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What�s all this talk about thought?
In June 1979, in Brockwood Park, there was a lengthy discussion with biographer
Mary Lutyens (Mary Zimbalist was also present and took notes from which
Lutyens quoted) on the question she had earlier put to him: �Who made the
teachings?� [As was his wont, during this conversation he reverted to
referring to himself in the third person.]:
K �Let us be clear. If I deliberately sat down to write it [the talks] I doubt if I
could produce it. � There is a sense of vacuity and then something comes.
But if I sat down to do it I might not be able to. Schopenhauer, Lenin,
Bertrand Russell etc. had all read tremendously. Here there is the phenomenon
of this chap who isn�t trained, who has had no [academic] discipline. How did
he get all this? � If it were only K - he is uneducated, gentle - so where does it
come from? This person hasn�t thought out the teaching.�
ML: He hasn�t come to it through thought?
K: It is like - what - what is the biblical term? - revelation. It happens all the time
when I�m talking.�
{Mary Lutyens, Volume 2: Years of Fulfilment, Chapter 20:
'Who or What is Krishnamurti?', pp. 229/30, Avon Books; ellipses added}
~~~~~~~~
�Thought has no place whatsoever in the silent mind.�
{Mary Lutyens, Volume 2: Years of Fulfilment, page 176)
�Thought is necessary to accumulate knowledge to function skillfully,
otherwise thought has no place whatsoever.�
{The Transformation of Man: The Wholeness of Life, Chapter XVIII, page 213}
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Remarkable statements. Thought has created our entire civilization, it dominates all our days and our entire life, from sentient being to death. It is at the very centre of all our self-identity, goals, ambitions, occupation, social status and relationships. It has created all of science, technology, architecture, philosophy, religions, languages and the myriad iconic images of god. Yet, these statements are flatly stating that psychological thought is simply not required to live our daily lives. Period.
Can the brain stop recording experiences?
The mind, as we know it, encompasses the brain, all feelings, and all the body senses. But it is the brain that is the seat of thought. The brain is a recorder and, not so strangely as it turns out, functions very much like a computer, which is its own creation. A computer mimics the actual structure of the brain: both are run entirely on fragmented memory (necessitating hard-drive defragmentation - like the deconditioning of the mind); and there is a remarkable symmetry between DNA code and computer programming binary code (Scientist Creates Life - Almost, Time Magazine, January 24, 2008). The brain is much more subtle, imitative and clever than we think.
Recording is accumulation. Accumulation is the central drive, or desire, of thought - to become something. Accumulating experiences, knowledge, fame, money and power. Accumulation gives comfort, pleasure and security to the self. The talks state that recording occurs only through inattention, which implies that most of the time we are not paying full attention to what we are doing and to what is occurring around us.
Thought is time...
"Thought brings about irrationality."
(With Bohm, The Ending of Time: Chapter 3, 'Why has Man given Supreme Importance to Thought?,' April 8, 1980)
Thought, as time, is the problem. One must fully understand this statement, for it lies at the center of the Core of the Talks. Time is also thought. When one is fully in the present, when one is wholly attentive to the now, there is no thought. Thought comes in to fill this void, as it fears this blankness, or emptiness. It is thus concerned to be occupied with something all the time.
Thought is conditioned by the past, by memory, one can see this in oneself. It divides life into fragments: you can see when you look into the mind that there is a "me" and a "not me." On a worldwide scale this division is nationalism. Thought does not consider the unity of mankind, it is always narrow, self-interested and conforming to a pattern. It constantly plays games with itself, it is highly self-deceptive.
You can observe over time that the nature and content of your thought doesn�t change. You may have supposedly �new� thoughts (new ideas, or so-called memes, which are only recycled from other people�s ideas) and a resultant change in lifestyle, which is essentially superficial, but the fundamental content of thought remains the same. Self-interested, deceptive, superficial, obsessing over particular repetitive memories, in fear, looking for direction, for endless distraction.
This is one of the deep statements that lies at the base of the talks. Thought, unlike the rest of nature, simply doesn�t evolve.
The brain is always recording and so the issue becomes one of what needs to be registered to live and what is only psychological registration in the defense and support of the self. Thought creates images as a part of its creation of this self. If thought ceases, then this movement of image-making ends, does it not?
