Monday, August 30, 2010
These are some of the comments that haven't been answered in my previous blog. I will answer them here, so they are more prominent than in the comments page. I think they deserve being put here. I have replied to four comments yesterday, please look them up under comments:
1) David said...
"One day scientists will realize that consciousness is everywhere"
Is this what Advaita speaks of as the world arising with the mind i.e. Body is in the Self ?
Can you elaborate on your understanding of this statement?
March 13, 2010 11:12 PM
Reply: Advaita says consciousness is everything, not just everywhere. Yes, the world of appearances, according to it, arises with the mind (because of ignorance), but then the body is part of it.(Actually, the mind is part of the world of appearance.) The Self, on the other hand, is consciousness.
2) Blogger Rambondalapati said...
Dear Narayana Moorty Sir,
Happy to see you back. I have been introduced to your blog nearly 20 days back through internet search. Since you have not been active of late, I thought of sending an email. But, again I thought at your age if were well or not.
I have the following questions:
1. Quite some states in our daily experience are beyond effort. Eg:we can't go into sleep by effort since effort requires us to be conscious. similarly if we are excited either positively or negatively, then also we can not enter sleep despite our efforts. Sitting in front of my computer some times I can't stop sleep despite my best efforts. Similarly I can't become Tendulkar with pure effort without action. To learn driving after some psychological effort i need to sit in a car and learn it. Once I learn the driving, it's impossible to get the reflexes out of my system despite my conscious effort. This might be because of the reflexes operating at a subconscious level.
Is the natural state some thing similar to the above situations?
Reply: The reflexes happening at a subconscious level are still mental, i.e., products of the divisive mind or thought. I don't what the natural state consists of, but it can't be the subconscious mind.
2.Though our mind operates through images, images are two way connections to the world. If I kick the man going on the street through his image, his image kicks me back because of him. It means through images we manipulate the world and invented things like space craft etc. This is very significant. Could this be done with the help of the "thought on demand" mode in which UG was?
Reply: I am not sure what you mean by 'image' here: if it is a visual image, UG was not capable of visual images. Even if thoughts were operating in UG on demand, they are not images in that sense. If, on the other hand, you say that my perception of my kicking a man results in my perception of his kicking me back, then perhaps you are right. For UG, in other words, the world is our interpretation of it.
3.UG says for practical purposes we can use thought. But from my perspective there's no clear cut distinction between these two aspects practical, and psychological(self conscious). Does being in natural state give that clarity?
Reply: I think we can understand UG better when we hear him say that actions are in him always prompted by something outside (in the world); they are never initiated by him. Then what you call the psychological plays no role at all.
4. Planning for future is one aspect of self-consciousness. Does it not enhance our survival?
Reply: Yes, but it also is responsible for the destructive nature of man. You can't have the one without the other.
5. Has civilization enhanced our survival? While comparing the amount of casualties in the case of calamities in developed and not developed world, I get the feeling that civilization has enhanced our collective survival(in addition to individual survival) too.
Reply: To appearances it may be so; but man's destructiveness is much deeper than just numbers of people who have survived vs. those who have perished. (Look at the divisions in the world, exploitation, hunger, wars, and on and on.)While I am impressed by many of the products of civilization, I can't say I can brag about it.
6. Can the thoughtless state be a result of the every day effort man exerts? If I read a book with concentration, then I am not self conscious at the moment. My mind is filled with the subject of the book (it might be images). Though the effort I put to read the book is to fulfill some selfish goal, or because of curiosity, am I not in a state that does not have self consciousness? Similar logic applies to a football player chasing a football in the field. Though, in this case he is chasing the image locked to a real world object.
Reply: It's not true that there is no self-consciousness in being absorbed in reading a book or playing football. There is thought and there are divisions (for example, your being affected by what happens to the hero in the book or when you are keenly aware of how close or farther away you are from your goal). Those divisions are divisions of self-consciousness. It just operates in a different way, that's all
7. Telling "some thoughts result in thoughtless state and some thoughts results in further thought", is nothing but "telling through thought/effort you can realize the thoughtless state". Is it correct?
Reply: I am not sure who said that. UG couldn't have said that. But if I said it, I mean that if a thought resulted in being free from thought, it is not because of any effort (which is always seeking a goal), but the abandoning of effort. If I let everything go in a certain state of mind, I am not seeking anything. I just let it go because of the realization that all goal-seeking only resulted in duality. If that constitutes a thought, I would say it's not like other thoughts. It's sort of self-annihilating.
8.Can we realize the necessary conditions for a natural state through our efforts/actions?
Reply: Only in the sense I talked about in the previous answer.
9. This question is mainly from what J Krishnamurti says. I have striven to reach the state. Now, it's easier for you. You need not be an Edison to switch on a light. Is it because if a person reaches certain state and looks back, it looks very easy to reach that state. Has JK realized that to a layman all that he was giving was a description of a state?
Reply: He must have known that. Yet, he somehow hoped that by his "journey together" he would lead the audience into some such state.
Finally, I write some novels kind of things on net. They are here.
http://wp.me/pGX4s-7Z
http://wp.me/pGX4s-52
I'll be very happy, if you could go through them and let me know your opinion (if your health permits)
Reply: Thanks for the links and I will let you know what I think when I get to read them.
March 15, 2010 12:19 AM
3Blogger Rambondalapati said...
One more question:
If we can realize the natural state through drugs or genetic engineering, then does it mean we attain that as a result of self consciousness?
Reply Not necessarily. The drugs can be taken by yourself or administered to you by someone else with or without your knowledge. In the last scenario, there is no self-conscious; you are a mere victim (or perhaps under duress!) But at any rate I wouldn't equate such changes with a transformation of the human being.
March 15, 2010 12:22 AM
4 Anonymous said...
Hi Mr Moorty,
Subjective introspection is prone to theorizing.It's very difficult to determine if a fleeting sensation is due to theorizing or actual. If a person is fully aware of teachings of UG, and then one day he tried(pseudonym) reaching end of thought,after thinking he has reached end of thought, according to the theoretical knowledge and his wishful thinking he may have a fleeting feeling that he realized the thoughtless state. It's impossible to distinguish this state from the actual natural state. In a recent time the experiment conducted on subjective introspection by Russell T. Hurlburt’s & Eric Schwitzgebel’s deals with this method.There's some literature about this experiment in internet.
Reply: I am not sure what you mean by 'theorizing': You mean one imagines one has such and such a sensation? Perhaps one would only as to the nature of the sensation, but not the fact that one has. That may be so in some cases, but it is rash to generalize from that all introspection is unreliable.
