"Knowledge is the deck of cards that reason plays with"

Why do we make a study of Krishnamurti's message? Why have we built a cult around him? This is not something you do with a message you comprehend...especially when the message is that it takes no time to get it.

nick carter wrote:
Why do we make a study of Krishnamurti's message?

Because he is addressing issues directly affecting our lives.Because he is talking about our lives.

Why do you study K's message? You are also a member here.

Kapila Kulasinghe wrote:
Why do you study K's message? You are also a member here.

I don't study K's message. It's clear what he was saying, and equally clear that no one "gets it"...though there's no shortage of those who'd have you believe they've got it and will gladly talk your ear off.

K was talking about awakening to non-dual consciousness; realizing the limitation of dualistic consciousness. It seems there are people for whom this has happened and K was one of them, but not all of these people had much to say about it because, as K demonstrated, talking about it doesn't do any good. In fact, talking about it results in organizations and cults being built around the talker. We idolize these people because they represent what we feel we should be, but idolizing them doesn't bring us any closer to our own awakening. And as we can see, this idolizing and emulating K can provide an excuse for not taking what he was talking about seriously.

Well said, Nick. Indeed, no study is needed at all. Only sensing the physical danger of duality. Nothing short of that will push the brain to evolve.

For a cult to exist, it requires more than an idol to worship. There is quite a difference between idolatry, which can be an individual matter, and cultism which requires organisation, ritual and a leader. Obviously K is not a candidate to lead such an operation as he is dead.

I am saying that a cult is an organised body that coalesces followers around forms of worship.

The followers of K, in so far as it can be put that way, are an extremely amorphous bunch and do not readily brook any organising. Some are fascinated by the person, some are fascinated by the teaching. Others are sincerely interested in experimenting with the teaching in their own lives. This site is a rag-bag mix of the three types, plus a handful of cynics whose purposes and game-playing are titillating to the readily titillated.

As for Konditioning, one is always complicit in one's own state of consciousness and blaming the other is an evasion of responsibility.

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Wed, 16 Feb 2011.

nick carter wrote:
It's clear what he was saying

Are you sure?

nick carter wrote:
and equally clear that no one "gets it"...though there's no shortage of those who'd have you believe they've got it and will gladly talk your ear off.

How do you know?

nick carter wrote:
And as we can see, this idolizing and emulating K can provide an excuse for not taking what he was talking about seriously.

What prevents you? talk of yourself and only of yourself. You will never know about others.

Paul Davidson wrote:
one is always complicit in one's own state of consciousness and blaming the other is an evasion of responsibility.

Exactly. Blaming others is so easy to escape from one's own state of disorder. Carry on Mister Carter, you will never know. It is a total waste of your Life.

No one's blaming anyone. I've merely described a situation, a condition. No need to get defensive.

nick carter wrote:
It's clear what he was saying, and equally clear that no one "gets it"

This statement is contradictory. How did you get it then? Can you explain please?

nick carter wrote:
In fact, talking about it results in organizations and cults being built around the talker.

Oh, no. Not at all. That depends solely on what the talker's is saying & listeners-whether they are gullible or not.

Have you ever known a talker in the recent history who talked against authority as much as K did? So how to make a cult around him?That's impossible. Then it's only some who have not understood him. Does this forum amount to a cult? Does discussing amount to forming a cult? In which way is this a cult?

This post was last updated by Kapila Kulasinghe Thu, 17 Feb 2011.

nick carter wrote:
awakening to non-dual consciousness

Words are tricky, aren't they?

Isn't consciousness -a conscious subject plus some external object of which being conscious- the very stuff of duality?

Yet I like to think I understand what you mean.

Conveying non-duality through words -symbols of symbols- is a mighty task requiring cooperation from the listener/reader. Making Krishnamurti an object of study/cult is sheer denial of that cooperation.

Speaking for myself and only for myself, as you were so kindly encouraged to do, I find Krishnamurti's finger stubbornly pointing to falsity and thus opening a way to awareness of what is true. This I appreciate. The loose way he used words like 'mind', 'thought', 'idea', meaning one thing and its opposite depending on the place you look, I do not appreciate that much.

I guess I am denying him my cooperation when I do that.

nick carter wrote:
No one's blaming anyone. I've merely described a situation, a condition.

To make it clearer, I am suggesting that there is no such thing as 'K-conditioning,' only self-conditioning that uses K's teaching as its grist.

One can use anything as a means to adapt oneself. To say K-conditioning suggests that the teaching itself is a form of conditioning. Thus, it appears as a side-swipe against the teaching.