Why has thought constructed an illusory self?
The heart of all self-understanding is in the actual realization there is no thinker, there is only thought.
Can you observe that thought is incapable of looking at facts without reaction? Can you see that it is always escaping from the actual? The self is the observer, the controller, which is the essence of our identity. It is seemingly separate from its thoughts. Over time, this observer has become an intrinsic part of one�s nature. We believe that the self is an inherent part of human nature, do we not?
The essence of the self is arrogance and deception: the belief that �I know," which by extension means others don�t. The self is the antithesis of humility, which it shuns as socially inept behavior. This constant game of one-upmanship it plays is the primary cause of anger, friction and violence in all our relationships, is it not?
The self is thought�s masterpiece of deception. It wears masks to conceal its true motives. It is always accumulating - outwardly, this is represented in money and possessions; inwardly, as experiences and knowledge. These accumulations burden the mind and only produce the desire for more: more money, more experiences, more pleasure, more knowledge. There is never a final satisfaction.
Repeat: There is never any final satisfaction. The fictional self is incapable of just being in the present. Although it is an illusory thing by itself, as a construction of thought it is an actuality and must be understood in its entirety. This is what self-knowledge is all about:
�The �me� is brought about through thought; it has no reality by itself. ��
(The Impossible Question: Chapter 4: 'Fragmentation', 23 July 1970, page 46)
[Emphasis in the original]
"Self-knowing is the understanding of becoming in oneself."
(Pupul Jayakar, A Biography: Chapter 27, "Action Without Consequence?", page 204)
~~~~~&~~~~~
Is it all about the ending of thought?
�There is the understanding of what is, an adequate action towards what is, only when the mind
is not seeking any escape. The very thinking about what is is an escape from what is.
Thinking about the problem is escape from the problem, for thinking is the problem,
and the only problem. The mind, unwilling to be what it is, fearful of what it is,
seeks these various escapes; and the way of escape is thought.
As long as there is thinking, there must be escapes, attachments, which only strengthen conditioning.
Freedom from conditioning comes with the freedom from thinking.
When the mind is utterly still, only then is there freedom for the real to be."
{Commentaries on Living, Series 11, Chapter 2, "Conditioning'}
"The brain is the source of thought. The brain is matter and thought is matter.
Can the brain - with all its reactions and its immediate responses to every challenge and demand - can the brain be very still?
It is not a question of ending thought, but of whether the brain can be completely still.
This stillness is not physical death. See what happens when the brain is completely still."
{The Urgency of Change: page 187}
There has been much discussion over whether the talks are positing the end of thought, per se. They are. "Thinking is the problem, and the only problem." Obviously, thought itself has its place (referred to as technical thought), as all the senses have their place. One needs the intellect of logic and reason to live one�s daily life, to plan for the material future. The talks are addressing the possibility of the utterly still mind, where thought will come into being only when required to live practically, in the moment.
Undeniably, the talks are concerned with the ending of the self. All thought as a movement of the �me� must come to an end. The end of the self is the end of all psychological memory; which is dying to each day. There is only the carrying over of memory which is essential for everyday practical/technical living and the denial of all the rest, which means the ending of all experiences. These experiences are of time and so are all false. They must be negated.
What does this really mean: "The observer is the observed"?
This is, of course, the perennial catchphrase that appears to have created a good deal of needless confusion as to its exact meaning. This may be the real issue - we have complicated it beyond all understanding. The statement is clear and simple, this is not complex abstract philosophy, advanced psychology, rocket science.
Put very simply, it means precisely the same as the phrase, �the thinker is the thought�. There is no separate independent thinker, it is all just thought. To put it another way: you are that which you are observing, you are not separate from it, observing it from another superior and removed vantage point, despite the strong, even apparently innate, sense that you feel you are.
What is called fragmentation is that movement of thought that has separated itself into two components. The self, which is time, which is the observer, which is the past, and the not self, which is everything that is observed by the self, including thought itself. But the observer is the same nature as that which it observes. In life itself, in all of nature, there simply is no division. If you observe all creatures you will see that they are entirely at one with their environment, they are not divided from or separate from it, they have no sense of a separate self-consciousness. (It is said that some of the other great apes have a rudimentary self-awareness, but they too do not separate themselves from their environment.)