I think your assertion that UG's natural state is only his wishful thinking that he had one is borne out of not knowing what UG in person was like. Suppose it is so, how could you say it is impossible to distinguish this state from the actual natural state. Suppose one were in the actual natural state. How would you know? Through his behavior? Well, why wouldn't you use that method to find out if UG was indeed in that state or not. If there is no distinction, on the other hand, between the two states, then your claim that it is a result of theorizing becomes meaningless (theorizing as opposed to what?).
March 21, 2010 12:33 AM
5Blogger Ganesh said...
Dear Mr. Moorty,
Thanks for this article, its refreshing to have read it.
Regards,
Ganesh
March 25, 2010 8:28 PM
6 Anonymous Anonymous said...
You have tested it and writing form your personal experience or you find some information online?
Reply: Tested what?
July 2, 2010 7:12 PM
7Blogger Lionel said...
Hello Mister Moorty.
Thanks for this article.
I cannot but think about a paper wrote by Mahesh Bhatt called "a taste of death". Under the section called "August 4... day twenty-six" UG comments an article that Mahesh read in the Herald tribune the day before.
What amaze me is that UG says suddenly: "this new dimension which they claim they (the scientists) are now beginning to read in nature has always existed."
So in your article you quote UG saying "there is no such thing as a third or fourth dimension (if he saw Einstein - who talked about the three dimensions of space and the fourth of time - he would "shoot him on sight". As far as UG was concerned there are only two dimensions, implying that the third and the fourth dimensions are interpolations or our thought process"
Ok. Sorry there is again a contradiction with UG's statement in the Mahesh Bhatt article which was written in 1995. In 1995 science was and still is working with the concepts of 4 dimensions (even more!). If UG, commenting the article of the Herald Tribune, gives some credits to the idea that scientists begin to read in Nature a new dimension (which by the way has always existed), that implies, so to speak, a fifth dimension! - he, again, contradicts "himself" for me. I don't understand (i know, nothing is to undertand) and that irritate me. For me, this is an assumption that leads in the opposite direction than the one claiming about only
two dimensions in Nature.
What is your opinion on this contradiction ?
Thanks you for your reply.
All the best
Lionel
August 14, 2010 8:30 AM
Reply:
Hi Lionel:
Thanks for your comment. Please post your comments from now on at moortysblog.blogspot.com and not here. I cannot post replies on this blog any longer. They moved the old blog to the new blog site.
The Herald Tribune quote you gave does seem to contradict what UG says elsewhere. However, in this quote, he only seems to have said that about new dimension to disparage the scientists and their achievements, but not to pick a specific axe like a fourth or fifth dimension.
When he talks about two dimensions, he is mostly speaking from the point of view of his own personal experience in which he experiences the world in two dimensions and the third or fourth dimensions are mere interpolations of thought.
Moorty
August 14, 2010 11:01 AM
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Some Reflections on UG and the Scientific Approach
[The following article was prepared with the aim of posting in the blog of a scientist friend of mine. For whatever reason, that did not happen. I am posting this just so readers here will have a look at it. Any comments, of course, will be welcome.]
UG operated from both the subjective and objective points of view in his approach to various issues:
A) He would take the objective, scientist's point of view at times and say: 1) Man as a product of evolution is born with a neurological defect, viz., of self-consciousness that creates the self and its concomitant self-protectiveness which go above and beyond the evolutionary needs of survival and reproduction. 2) The self and self-protectiveness operate through man's development outside his organism through his culture. 3) Man's internal and external conflicts are a consequence of this self-protectiveness which creates offensive and defensive mechanisms as well as a civilization which is ultimately destructive of the human kind.
Once I also heard him say that scientists will find out one day that consciousness is everywhere.
UG's teachings, however, cannot be judged or measured by any scientific (or for that matter any rational) means, because they are not, as he would say, "based on logically ascertained premises."
Man, according to UG, is unique in creation because of his self-consciousness. Self-consciousness has not only provided his superiority to better control nature to his advantage but also has generated all his typically human individual and collective problems. Thanks to the internalization of the cultural influences in him, he formulates his goals for perfection and strives to live according to them. It is indeed such goal-seeking that is the source of his problems. If it is just goal-seeking like food gathering or procreation, which we also find in the animal world, there would have been no problem. But the goals that man seeks are set by his culture on the model of other personages in his culture who have succeeded in molding society. The goals create a past and a future in his mind and become an endless source of conflict. These goals operate through his self-consciousness with the help of his thought process which splits up each thought into the self and the goal, something that he has to become or achieve. They also create his sense of time. Once the self is formed thus on the basis one's past experiences, it becomes the basis of assigning meaning to the world around us and finding a place for itself in it.
The self is formed through the operations of the thought process which includes goals inculcated by one's culture (such as becoming a perfect man), goals which not only are used to promote one's pleasure and avoid one's pain, but create an effort to ensure that pleasure or happiness over time (hence the quest for permanent happiness) and thereby achieve a permanent place in the scheme of things. This is essential for the "survival" of the self, as opposed to the survival of the organism of the individual, which is normally taken care of by the biological functions of self-preservation and procreation. Endless search for a non-existent permanent happiness, "without a moment of unhappiness," becomes the main concern of life and a source of conflict.
UG's views about modern medicine parallel his other views. He himself would never take medicines or see a doctor if he ran into any problem. But he doesn't recommend the same for others. He would say that the body knows how to take care of itself (and heal itself), that pain is a healer, that the (psychological) problem of pain is created by connecting one sensation with another in our minds, and that when the body finds itself unable to take care of itself, it will gracefully give up and die. At other times, he would say that you sometimes need "to give a helping hand" by taking medicine. When a person has cancer or suffers an injury, his advise to him, more often than not, is to seek medical help, especially by getting a diagnosis and go through surgery, if necessary. In case of mental illnesses, he always held that most of them are due to genetically determined chemical balances and have to be treated with drugs.
He would use scientific facts he collected from newspapers, magazines or people visiting him sometimes to bolster his own position, or sometimes to show that the scientists don't always know the depths of things.
B) UG also often takes the subjective (or rather, his own personal) non-dual point of view, i.e., point of view and says that 1) evolution and even cause-effect relationships are all thought-created, that unless in thought you concatenate one event with another, there is neither evolution nor cause and effect; and that 2) there is no such thing as a third or fourth dimension (if he saw Einstein [who talked about the three dimensions of space and the fourth of time], he would "shoot him on sight". As far as he was concerned there are only two dimensions, implying that the third (and the fourth) dimensions are interpolations of our thought process.
Thus UG discards the idea of evolution, especially when it came to the universe: according to him, the scientists' theories about the origins of the universe and big bang are all bunkum; scientists will never find the fundamental particle from which supposedly everything came. He says that the universe has no origin and has no end. It always has been, is and will be. There is no sense in asking the whys and wherefores of creation.
