe that is the problem. You dont have to end concepts in all cases. You just rid yourself of the emotion attached to the concept because that is what turns the concept in to a belief. In essence when a concept ends being a belief, the concept itself is subject to change. But you do have to get rid of the concepts of the emotionally charged conditioned words such as ?insult? to use the example above. You see in this case, you are believing the person is the one insulting ?you? lets say. Insult, however, is a concept of the conditioned mind. Someone else may intend to insult and then you may say he is using what we call insult but only you can experience an emotion of being insulted. Now ending of the ?self? ends the fact that ?you? are being insulted and this is a hard one, but even ending of the self does not end the concept of insult. Ending of the ?self? does end belief though in your everyday concepts. Insult and all emotionally charged conditionings listed so far by the neurologists can hold their own belief in their own existence. An obvious thing to help understand insult is to understand that one man's insult is not another's. The CEO of the company where the person above works is not insulted by his cohorts and he has to listen to his workers without stress in order to find new ideas. This does not mean he is free of insult because probably when the board of directors calls him on the carpet, his heart is pounding. But what one can see is that K wise and brain wise, there is no need for this unless we let it happen to us. Even the guy, David Rock, who is going around lecturing about the brain said that people can improve as they learn to look to their brain for the things that go wrong. And I have said before, we have all ended some kind of conditioning, I am sure, from reading K. The question is can understanding and awareness of the attachment between concept and emotion be broken? I think it happens when, first, a word like ?insult? is seen as a fallacious concept. The awareness of the connection between the emotion and the word is something that no one can tell you about because then it is a system of thought. The problem with awareness is almost like today's K's daily quote on Kinfonet. Denial is not a process of thought. I think instead it is awareness.

One must start somewhere, and I only offer all this brain stuff and my interpretations of K as a means to investigate more. Someday, neurology and science will put this together, I think, and more of mankind will understand. I hope the insight I had yesterday which I will post tomorrow will be a contribution to it, although I doubt it will be too well accepted since it seems that people need authority before they really investigate. I know I did when I first went to K.

[a friend of mine whom I sent this post too said that this next to last paragraph gets bogged down. I totally agree but cant seem to correct it so am leaving it in tact. I decided to post my insight post on Max's consciousness topic because it is really about consciousness. this is december 9th, I am posting this edit and the insight post]

This is going to be long but will be a culmination of this conditioning topic. Please don't post for a day or two to leave this up for reading. If one goes back and reads this thread in its entirety, I think you will find a consistency in my responses leading to this. Just the first page of posts and exchanges I had with posters is critical to my coming to this point. I hope to show a connection between concepts as created in thought to our responses in emotion. Let me first quote from statements about what we are dealing with when we talk about emotion. We cannot talk about things without using definitions we all are in agreement with. I quote here from my earlier post on emotions and the definitions he has given from psychology and neurology:

phil K wrote: phil K wrote: In this you would be well supported by Antonis Damasio, in his book The Feeling of What Happens. Again this is another book I am not very far into (page 55), but I have just finished a section where he talks about the emotions coming from lower brain structures and hard to do anything about. At the same time he says that many of the emotions are culturally conditioned and come from ones own upbringing. He, thinks, there are primary or universal emotions and apparently psychology and neurology list these as happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, or disgust. (page 50) Only two of these have been studied to any extent as far as I know: anger and disgust. He goes on to list ?numerous other behaviors to which the label ?emotion? has been attached. They include so-called secondary or social emotions, such as embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, or pride; and what I [Damasio] call background emotions, such as well-being or malaise, calm or tension. The label emotion has also been attached to drives and motivations and to the states of pain and pleasure ?(page 51).

So the emotions we are talking about are of two types. The ones that science find exist biologically and the ones that society uses as we have progressed with language to define states the way we want to interpret them for purposes of cultural. Both states lead, I think, to conditioning. The only thing is that the feelings/sensations represented in the body are limited to biological represented feelings. It is here that science does not have the answers either as of yet so some speculation is in order.

My idea is that the mind has the ability to attach concepts held by the mind to emotional responses. First, a definition is in order:

Concept: . A general idea derived or inferred from specific instances or occurrences. 2. Something formed in the mind; a thought or notion. See Synonyms at idea.

Here I would say that the concept is something we have created in the left brain language system. We will have to address the harder attachment of the image to emotion at a later date.

So my idea about this which itself may be considered a concept if we say that concept is synonymous with idea is that when it comes to all of the emotions listed above and any other list which is long when it comes to cultural emotions can be sequenced, attached to, followed by, or preceded by emotional responses. So we can say that we, if we have a concept that something is real like fear, happiness, guilt, jealousy, embarrassment, etc., then the very fact that we hold the concept of what it is, there is a reality to the mind of its existence. Please, repeat this last statement until it makes sense to you or else the rest of this is worthless. If you don't understand this or you disagree with it, then it is time to ask me about it. When I read your posts, I take time in reading them slowly for understanding and I reread everything I don't understand or disagree with. It is a must if we go in to this deeply, that we have understanding before preceding. I do not post without rereading for total clarity in what I am saying.