Man is the only creature on earth that has created a separate and apparently �independent observer�, that appears to be observing itself and the world around it. The self is a trick of the mind, a controller separate from itself:
�The observer is the self.
The observer detaches itself from that which it observes in itself - the loneliness, emptiness etc.
This very detachment - division - is an escape from the actual.�
(The Impossible Question: page 119)
�So we come to a point where we can say, the observer is also the image, only he has separated himself and observes. This observer who has come into being through various other images thinks himself permanent and between himself and the images he has created there is a division, a time interval. This creates conflict between himself and the images he believes to be the cause of his troubles. So then he says, "I must get rid of this conflict", but the very desire to get rid of the conflict creates another image.
Awareness of all this, which is real meditation, has revealed that there is a central image put together by all the other images, and the central image, the observer, is the censor, the experiencer, the evaluator, the judge who wants to conquer or subjugate the other images or destroy them altogether. The other images are the result of judgments, opinions and conclusions by the observer, and the observer is the result of all the other images - therefore the observer is the observed.�
{Commentaries On Living, Series II, Chapter 50, 'Convictions--Dreams'}
So the observer is the observed actually is a phrase that is quite simple to understand. It is the analytical and abstract thought process that complicates it. This becomes a clever escape from facing up to the actual fact of it. There is seemingly no end to the trickery and deceptiveness of thought; have you noticed that in yourself? Thought plays games and has an innate suspicion of simplicity, which explains why society as a whole is utterly dependent upon myriad experts to solve all of its problems.
(See: The Catchphrases)
Can thought be aware of itself?
This is a pivotal point. The following passage, which also addresses realization, brings these questions to the fore:
�So there has been in my conversation with myself the discovery that loneliness is created by thought.
Thought has now realized of itself that it is limited and so cannot solve the problem of loneliness. �
Thought has created this sense of loneliness, this emptiness, because it is limited, fragmentary,
divided and when it realizes this, loneliness is not, therefore there is freedom from attachment.�
{Brockwood Park, 3rd Public Talk, September 8, 1973}
�Thought must be aware of its own ways, of its own cunning deceptions. All consciousness, surely, whether it is of the past, the present, or the future, is within the field of thought; and any change within that field, which sets the boundaries of the mind, is no real change. A radical change can take place only outside the field of thought, not within it, and the mind can leave the field only when it sees the confines, the boundaries of the field, and realizes that any change within the field is no change at all. This is real meditation. In being aware of itself, without any desire to be or not to be, the mind comes to a state of inaction.
Inaction is not death; it is a passive watchfulness in which thought is wholly inactive. It is the highest state of sensitivity. When the mind is completely inactive at all its levels, only then is there action. All the activities of the mind are mere sensations, reactions to stimulation, to influence, and so not action at all. When the mind is without activity, there is action; this action is without cause, and only then is there bliss.�
{Commentaries on Living: Series I, Chapter 85, 'Sensation and Happiness'}
The actual nature of this realization, and the state or quality of mind in which this self-awareness takes place, appear to be the most difficult issues of all in the talks. Have we ever realized anything? Realization is seeing something entirely new. Are we capable of it?
More Significant Quotations:
�Can thought be aware of its own movement? Can thought see itself, see what it is doing, both in the outer and the inner? There is really no outer and inner: the inner creates the outer, and the outer then shapes the inner. This ebb and flow of action and reaction is the movement of thought, and thought is always trying to overcome the outer, and succeeds, bringing about many problems; in solving one problem other problems arise. Thought has also shaped the inner, molded it according to the outer demands....