Anything can become a condition if you accept it as a condition, which is an act of your own volition.

What are you waiting for?

Kapila Kulasinghe wrote:
This statement is contradictory. How did you get it then? Can you explain please?

Anyone can get K's message that we're trapped in dualistic consciouness, but few, if any, ever see dualistic consciousness for what it is; ever awaken to non-dualistic consciousness. I don't claim to be one of those few.

Kapila Kulasinghe wrote:
Does this forum amount to a cult? Does discussing amount to forming a cult? In which way is this a cult?

Whatever distinguishes K from anyone else who has undergone what he called "transformation" is of little significance. What matters is that one awakens to the limitation of "thought" (dualistic consciousness), is transformed by this awakening. Why not build an organization around this phenomenon instead of around one of the humans to which it has happened? It's the change in consciousness that matters; not any one individual who underwent it.

" . . . few, if any, ever see dualistic consciousness for what it is; ever awaken to non-dualistic consciousness."

What is the difference between dualistic consciousness and non-dualistic consciousness?

max

max greene wrote:
What is the difference between dualistic consciousness and non-dualistic consciousness?

K's statement "the observer is the observed" is an expression of non-dualistic consciousness, a state in which all is one, there being no division between thought and thinker, seer and seen. In dualistic consciousness everything is apprehended by the observer, i.e., the past, one's conditioning, and there being no direct, immediate perception, there is only a world of appearances.

That is clear, no division between thought and thinker (i.e., no separate thinker is postulated; there is only thinking) and between observer and observed (no separate observer; there is only observing) and this would carry through into any action: there is only the acting and no separate actor.

What isn't so clear is how the past and conditioning apprehend, under dualistic consciousness. The past and conditioning are not capable of action (observing, thinking) on their own.

Isn't consciousness, other than as pure memory of fact, dualistic in itself?

max

nick carter wrote:
Why not build an organization around this phenomenon instead of around one of the humans to which it has happened?

Nick, you could always do that, if it is worthwhile. Or else you are being rhetorical, which is not clear.

But I feel there is a misapprehension stated, that an organisation has been built around the man, K, and not around the phenomenon of transformation, about which he taught.

What organisation are you referring to and what do you feel it is built around?

And do you feel that to build an organisation around a teaching is the same as building one around a teacher?

Again, how would one go about building an organisation, as you suggest, around the phenomena of transformation and what would an organisation built around a phenomena do? What would it amount to?

Also, lastly, as far as I am aware, the K foundations were set up with the intention of disseminating the teaching, nothing more. (We may leave the question of the schools aside.)

What people do with the teaching is up to them and K was emphatic on that. He sanctioned no following, priesthood or group-work and condemned interpretation.

No organisation was ever set up to teach the teaching or organise any following in any regard. If any organisation has fallen into acting that way, then it could be rightly criticised but the criticism would be effective if it was concrete and not nebulous.

What are you waiting for?

max greene wrote:
What is the difference between dualistic consciousness and non-dualistic consciousness?

max greene wrote:
Isn't consciousness, other than as pure memory of fact, dualistic in itself?

Hi Max,

Consciousness, as an accumulation can never be complete, but one can be fully conscious if one is fully present and not stuck in the accumulation. Full consciousness, as an ever changing state of attention is quite a different thing from the aggregated experience of the past upon which we usually attempt to calculate the present..

What are you waiting for?

Paul Davidson wrote:
the K foundations were set up with the intention of disseminating the teaching, nothing more. (We may leave the question of the schools aside.)
What people do with the teaching is up to them and K was emphatic on that. He sanctioned no following, priesthood or group-work and condemned interpretation.

The intention of disseminating the teaching is one thing, but the unintended consequences are quite another. Perhaps if the foundations featured what neuroscience is finding out about conciousness as prominently as what K said about it, K's words would matter less than what they pointed to. The pointer is not important, but once you've built an organization around him...

Had K been totally secular and scientific in his approach, he would be surpassed by what researchers in neuroscience have brought to light as of today. But because he referred to himself as "a religious man", because of his background, and because he spoke of "the sacred", "the benediction", and so on, he's the kind of person who tends to be regarded with more awe and reverence than a mere researcher.

It may not be the intention of the foundations to cater to people's need for a religion, but to many people K is more of a religious figure than a secular one, and the foundations do nothing to disabuse of them of their fanciful notions. Was he The Maitreya? Who knows? And who are the foundations to say he was or wasn't?