* * *
On the other hand, if someone complained about his personal problem such as deteriorating vision, he would counter with the objective point of view: "I don't see any blindness in you," or "I don't see any problem," or "You have no problem." Or, if someone speaks of how he experiences duality in response to UG's claim that he himself doesn't experience any duality, of how there is meaning in his experience and so forth, UG would counter him by saying that that the person's understanding of him and attributing meaning to his statements was only an "interpretation," that there is no meaning, that he (UG) was only making noise, "barking like a dog," that the other person was doing exactly the same thing, and that "they are only two dogs barking at each other."
In all this, UG's attempt is not so much to prove a certain point of view, position or claim, but to disarm the listener's intellect, so that he can stand without any ground whatsoever. UG is not so much interested in winning the other person to his side, either. His efforts were all directed toward dismantling the belief structures and mental edifices people have built in their minds. However, one can't say that UG has a set agenda of doing such things. It's more appropriate to say that that's how he operated.
Much like the dialecticians of the past like Nagarjuna, he didn't have a set position of his own. And whatever operated through UG, if it ever succeeded with anyone, would not only disarm the person's intellect as well as his mental edifice in general, unglue him from his attachments and conditioning, (it's not that the person wouldn't operate through them any more, but that he is not determined by them), but would prompt him to revert to what was his original state, i.e., the Natural State. Whether or not this individual will be able to function in the world as a natural individual largely depends on if and how much from moment to moment he has freed himself from his conditionings and attachments.
The natural state, if it could be called such, is not achieved through any conscious (or unconscious) effort on one's part. It is something we are already in and we revert to it only when all effort based on goal-seeking ceases. UG, however, cannot be understood to be supplying a set method or recipe to achieve such a state. He only states the necessary condition for it to occur. That doesn't mean that you can achieve that result by practicing a certain method. A method presupposes a calculated goal to which it is supposed to lead you. And, UG would say, as long as a duality exists in your mind between yourself as you are and a state such as the natural state, so long there is bound to be conflict.
Of course, in UG, this would be seen as a fundamental solution to the problem of conflict in man (within and without), although it's hard to visualize how such a person would live and function in this world. All the goals and ambitions that would mark the life of a modern man would have no meaning for this individual. (Note that this does not mean that he would not have goals as such making a living, having a family or other such finite goals; only he will be free of the goals which can in principle be never totally realized, goals such as becoming perfect or permanently happy, or totally fulfilled.) We can't see that there will be any civilization as we know it, if the world were populated by such men.
This doesn't mean that the situation is hopeless either. It just means that there is nothing we can consciously or deliberately do to achieve such a state. Does this mean that if a person realizes his true state, it's only by good luck or chance? UG often said that "'It' chooses you, you do not choose it," that is, if you are lucky.
Then what did he hope to achieve through all this? Was he aiming at some result or goal? He wasn't even interested as much in changing or transforming people. In his final years, he used to say that what he says would "unburden" you, meaning unburdening you from your past.
* * *
Comments and Reflections: My quarrels with scientific method, particularly as it is applied to human sciences, is that it almost totally neglects to take the subjective fully into consideration. While many scientific studies in medicine, neurophysiology, psychology or sociology have to take into account the subjective "input" to verify and validate its results, the subjective understanding of an issue is undervalued to the extent that results are either distorted or partial, or simply inapplicable. Scientific method in these areas is glaringly conspicuous for grossly ignoring or underestimating both commonsensical introspective reflection and inter-subjective verification, and philosophically esteemed phenomenological method, after it had abandoned introspective method in psychology in the beginning of the twentieth century.
Of course, the subjectivity of the human being can never be objectified. Yet, that ultimately is the basis for my dealings with myself and the world as well as for utilizing scientific findings. So, what does that mean for scientific investigation? As a scientist you may solve all my psychological or social problems, but they remain outside solutions to me, unless I see them as solutions and try to adopt them. In the ultimate analysis, scientific findings have to be seen by a person as valid and applicable to himself; he has to find a way translating them into his personal life and its problems. Also, contrary to appearances, science cannot solve existential problems; at best it gives the illusion of solving them, by creating a hope for final solutions sometime in an indefinite future.
It's not that the objective scientific discoveries and inventions about the human being, and the physiological or neurological equivalents of mental states are irrelevant or useless. They have their place in the realm of knowledge. But the problem with these researches is that it leaves any problems that the individual has to deal with largely in the hands of the experts in the respective field and the person involved is hopelessly dependent on the expert to solve any of them. And the expert, more often than not, is dependent in his turn for the funding of his research on commercial and governmental sources which tend to monopolize and control the discoveries. And only the rich can afford any help from these experts. Man thus becomes a commercial and political slave. In my opinion this is a misled enterprise. As UG would say, all those discoveries "do not percolate to the level of the common man." Not that every man on the street is interested in attaining spiritual liberation or gaining self-knowledge. But not all those who do are necessarily rich. And even if they could get some help from the experts, they would still lack the insight and understanding of how the duality with its consequent problems of conflict is generated in their own minds.
I am not saying that UG cared much about advocating understanding or self-knowledge. As I mentioned above, he rejected the idea of any effort directed to change anything in man's condition to arrive at what he called the "natural state". At the same time, he would also denounce scientific efforts to study the human being as an objective entity, say by establishing correlations between subjective, personal reports of mental states or experiences and the neurophysiologic states or centers of the brain. He is more interested in helping a person realize how all effort is ultimately futile (although it may take a lot of effort on one's part to realize that!).
As I said above, UG only offered the necessary condition to be in the natural state: (To repeat, "'It' chooses you and you do not choose it.") There is nothing you can do to achieve it, because it is not a state to be achieved, nor an experience to be had. When all your goals drop, then the mind is freed from the trammels of the past, automatically. But unfortunately, you cannot willfully drop your goals without the ulterior motive of becoming free. In other words, the process of becoming is still going on. When that ceases, what there is is the natural state.
Science may create through its scientific method a technology by which a human being may mimic such "effortlessness" or even "the absence of the domination of thought processes", but from what we have seen in other areas, the result may be a mock human being, but will not be a full-fledged flesh-and-blood person. Any scientific attempt to modify the brain may produce some result, but would it be the same as the natural state? Would it truly release one from the bonds of day-to-day existence? Of course, the scientist would say that it's always possible and offer us hope. Then we begin to live in hope and would never face the realities of our existence.
* * *
The most frustrating part about listening to UG is that there is really no "directive" you can derive from his teaching: you cannot say he is advising you to do this or not to do that. Yet, he kept talking to people, exposing to them their assumptions and belief structures and yet, telling them there is nothing the person can do ("no way out"). As far as he was concerned that's the mode of his operation. He wasn't trying to change anyone or provide a belief system for people to take home and adopt or apply to their lives. What effect his teaching had on others was not of concern to him. ("It cannot harm anyone;" "I sing my song and go.")
All right, if there is nothing one can do, why is this better than relying on the scientist (or the expert) to solve one's problems?