This process has been going on for thousands upon thousands of years and thought seems not to realize its own activity. So one asks: can thought ever be aware of itself - aware of what it is doing? There is no thinker apart from thought; thought has made the thinker, the experiencer, the analyser. The thinker, the one who is watching, the one who acts, is the past, with all the inheritance of man, genetically, biologically - the traditions, the habits and all accumulated knowledge. After all, the past is knowledge, and the thinker is not separate from the past. Thought has created the past, thought is the past; then thought divides the thinker and the thought, which the thinker must shape, control. But that is a fallacy; there is only thought. The self is the 'me', the past. Imagination may project the future but it is still the activity of thought.�
{Krishnamurti to Himself}
�A human being, throughout life, depends on thought and the things that thought has put together as being most essential, �
Someone comes along and says: �Now look, all that is the movement of the past.�
Having reasoned with him, logically, the other says: �Why not, what is wrong with holding on to thought even though
it is of the past?�; he acknowledges it, and says: �I�ll hold to it, what is wrong?� Yet when the human mind lives in the past
and when it holds to the past, then it is incapable of living, or perceiving truth.�
{The Transformation of Man: page 161}
�Thought is necessary, yet we see that thought divides, as the �me� and �not me�;
it tries to solve the problem of violence in isolation, unrelated to all other problems of existence. �
Can the mind be free of the �me�?�
{The Impossible Question: Chapter 4, 'Fragmentation', page 46, 23 July 1970)
�The mind must go through that small hole which it has put together, the self, to come upon this vast nothingness
whose stability thought cannot measure."
{Krishnamurti�s Journal, Malibu, 23 April 1975, Copyright KFT}
�Has it ever happened to you - I am sure it has - that you suddenly perceive something, and in that moment of perception you have no problems at all? The very moment you have perceived the problem, the problem has completely ceased. Do you understand, sirs? You have a problem, and you think about it, argue with it, worry over it; you exercise every means within the limits of your thought to understand it. Finally you say, "I can do no more." There is nobody to help you to understand, no guru, no book. You are left with the problem, and there is no way out.
Having inquired into the problem to the full extent of your capacity, you leave it alone. Your mind is no longer worried, no longer tearing at the problem, no longer saying, "I must find an answer"; so it becomes quiet, does it not? And in that quietness you find the answer. Hasn't that sometimes happened to you? It is not an enormous thing. It happens to great mathematicians, scientists, and people experience it occasionally in everyday life. Which means what? The mind has exercised fully its capacity to think, and has come to the edge of all thought without having found an answer; therefore it becomes quiet - not through weariness, not through fatigue, not by saying, "I will be quiet and thereby find the answer." Having already done everything possible to find the answer, the mind becomes spontaneously quiet. There is an awareness without choice, without any demand, an awareness in which there is no anxiety; and in that state of mind there is perception. It is this perception alone that will resolve all our problems.�
{Book of Life Daily Meditations, 'At the edge of all thought', October 9, 2007}
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* Questioner: "What is the relation between the thinker and his thought?"
Krishnamurti: "Now, is there any such relation, or is there only one thing, which is thought, and not the thinker? Because, if there are no thoughts, there is no thinker... Now, having thoughts, seeing the impermanency of thoughts, the thinker comes into being. That is, thought creates the thinker; and because thoughts are transient, the thinker becomes the permanent entity ... That is, thoughts are transient, they are always in a state of flux, and thought objects to its own impermanency; therefore, thought creates the thinker ... Then we try to establish a relationship between the thinker, and the thought which has created him. That is, we try to establish a relationship between that which seeks to be permanent, which is the thinker created by thought, and the thought itself, which is transient. But obviously both are transient. ..."
{Collected Works, Bombay, 10th Public Talk, 14th March, 1948}
This is the clearest passage you could get explaining why thought has created this thing called the self. When you look at it carefully, it is all so logical. There is no actual thing as the self at all, there is only thought. But of course, our whole conditioning says there is a self; moreover one must, we believe, have a self (and consequent self-esteem) to carry on through life. So, the fact is, we have never investigated whether it is possible to live life without a self. Moreover, there is fear when thought anticipates the end of the self. Without understanding this fear and ending it, the self will simply continue, will it not?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'How can there be a fusion of the thinker with his thoughts?' ... Not through the action of will ... The use of a means implies an agent who is acting, does it not?... The fusion takes place only when the mind is utterly still without trying to be still. There is this stillness, not when the thinker comes to an end, but only when thought itself has come to an end. There must be freedom from the response of conditioning, which is thought."