So, if I have learned what fear is or what jealousy is from my parents or my culture and I understand that there is some connection to a feeling, then I am perfectly capable of reproducing that feeling upon recall of the thoughts. This can go both ways. You see in teaching someone that there is a reality to an emotion in thought, one has to experience the feeling that culture is calling fear, pleasure, guilt, jealousy etc. Now with the primal emotions as listed by science, this is easy. Fear is certainly real as an emotion and so is happiness as one of the six experiential feelings listed by Damasio. This then would lead for parents and culture to pass on a word to define the thing easily at the moment of observing the child appearing to be afraid of something or happy about something, but what about jealousy and guilt? Wouldn't we say that we have to develop language at least and then an understanding of the words in the form of developing a concept in order to tell the child he is experiencing jealousy or guilt? And aren't all culturally taught emotions relatively different from culture to culture? If Tiger Woods were living in most of Europe, he might not be feeling guilt at all!

I would say that not only have the culturally taught emotions become a concept in left brain thought, but why not fear and happiness itself. Don't we know that happiness to some people might not stimulate another person in another culture and certainly we all don't fear the same things. Anyone here fear God?

I think what I would like to point out is how conditioning works with this process. If learning is the source of misidentification of emotion, then how does the body respond in emotional ways. I am angry at you. You have insulted me. I am afraid of elevators. I am jealous because you have a friend I don't want you to have. I feel guilty because I lied to you. We know why the mind develops these things because it is convenient for mankind, thinking that we need to be tamed, finds that we must have the emotions to control us so we don't do the things that the culture doesn't want us to do? Culture and religion think that we need commandments to follow or else we would be like animals and all be dangerous. ?Thou shall not kill!? Certainly we would all be murderers if we weren't taught not to kill!!! What a joke. I guess this throws out human empathy which is not an emotion. Sentimentality is.

How does this work then. Well, it works like this. Memory works in association. One thought leads to the next. I don't count one, two, three, six, four, five, eight, nine, ten unless I have a brain injury. I have learned associations that allow for automatic access to successive memories. Can it be possible that conditioning with emotion is just using memory in this same pattern? If I were to have a concept of jealousy or fear which have been developed in the language system, wouldn't I be able to balance events that were happening and then access the emotion that I have learned that are connected to this emotion. That is, there is an elevator, someone says lets take the elevator and I imagine I am going in to it and I remember the experience of fear that I have developed out of a concept I have of the danger of elevators, and, therefore, I have a reaction when someone says, we have to take the elevator and I have a flash of fear and state ?I am afraid to go in to the elevator.? This can apply to any conditioned states like fear of a teacher, a parent or a snake if your parent told you to be afraid of snakes. You might not even have experienced a snake. With jealousy, you may have experienced something as a child where you saw your brother or sister get something you didn't get and you wanted it instead of what you got and had a feeling and your parent says, you shouldn't be jealous of your brother. Voila, the creation of the concept of jealousy. Now it is just up to you to use the word at other times when you experience that emotion when your girlfriend looks at another guy.

This simple process of memory can be extended to all conditionings. And I would say that the problem is that the concept is wrong. The word is not the thing. The concept is not the thing either. What happens to you when you don't want to go on to an elevator is not real biological fear, but it is the fear created by association in memory to previous experienced events and to the concept you have of their danger. Jealousy and the cultural emotions as such are totally conceptual in nature. They are all entirely learned and applied by the culture you grow up in and have no universality at all. This is easily understood once you realize that an insult to one person might be a compliment to another. The reason the primary emotions take on more universality is that they are the only emotions that exist. Fear is amygdala firing and so more cultures will be afraid of snakes lets say than will have the same types of jealousy, but even here things are different because we see people in some cultures who play with cobras for instance.

Now, speculation, since, as of now, there is no known or named emotions outside of the seven feelings they have found already, the emotions that we feel when experiencing jealousy, guilt, embarrassment etc are the other emotions being named in thought with different concepts. This is convenient, isn't it for culture to be able to condition us using fear, for example, for many different things. I find when I am trying to identify why I am having a cultural reaction, it helps me to define the real emotion that the concept is attached to. By the way, I am not sure I really like all the seven emotions that Damasio mentions as I am not sure pleasure is happiness or that anger and fear are not somehow connected through the amygdala. So all this is not set in stone yet. I don't know of a neurologist who has read K including Burton who sent me an email to that effect.

It's my birthday today and I wanted to get this done. I have much more I could add, but I think this is enough as someone will post and all this will be gone which is the problem with this kind of exchange. I do hope though that those who are following this will take a great deal of time to understand this and if there is something wrong, say so. If not then we can go on to the right brain and the solutions to this. Just a hint on the right brain. The concepts of the right brain are in this nebulous image process. No clue how it works because it is not studied. One thing though I think from observation is that the right brain accesses its feelings through picture. That is, it will access jealousy by just picturing the person or event where it had the experience. It will also, send that picture at times to the left brain in the form of a visual image (oops my theory...no proof) and the left brain can then use its concept to access the feeling. This would be K's picturing the bear after he got back to the Yellowstone lodge.

Just one brief finishing thing and that is where does the self come in to this. Well it comes in as a concept to the left brain and image to the right brain. And then when there is the attachment of emotion to the concept or the image....Voila! You have the reality of feeling connecting to a memory. Memories are not real but emotions are. Thus the self and the self image would be a conditioning as I have speculated and, therefore, have no more reality than any other memory.

Please try to leave this post up for a day or two before commenting. Maybe, in a two day break those who are new here might want to go back to the beginning where we defined conditioning.