One common admonition of UG is that "you don't have the hunger, you are wasting away the precious time of your life in pursuing trivial pleasures... etc." Saying this and saying at the same time that no effort of yours is of any use is not very helpful. In fact, they seem contradictory, as the former implies that there is something better, more worthwhile that you should be doing.
Should I just sit tight without doing anything, then, without pursuing any specific goal? Suppose I am reverted to such a passive state. Then either I instantly fall asleep, or some thought, past habit or memory grabs me and takes me to another place (in my mind), pushes me to pursue something, or go after something. Should I just sit here consciously and avoid pleasure- or goal-seeking? But that too is done with a motive. How is that helpful?
The paradox here is resolved in my mind in the following fashion: Actually, the whole dilemma is created by the thought process which is driven by the motivation of trying to find liberation (and find some sneaky way of getting there) and being frustrated about it. Or else, why bother what you do or don't do? When the goals themselves aren't important, it doesn't matter. You could just as well "waste" your life and go when you have to. No meaning, no questions and no quest. If you are at peace with yourself, then where is the problem?
Then, surely, the duality between bondage and freedom would have to disappear, because there is nothing else that one has to become or achieve. There is no 'this' (bondage), because the 'that' (liberation), as a goal, does not have any significance.
The little restlessness that you confront in day-to-day life can easily be resolved by changing the lifestyle or reorganizing daily life slightly differently. There is no fundamental dissatisfaction (or satisfaction) in life. That may be all there is to life. It's neither good nor bad, it just is.
I have to resolve the problems of my life and existence now, while I am still alive, and cannot afford to wait for the scientist to come with some promised solution in some far off future.
When there is no duality in life, there are no problems. Then it doesn't matter if you are liberated or in bondage.
* * *
UG operated from both the subjective and objective points of view in his approach to various issues:
A) He would take the objective, scientist's point of view at times and say: 1) Man as a product of evolution is born with a neurological defect, viz., of self-consciousness that creates the self and its concomitant self-protectiveness which go above and beyond the evolutionary needs of survival and reproduction. 2) The self and self-protectiveness operate through man's development outside his organism through his culture. 3) Man's internal and external conflicts are a consequence of this self-protectiveness which creates offensive and defensive mechanisms as well as a civilization which is ultimately destructive of the human kind.
Once I also heard him say that scientists will find out one day that consciousness is everywhere.
UG's teachings, however, cannot be judged or measured by any scientific (or for that matter any rational) means, because they are not, as he would say, "based on logically ascertained premises."
Man, according to UG, is unique in creation because of his self-consciousness. Self-consciousness has not only provided his superiority to better control nature to his advantage but also has generated all his typically human individual and collective problems. Thanks to the internalization of the cultural influences in him, he formulates his goals for perfection and strives to live according to them. It is indeed such goal-seeking that is the source of his problems. If it is just goal-seeking like food gathering or procreation, which we also find in the animal world, there would have been no problem. But the goals that man seeks are set by his culture on the model of other personages in his culture who have succeeded in molding society. The goals create a past and a future in his mind and become an endless source of conflict. These goals operate through his self-consciousness with the help of his thought process which splits up each thought into the self and the goal, something that he has to become or achieve. They also create his sense of time. Once the self is formed thus on the basis one's past experiences, it becomes the basis of assigning meaning to the world around us and finding a place for itself in it.
The self is formed through the operations of the thought process which includes goals inculcated by one's culture (such as becoming a perfect man), goals which not only are used to promote one's pleasure and avoid one's pain, but create an effort to ensure that pleasure or happiness over time (hence the quest for permanent happiness) and thereby achieve a permanent place in the scheme of things. This is essential for the "survival" of the self, as opposed to the survival of the organism of the individual, which is normally taken care of by the biological functions of self-preservation and procreation. Endless search for a non-existent permanent happiness, "without a moment of unhappiness," becomes the main concern of life and a source of conflict.
UG's views about modern medicine parallel his other views. He himself would never take medicines or see a doctor if he ran into any problem. But he doesn't recommend the same for others. He would say that the body knows how to take care of itself (and heal itself), that pain is a healer, that the (psychological) problem of pain is created by connecting one sensation with another in our minds, and that when the body finds itself unable to take care of itself, it will gracefully give up and die. At other times, he would say that you sometimes need "to give a helping hand" by taking medicine. When a person has cancer or suffers an injury, his advise to him, more often than not, is to seek medical help, especially by getting a diagnosis and go through surgery, if necessary. In case of mental illnesses, he always held that most of them are due to genetically determined chemical balances and have to be treated with drugs.
He would use scientific facts he collected from newspapers, magazines or people visiting him sometimes to bolster his own position, or sometimes to show that the scientists don't always know the depths of things.
B) UG also often takes the subjective (or rather, his own personal) non-dual point of view, i.e., point of view and says that 1) evolution and even cause-effect relationships are all thought-created, that unless in thought you concatenate one event with another, there is neither evolution nor cause and effect; and that 2) there is no such thing as a third or fourth dimension (if he saw Einstein [who talked about the three dimensions of space and the fourth of time], he would "shoot him on sight". As far as he was concerned there are only two dimensions, implying that the third (and the fourth) dimensions are interpolations of our thought process.
Thus UG discards the idea of evolution, especially when it came to the universe: according to him, the scientists' theories about the origins of the universe and big bang are all bunkum; scientists will never find the fundamental particle from which supposedly everything came. He says that the universe has no origin and has no end. It always has been, is and will be. There is no sense in asking the whys and wherefores of creation.
* * *
On the other hand, if someone complained about his personal problem such as deteriorating vision, he would counter with the objective point of view: "I don't see any blindness in you," or "I don't see any problem," or "You have no problem." Or, if someone speaks of how he experiences duality in response to UG's claim that he himself doesn't experience any duality, of how there is meaning in his experience and so forth, UG would counter him by saying that that the person's understanding of him and attributing meaning to his statements was only an "interpretation," that there is no meaning, that he (UG) was only making noise, "barking like a dog," that the other person was doing exactly the same thing, and that "they are only two dogs barking at each other."
In all this, UG's attempt is not so much to prove a certain point of view, position or claim, but to disarm the listener's intellect, so that he can stand without any ground whatsoever. UG is not so much interested in winning the other person to his side, either. His efforts were all directed toward dismantling the belief structures and mental edifices people have built in their minds. However, one can't say that UG has a set agenda of doing such things. It's more appropriate to say that that's how he operated.
Much like the dialecticians of the past like Nagarjuna, he didn't have a set position of his own. And whatever operated through UG, if it ever succeeded with anyone, would not only disarm the person's intellect as well as his mental edifice in general, unglue him from his attachments and conditioning, (it's not that the person wouldn't operate through them any more, but that he is not determined by them), but would prompt him to revert to what was his original state, i.e., the Natural State. Whether or not this individual will be able to function in the world as a natural individual largely depends on if and how much from moment to moment he has freed himself from his conditionings and attachments.