{Book of Life Daily Meditations, 'A wall of impregnable thought', August 17, 2008}
Here, again, is the clear statement that the beginning of everything is the still mind, not that the still mind comes about through the ending of the observer. That is, when thought ceases, when all the responses of the mind cease, only then is there perception, only then is there the freedom to look at what is. This raises the paradox: if no action of thought can bring about a still mind, what does bring it about? An insight, a realization, a direct perception? Or are these in fact all one and the same?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* "The Flowering of Thought"?
What follows runs directly counter to two thousand years of civilization, human conditioning, and human behaviour. To allow thought and its associated feelings to fully flower goes against the grain of all we have ever been taught. It is, on the face of it, completely counter-intuitive - if you allow all thought to flower you will go out of control, will you not? You will become subservient to your thoughts and so run amok. Consequently, we have been conditioned (brainwashed) into automatically suppressing all bad thoughts.
It is this passage that reveals the truly revolutionary nature of the talks. It is the end of "I must" or "I must not" - the death of the censor.
What is implied here is that the flowering of thought is not the indulging of thought - there is a distinct difference between the two. It is to be fully aware of the thoughts, not identifying with them, so letting them rise and then die. This is awareness without the censor. It is the censor that has identified itself with all these thoughts - so the desire of thought to identify with things becomes the central point. If one does not establish an identity with any of one's thoughts, then what is left? Only thought itself?
The analogy in this passage to the flower is strong. The existence/significance of the flower in nature (and its perfume) is a persistent theme running throughout the entire talks:
"Every thought and feeling must flower for them to live and die; flowering of everything in you, the ambition, the greed, the hate, the joy, the passion; in the flowering is their death and freedom. It is only in freedom that anything can flourish, not in suppression, in control and discipline; these only pervert, corrupt.
... To allow envy to flourish is not easy; it is condemned or cherished but never given freedom. It is only in freedom the fact of envy reveals its colour, its shape, its depth, its peculiarities; if suppressed it will not reveal itself fully and freely. When it has shown itself completely, there is an ending of it only to reveal another fact, emptiness, loneliness, fear, and as each fact is allowed to flower, in freedom, in its entirety, the conflict between the observer and the observed ceases; there is no longer the censor but only observation, only seeing....
The flowering of thought is the ending of thought; for only in death is there the new.... What flowers must come to an end."
{The Notebook: page 189; ellipses and paragraphs added}
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Summary:
* Thought is part of the senses. It is a neurophysiological response (reaction) to input (stimulus) from the sensory system ~
* Thought has created an illusory entity supposedly separate from itself - the so-called 'permanent' self, as distinct from
the transient nature of thought itself - in order to achieve psychological security ~
* The self is a fiction - an escape used by thought from looking at its actual nature, which is the "what is" ~
* For the ending of thought to occur, thought must actually realize its own limitation, not merely as an abstraction ~
* Without this fundamental realization, thought will simply continue with all its ceaseless reactions ~
* It is only when each thought fully flowers (without suppression or condemnation), and then dies, that all thought ends.
The central theme of the talks is that all thought is limited. Thought cannot come to Truth, no matter what it does - what it imagines or conjures up. It is always in the box, whereas insight is outside the box. Insight is direct perception in the present of the Truth. The Truth is limitless and is the unknown. Thought is the known, for it is structured on past knowledge, which is memory. Truth is only in the present and has no relationship whatsover with thought and the past. This goes against the grain of thousands of years of conditioning: We think we can progress to the Truth. We cannot.
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This website went online on November 22, 2007 and is being continually developed.
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"Thinking has created problems and then our brains, our minds, are trained to solve them with
more thinking. All problems are created, psychologically and inwardly, by thought."
{The Network of Thought: Chapter 8, Amsterdam, September 19, 1981}
"There is no self to understand but only the thought which creates the self."
{The Beginnings of Learning, � KFT, London, 1979}
It is clear that one must go to the very end of the mind, to face the actual basis of thought - the feeling of loneliness/emptiness
that exists at the center of it. One has to face that without any avoidance or escape. This is not stagnation.
(Page last updated on February 24, 2009)
Life after Death: A Most Extraordinary Discussion -
on the Stream, Pure Energy, Death & Reincarnation