" Full consciousness, as an ever changing state of attention is quite a different thing from the aggregated experience of the past."

What is consciousness? Is it a "state of attention," or is it the accumulated knowledge and "aggregated experience of the past"? Or is it both? And what is the entity behind consciousness?

max

max greene wrote:
And what is the entity behind consciousness?

It was K's insight that there is no "entity behind consciousness", and neuroscience supports it.

Nick, thank you for that reply, which is welcome.

It seems, and please add your own clarifications to this, that you are saying the following:

Such people as hold K as having something special to say are more awestruck by his religious veneer promoted by the foundations, than they are by the true value of his insights, which have in any case been surpassed by science and neurology.

Nick, this is what I am reading and I am open to correction.

What are you waiting for?

max greene wrote:
What is consciousness? Is it a "state of attention," or is it the accumulated knowledge and "aggregated experience of the past"? Or is it both? And what is the entity behind consciousness?

Hi Max,

I understand that you are pointing to the irreconcilable difference between aggregated experience/knowledge and the state of complete attention which K speaks of. In which state, do you think, one is more conscious?

I am using the word 'conscious' in the common sense of being widely aware. In that common usage the phrase, 'to enter one's consciousness' means to become aware of something.

The unending stream of awareness is nowadays called a consciousness stream and has little to do with the restricted usage K gave to the word 'consciousness' in his later years, when he referred to the accumulation of experiences and knowledge, hurts and sorrows that crosses continents and generations.

As always there is the danger of getting trapped by lexicons and conventions when what is important is to get to the thing being described, whatever the words used. And the question is: are we in agreement as to what difference we are trying to discern?

What are you waiting for?

nick carter wrote:
It was K's insight that there is no "entity behind consciousness", and neuroscience supports it.

Is this a quote by K Nick? I think K said that behind consciousness is the entity that has, in its ignorance, accumulated that consciousness and that can, with direct perception, end that ignorance. Otherwise there is only the accumulation of knowledge which can never end.

And of course, there is no such entity as 'neuroscience,' speaking with one voice.

What are you waiting for?

This post was last updated by Paul Davidson (account deleted) Thu, 17 Feb 2011.

Paul,

"I am using the word 'conscious' in the common sense of being widely aware. In that common usage the phrase, 'to enter one's consciousness' means to become aware of something."

A couple of questions here, Paul. Your quote implies that consciousness is identical with awareness. I'm not saying this is incorrect, as I'm not certain. But is this what is meant?
Secondly, who is it (the entity) that enters consciousness?

Referring to your first paragraph, I see consciousness as accumulated knowledge, thought, memory, the past. I see consciousness as an obstruction to awareness and observation. In my view, the 'entity' that enters (actually, that is a part of) consciousness is the psychological thought/construct Self.

Consciousness is necessary, in that we can't get along without memory and facts. But we don't need the entity and the entity-related thought that comprises most of our consciousness.

max

Nick,

"It was K's insight that there is no "entity behind consciousness", and neuroscience supports it."

This seems logical, as in the same vein, there really is no separate entity in observation - - there is simply observing. The same goes for thought, and apparently any action, i.e., in the moment of action, actor/action are one.

It appears that there is no continuing entity other than the physical body, as the actor/action changes from moment to moment and the Self is merely a psychological construct.

max

Paul Davidson wrote:
Such people as hold K as having something special to say are more awestruck by his religious veneer promoted by the foundations, than they are by the true value of his insights, which have in any case been surpassed by science and neurology.

The foundations are not being selective. They're promoting the whole K story which involves everything he said about consciousness and transformation as well as his history as the boy selected by the Theosophists to be The World Teacher who was "prepared" by mysterious disembodied entities, "The Masters", for that role.

What if he'd been a nobody? Would anyone have listened to him? For all we know there may have been thousands, millions, of people who've undergone transformation, but because of being ordinary and inconspicuous, have gone unnoticed.

Krishnamurti was, by his own designation, a religious man. He spoke of things that ordinary people have no knowledge or experience of. He used words like "sacred" and "timeless" and "immeasurable" as one who had direct knowledge of such things. Such people can't help but attract an army of devoted followers.

nick carter wrote:
Why not build an organization around this phenomenon instead of around one of the humans to which it has happened?

Yes & lets call it 'X' just to refer to it.In this instance the 'X' merely happens to be Krishnamurti-the talker's name.What's the difference?

nick carter wrote:
It's the change in consciousness that matters; not any one individual who underwent it.

Quite right.