The natural state, if it could be called such, is not achieved through any conscious (or unconscious) effort on one's part. It is something we are already in and we revert to it only when all effort based on goal-seeking ceases. UG, however, cannot be understood to be supplying a set method or recipe to achieve such a state. He only states the necessary condition for it to occur. That doesn't mean that you can achieve that result by practicing a certain method. A method presupposes a calculated goal to which it is supposed to lead you. And, UG would say, as long as a duality exists in your mind between yourself as you are and a state such as the natural state, so long there is bound to be conflict.
Of course, in UG, this would be seen as a fundamental solution to the problem of conflict in man (within and without), although it's hard to visualize how such a person would live and function in this world. All the goals and ambitions that would mark the life of a modern man would have no meaning for this individual. (Note that this does not mean that he would not have goals as such making a living, having a family or other such finite goals; only he will be free of the goals which can in principle be never totally realized, goals such as becoming perfect or permanently happy, or totally fulfilled.) We can't see that there will be any civilization as we know it, if the world were populated by such men.
This doesn't mean that the situation is hopeless either. It just means that there is nothing we can consciously or deliberately do to achieve such a state. Does this mean that if a person realizes his true state, it's only by good luck or chance? UG often said that "'It' chooses you, you do not choose it," that is, if you are lucky.
Then what did he hope to achieve through all this? Was he aiming at some result or goal? He wasn't even interested as much in changing or transforming people. In his final years, he used to say that what he says would "unburden" you, meaning unburdening you from your past.
* * *
Comments and Reflections: My quarrels with scientific method, particularly as it is applied to human sciences, is that it almost totally neglects to take the subjective fully into consideration. While many scientific studies in medicine, neurophysiology, psychology or sociology have to take into account the subjective "input" to verify and validate its results, the subjective understanding of an issue is undervalued to the extent that results are either distorted or partial, or simply inapplicable. Scientific method in these areas is glaringly conspicuous for grossly ignoring or underestimating both commonsensical introspective reflection and inter-subjective verification, and philosophically esteemed phenomenological method, after it had abandoned introspective method in psychology in the beginning of the twentieth century.
Of course, the subjectivity of the human being can never be objectified. Yet, that ultimately is the basis for my dealings with myself and the world as well as for utilizing scientific findings. So, what does that mean for scientific investigation? As a scientist you may solve all my psychological or social problems, but they remain outside solutions to me, unless I see them as solutions and try to adopt them. In the ultimate analysis, scientific findings have to be seen by a person as valid and applicable to himself; he has to find a way translating them into his personal life and its problems. Also, contrary to appearances, science cannot solve existential problems; at best it gives the illusion of solving them, by creating a hope for final solutions sometime in an indefinite future.
It's not that the objective scientific discoveries and inventions about the human being, and the physiological or neurological equivalents of mental states are irrelevant or useless. They have their place in the realm of knowledge. But the problem with these researches is that it leaves any problems that the individual has to deal with largely in the hands of the experts in the respective field and the person involved is hopelessly dependent on the expert to solve any of them. And the expert, more often than not, is dependent in his turn for the funding of his research on commercial and governmental sources which tend to monopolize and control the discoveries. And only the rich can afford any help from these experts. Man thus becomes a commercial and political slave. In my opinion this is a misled enterprise. As UG would say, all those discoveries "do not percolate to the level of the common man." Not that every man on the street is interested in attaining spiritual liberation or gaining self-knowledge. But not all those who do are necessarily rich. And even if they could get some help from the experts, they would still lack the insight and understanding of how the duality with its consequent problems of conflict is generated in their own minds.
I am not saying that UG cared much about advocating understanding or self-knowledge. As I mentioned above, he rejected the idea of any effort directed to change anything in man's condition to arrive at what he called the "natural state". At the same time, he would also denounce scientific efforts to study the human being as an objective entity, say by establishing correlations between subjective, personal reports of mental states or experiences and the neurophysiologic states or centers of the brain. He is more interested in helping a person realize how all effort is ultimately futile (although it may take a lot of effort on one's part to realize that!).
As I said above, UG only offered the necessary condition to be in the natural state: (To repeat, "'It' chooses you and you do not choose it.") There is nothing you can do to achieve it, because it is not a state to be achieved, nor an experience to be had. When all your goals drop, then the mind is freed from the trammels of the past, automatically. But unfortunately, you cannot willfully drop your goals without the ulterior motive of becoming free. In other words, the process of becoming is still going on. When that ceases, what there is is the natural state.
Science may create through its scientific method a technology by which a human being may mimic such "effortlessness" or even "the absence of the domination of thought processes", but from what we have seen in other areas, the result may be a mock human being, but will not be a full-fledged flesh-and-blood person. Any scientific attempt to modify the brain may produce some result, but would it be the same as the natural state? Would it truly release one from the bonds of day-to-day existence? Of course, the scientist would say that it's always possible and offer us hope. Then we begin to live in hope and would never face the realities of our existence.
* * *
The most frustrating part about listening to UG is that there is really no "directive" you can derive from his teaching: you cannot say he is advising you to do this or not to do that. Yet, he kept talking to people, exposing to them their assumptions and belief structures and yet, telling them there is nothing the person can do ("no way out"). As far as he was concerned that's the mode of his operation. He wasn't trying to change anyone or provide a belief system for people to take home and adopt or apply to their lives. What effect his teaching had on others was not of concern to him. ("It cannot harm anyone;" "I sing my song and go.")
All right, if there is nothing one can do, why is this better than relying on the scientist (or the expert) to solve one's problems?
One common admonition of UG is that "you don't have the hunger, you are wasting away the precious time of your life in pursuing trivial pleasures... etc." Saying this and saying at the same time that no effort of yours is of any use is not very helpful. In fact, they seem contradictory, as the former implies that there is something better, more worthwhile that you should be doing.
Should I just sit tight without doing anything, then, without pursuing any specific goal? Suppose I am reverted to such a passive state. Then either I instantly fall asleep, or some thought, past habit or memory grabs me and takes me to another place (in my mind), pushes me to pursue something, or go after something. Should I just sit here consciously and avoid pleasure- or goal-seeking? But that too is done with a motive. How is that helpful?
The paradox here is resolved in my mind in the following fashion: Actually, the whole dilemma is created by the thought process which is driven by the motivation of trying to find liberation (and find some sneaky way of getting there) and being frustrated about it. Or else, why bother what you do or don't do? When the goals themselves aren't important, it doesn't matter. You could just as well "waste" your life and go when you have to. No meaning, no questions and no quest. If you are at peace with yourself, then where is the problem?
Then, surely, the duality between bondage and freedom would have to disappear, because there is nothing else that one has to become or achieve. There is no 'this' (bondage), because the 'that' (liberation), as a goal, does not have any significance.
The little restlessness that you confront in day-to-day life can easily be resolved by changing the lifestyle or reorganizing daily life slightly differently. There is no fundamental dissatisfaction (or satisfaction) in life. That may be all there is to life. It's neither good nor bad, it just is.
I have to resolve the problems of my life and existence now, while I am still alive, and cannot afford to wait for the scientist to come with some promised solution in some far off future.
When there is no duality in life, there are no problems. Then it doesn't matter if you are liberated or in bondage.
* * *
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Introduction and Conclusion to my book "Being"
I am positing in the following two posts the introduction and conclusion to my book "Being". If you have the electronic copy of the book you can append these pages to it. Anyway, you have the whole stuff. I am adding about 40 photos to the book as well as a cover page my wife has designed. Of course, I am looking for a publisher. If any of you know of someone who might be interested in publishing it, please drop a note.
Introduction
I have always thought a photograph reveals the photographer more than it does the subject. In that sense the following writing is rather autobiographical.
My association with UG, which started in 1981, has been long. He visited me practically once every year since then, till the beginning of 2006, after which time he stopped visiting the US. This book not only tells about my acquaintance and association with UG, but also how he affected me in person, and in my thought and my life in general. It’s hard to pinpoint these things and say definitely this is where UG’s influence stops and my own thinking and life start.
The other influences in my life have been Gora, Chalam and J. Krishnamurti. Yet, there has been a certain ongoing inquiry in my mind ever since I was conscious, namely, “Who am I?” You can say it is that which gave me a core identity and drove my thinking. It is what made me interested in all these people in the first place. After all is said and done, if there is anything called the "I" remaining, it is that which makes me question everything and everyone I have been exposed to, including UG. In my investigations in this book, I combine my skepticism with the critical and analytical skills I have acquired in my study of philosophy.
UG never minded my critical remarks in my essays on him. Once, he read my Introduction in the book No Way Out. When we were talking about it, he asked if I was rethinking my (critical) comments on him. I said, “No, I am not taking any of it back.” Then I remember him saying, “That’s the only way to write.” He did not want people to merely repeat what he said: “What hasn’t helped you can’t help others.” The essays in this book, although they tell of my acquaintance and relationship with UG, do not merely rehash what UG says, nor are they merely an interpretation of UG’s teachings. Even when I am open to someone’s ideas, I always question and test them and add my own investigations to them. It is in that spirit that I hope the reader will look at the following essays.
Almost all the chapters included here are essays I have posted on my blog site http://moortysblogpage.blogspot.com) for almost two years. For the sake of completion, I have added my paper “Science and Spirituality.” There is a little history behind this essay which was initially read at the Krishnamurti Centenary Conference in Oxford, Ohio. When the organizer of the conference, my friend Professor Rama Rao Pappu, asked me to write about J. Krishnamurti, I told him that I had already written an article about J. Krishnamurti , I would rather write about UG. After some hesitation, he agreed to my proposal.
When I was visiting UG in Corte Madera, California in the beginning of 1995, I mentioned to him that it was possible to put up one of his books on the Internet. Mario Viggiano and Julie Thayer were also present on the occasion. Mario immediately jumped on the idea and said, “Let’s do it!” Thus the UG website was set up in Julie’s www.well.com and UG’s Mind is a Myth with a picture of his taken by Julie in New Zealand were put up. UG, who had by then read my article “Science and Spirituality,” insisted that it also be put up. Later, I had seen him handing a copy of this article to a visitor or two.
Part 1 of this book consists of articles about how I met UG and an account of some of my meetings with him. I have deliberately avoided giving biographical details about UG as they have been frequently mentioned in books like The Mystique of Enlightenment, UG Krishnamurti, A Life, by Mahesh Bhatt, and The Other Side of Belief by Mukunda Rao. Part 2 of the book comprises a set of articles about UG’s teachings (Chapter 7) as well as his teaching process. Part 3 contains my ruminations about thinking, the self and mental states. Part 4 deals with a couple of academic issues, viz., the mind-body problem and the problem of other minds, as well as my views about meditation, morality and a few moral issues. I can’t say the articles in parts 3 and 4 are all inspired by UG’s teachings, but in some fashion or other, they all have some relationship to them. Only the essays on the mind-body relationship and other minds may be a little abstract to the reader. All others, though they might require careful reading, should be fairly accessible.
My philosophical essays may not impress the professional philosopher and may not seem to advance any current discussion of specific philosophical problems. They certainly are by no means scholarly. I didn’t even provide extensive documentation in my essays. My interest here is to tackle a couple of these problems from a rather commonsense point of view, mostly starting from my own experience. Of course, what I have learned from both Western and Eastern philosophy, as well as what I have learned from UG, does come into play in my explorations. I hope my suggestions to solve those problems are interesting to the professional philosopher as well as to the layman.
Needless to say, I have to use my thinking and logical skills to present my understanding of the issues presented here. I don’t know if it is possible to arrive at a totally consistent theory about them or fit them into a coherent and meaningful picture. Indeed, the reader may find that in several places my conclusions are hesitant and tentative. I may seem to be expressing doubts about my own previous conclusions or debating with myself. That’s why I would like to call this book a “work in progress.”
My aim in this book is to approach some issues without presupposing any religious or spiritual beliefs, taking a commonsense point of view and remaining always within the sphere of the known. The book should also demonstrate how I have translated, as best as I can, what I have understood or learned from UG into my own life. Standing on such a ground of experience I have tried to chip away, as it were, bit by bit, at some of the concepts in understanding oneself (contrary to UG’s rejection of the very idea of understanding oneself). Of course, you can never know the unknown. But what has been considered mystical or mysterious before could, at least to a minor degree, be unraveled. In my opinion, that was indeed what UG was trying to achieve as well, as the title of the book Mystique of Enlightenment indicates.
You may find it difficult to draw a clear line separating between what UG said from my own analysis and investigation. That’s in the nature of things. I never separated myself from UG. Just like in life, I consider my work as an extension of his teachings.
My central concern when I discuss moral issues is always to find out how I can relate to these subjects and what difference they would make in my life or my reader’s life.
Thanks to Wendy Moorty for her meticulous editorial help for both the text and the photographs. She has also designed the cover page.
Several photographs from the collections of Wendy Moorty, Lisa Toronto and Julie Thayer have been used in this book. My thanks to all three for letting me include them here.
Narayana Moorty
Seaside, California
September, 2009
Introduction
I have always thought a photograph reveals the photographer more than it does the subject. In that sense the following writing is rather autobiographical.
My association with UG, which started in 1981, has been long. He visited me practically once every year since then, till the beginning of 2006, after which time he stopped visiting the US. This book not only tells about my acquaintance and association with UG, but also how he affected me in person, and in my thought and my life in general. It’s hard to pinpoint these things and say definitely this is where UG’s influence stops and my own thinking and life start.
The other influences in my life have been Gora, Chalam and J. Krishnamurti. Yet, there has been a certain ongoing inquiry in my mind ever since I was conscious, namely, “Who am I?” You can say it is that which gave me a core identity and drove my thinking. It is what made me interested in all these people in the first place. After all is said and done, if there is anything called the "I" remaining, it is that which makes me question everything and everyone I have been exposed to, including UG. In my investigations in this book, I combine my skepticism with the critical and analytical skills I have acquired in my study of philosophy.
UG never minded my critical remarks in my essays on him. Once, he read my Introduction in the book No Way Out. When we were talking about it, he asked if I was rethinking my (critical) comments on him. I said, “No, I am not taking any of it back.” Then I remember him saying, “That’s the only way to write.” He did not want people to merely repeat what he said: “What hasn’t helped you can’t help others.” The essays in this book, although they tell of my acquaintance and relationship with UG, do not merely rehash what UG says, nor are they merely an interpretation of UG’s teachings. Even when I am open to someone’s ideas, I always question and test them and add my own investigations to them. It is in that spirit that I hope the reader will look at the following essays.
Almost all the chapters included here are essays I have posted on my blog site http://moortysblogpage.blogspot.com) for almost two years. For the sake of completion, I have added my paper “Science and Spirituality.” There is a little history behind this essay which was initially read at the Krishnamurti Centenary Conference in Oxford, Ohio. When the organizer of the conference, my friend Professor Rama Rao Pappu, asked me to write about J. Krishnamurti, I told him that I had already written an article about J. Krishnamurti , I would rather write about UG. After some hesitation, he agreed to my proposal.
When I was visiting UG in Corte Madera, California in the beginning of 1995, I mentioned to him that it was possible to put up one of his books on the Internet. Mario Viggiano and Julie Thayer were also present on the occasion. Mario immediately jumped on the idea and said, “Let’s do it!” Thus the UG website was set up in Julie’s www.well.com and UG’s Mind is a Myth with a picture of his taken by Julie in New Zealand were put up. UG, who had by then read my article “Science and Spirituality,” insisted that it also be put up. Later, I had seen him handing a copy of this article to a visitor or two.
Part 1 of this book consists of articles about how I met UG and an account of some of my meetings with him. I have deliberately avoided giving biographical details about UG as they have been frequently mentioned in books like The Mystique of Enlightenment, UG Krishnamurti, A Life, by Mahesh Bhatt, and The Other Side of Belief by Mukunda Rao. Part 2 of the book comprises a set of articles about UG’s teachings (Chapter 7) as well as his teaching process. Part 3 contains my ruminations about thinking, the self and mental states. Part 4 deals with a couple of academic issues, viz., the mind-body problem and the problem of other minds, as well as my views about meditation, morality and a few moral issues. I can’t say the articles in parts 3 and 4 are all inspired by UG’s teachings, but in some fashion or other, they all have some relationship to them. Only the essays on the mind-body relationship and other minds may be a little abstract to the reader. All others, though they might require careful reading, should be fairly accessible.
My philosophical essays may not impress the professional philosopher and may not seem to advance any current discussion of specific philosophical problems. They certainly are by no means scholarly. I didn’t even provide extensive documentation in my essays. My interest here is to tackle a couple of these problems from a rather commonsense point of view, mostly starting from my own experience. Of course, what I have learned from both Western and Eastern philosophy, as well as what I have learned from UG, does come into play in my explorations. I hope my suggestions to solve those problems are interesting to the professional philosopher as well as to the layman.
Needless to say, I have to use my thinking and logical skills to present my understanding of the issues presented here. I don’t know if it is possible to arrive at a totally consistent theory about them or fit them into a coherent and meaningful picture. Indeed, the reader may find that in several places my conclusions are hesitant and tentative. I may seem to be expressing doubts about my own previous conclusions or debating with myself. That’s why I would like to call this book a “work in progress.”
My aim in this book is to approach some issues without presupposing any religious or spiritual beliefs, taking a commonsense point of view and remaining always within the sphere of the known. The book should also demonstrate how I have translated, as best as I can, what I have understood or learned from UG into my own life. Standing on such a ground of experience I have tried to chip away, as it were, bit by bit, at some of the concepts in understanding oneself (contrary to UG’s rejection of the very idea of understanding oneself). Of course, you can never know the unknown. But what has been considered mystical or mysterious before could, at least to a minor degree, be unraveled. In my opinion, that was indeed what UG was trying to achieve as well, as the title of the book Mystique of Enlightenment indicates.
You may find it difficult to draw a clear line separating between what UG said from my own analysis and investigation. That’s in the nature of things. I never separated myself from UG. Just like in life, I consider my work as an extension of his teachings.
My central concern when I discuss moral issues is always to find out how I can relate to these subjects and what difference they would make in my life or my reader’s life.
Thanks to Wendy Moorty for her meticulous editorial help for both the text and the photographs. She has also designed the cover page.
Several photographs from the collections of Wendy Moorty, Lisa Toronto and Julie Thayer have been used in this book. My thanks to all three for letting me include them here.
Narayana Moorty
Seaside, California
September, 2009
Conclusion
[The following is the concluding chapter to my book Being.]
UG’s Relationship with Me: What is my relationship to UG? Was he a friend, or was he a master or a teacher? I have been interested in the teachers I mentioned in my Introduction (Gora, Chalam, J. Krishnamurti and UG) primarily because they helped me in my own investigations. Their teachings spurred me to make advances in my thinking and ways of living and thus to various degrees have become an integral part of my intellectual life as well as my living. Gora, Chalam and UG all became my friends as well. Yet, I never hesitated to criticize them, especially Gora and UG. This applies to J. Krishnamurti as well. In other words, I never submitted myself totally to any of them; I didn’t implicitly obey them nor did I uncritically accept what they said. I have the greatest regard for UG as well as unbounded affection. So, my unqualified answer to my question is that regardless of an occasional skirmish or two between us, UG was my friend as well as my teacher.
Main Conclusion of this Book: The main conclusion that might emerge from the different essays in this book is that release (I am deliberately desisting from using the term “enlightenment”), while being total, sudden, final and acausal in someone like UG (and I can think of others), might also be piecemeal, relative and provisional in others.
UG’s Teachings: Once, during a conversation, UG vehemently denied that there is any such thing as relative freedom. In fact, he at times even denied (although I doubt if he had meant it) that there is any such thing as enlightenment. UG also often said that you cannot strive for “enlightenment” or total freedom: “You do not choose it; it chooses you.” Nevertheless, he laid down some necessary conditions: the mind must be stultified to the point that all desire must be burned away and all movement in any direction must stop. Yet, this, in his view, is not an effect you can aim at or try to achieve. This may be so. Yet the problem remains that the mind’s nature is to seek, if not to seek goals, at least to seek to avoid pain. As long as the mind is operating, it keeps seeking for this or that. The question is whether one can give up seeking ultimate goals such as what UG might call “permanent happiness,” “nirvana” and what not. That’s why UG always said you don’t really give up anything.
My Approach: I might want to opt for shutting life down, renouncing everything that I am and all that I have, say my house, relationships, property, food (when I am hungry I will find out where to get food), and so on. I could just walk away from everything. But would I be free from the goal of shutting life down? As UG says, it’s the goal you have to be free from. But could you? Giving up the goal still presupposes a reason for giving up the goal, which is the goal itself. Thus it becomes a game we play with ourselves. (As UG said, “the negative approach is a positive approach.”
My discussions in the book should have shown that while there are persistent goals (or attachments), there are also moments when we can just simply surrender to the inability to let the goals go. That effortlessness, to my mind, lets you become detached from the goal itself. So, the moral of the lesson here is not just to try to let things go, but to discover in oneself a place where there are no goals and surrender yourself to the prospect of living without any goal. Once we see the state of mind where there are no goals of whatever kind (including being free or enlightened), then I think stepping out of the process of striving for goals is not such a hard thing to do.
While a total and final change may be the "real" thing, I can’t just sit there and wait for it. For whatever it is worth, I have to live my life now, facing my problems and working things out, nevertheless not losing sight of what is fundamental in life. I see a gradual evolution (or development, if you will) in this process and it may or may not culminate in a total transformation. For example, it’s a lot easier for me now than before to let go of things and people.
I know such a release is at best relative and provisional and there is no finality about it. Final liberation can only come about when the will in some fashion or other withers away and that unfortunately is not in our hands.
Can I say that I attained some kind of breakthrough, or that I am enlightened? I have absolutely no claims to enlightenment. At times, I feel like that with certain limitations in my present makeup, physical or psychical, it may not possible for me to be anything other than what I am. That doesn’t render what I have been discussing in this book totally useless.
One of the facts of my life is that I too am conditioned like everyone else. UG used to say, “You can never be free from conditioning. Conditioning is intelligence.” I don’t know if these statements are indeed true. But I know that I do react and it may take me some time for those disturbances to run their course. I can see that as long as conditioning operates, one must live in the world of duality. In that sense, UG himself, as far as I know, to the extent he was operating under his own conditioning; he too was subject to duality (as he would say, “’UG’ comes into the picture”).
Method: The whole book may seem to advocate adopting a method, practicing it and thereby trying to progress toward a goal, and so on. It may seem as if I haven’t become free from goals after all. (You might ask, “Or why write this book?”) Also, when I write, what I write must perforce be taken as a method or a “directive”, to use UG’s term.
Take the other side of the picture: If having goals is a problem, and yet UG says that you cannot give up anything (including goals) except in order to gain something in return, then the main question is, why in the hell did he talk about anything at all? Why didn’t he just say what he had to say once and walk away? If UG kept hammering away at these issues, dinning the same thing over and over again into people’s ears, it may be that he was doing it so that it might have the effect eventually of people quitting their goal-seeking and their quests.
UG’s common response to this dilemma was to say that when someone asking him questions, the answers come out of him as if from a machine, automatically. When involved in some discussion or debate, UG often ended the debate by asserting, “It’s two dogs barking at each other.” He claimed that we “interpret” whatever he says or does according to our background, prejudices or predilections. There may be no problem with words, his or others', they being just noises made and everything being mainly an interpretation. This may be a consequences of his non-dual state, but it also has the consequence of his being wrapped up in a bubble of immunity to criticism, challenge or personal involvement. You can either admire him or throw up your hands in despair.
People who heard or read UG often couldn’t help taking what he said as directives either. He knew that. But he kept talking, knowing full well that people would interpret him the way they in fact do. His answer to the problem is to say, “Being exposed to what I say will unburden you.” For instance, UG said to someone who was bothered with a neurotic fear of silence that he should try to change nothing but should merely accept the fear. And the person eventually did find relief by letting his fear be. To my mind, such changes are possible only because people have learned to let things go, especially their goals. That is indeed how their lives become unburdened.
One of the common answers UG gave to people raising their problems in front of him was to say, “There are no problems. You have no problem.” If a person was saying he gets depressed, UG would say, “Be depressed!" or he would say, "Unless you are contrasting it with another state, where is the problem?” Or he would say “You have problems only because you want two things at the same time. If you want just one thing (and are willing to do everything to get it), there is not a thing you cannot get.” When he himself was in a rage, he never looked at it as a problem. He just rode it out. In that sense he never wanted to change the given. He never moved out of his nonduality.
Goals and Lettings Things Go: To come back to my own writing: what I have been trying to do is primarily to agree with what UG says about being disillusioned about goals (my writing should confirm this), yet, at the same time, I am trying to work out the nitty-gritties of it (the actual workings of it). My “letting things go” may sound like I am advocating a method. It’s rather a “non-doing” without any specific goal in mind, done only because one is confronted with a problem or set of problems. You might say that this, i.e., becoming free from a problem, is indeed a goal and is bound to set up a duality in your mind between yourself and the problem you are trying to deal with. I agree, and that’s where I point to the idea of “surrendering to a problem” (including to the inability to give up a goal). In other words, although your intention (or goal) is to solve a problem to begin with, you realize at some point that as long as you are attached to the goal, you cannot truly solve the problem.
Notice that in view of my analysis of mental states, it should be clear that I am not advocating advancing toward some goal. Rather, I am talking about repeatedly letting things go (and this may be telescoped into short moments, meaning that the time it takes will become much shorter). In that sense there is a progress or evolution, but not in any sense of gaining something. In fact, the whole thing will surely backfire if one does it with a view to achieve some result or gain something or attain a state (even if it is just to become free from a problem). If one has in view any solution outside of the problem, that surely would set up a duality and throw one headlong back into the problem.
I am writing more in a spirit of explaining the structure of problems and gaining an insight into them rather than trying to provide a solution or method which can be mechanically applied. Of course, just as with UG, this too can easily be misconstrued as advocating and teaching a certain method, a path, a practice and so on.
To me, what words you use don’t really matter. What matters are the facts: The fact of the matter is that one can be relieved from the burden of one’s past: This can happen by becoming free from specific problems as well as any and all problems, landing in the field of awareness (energy if you will). This "landing" is a function of our ability to relax totally to the point where nothing matters, including living, dying or enlightenment. The contrary side of the picture is that when problems mount up in myself or my mind, I can feel the tension going up. And when I stop caring for the problems or solutions by letting things go (and letting the problems be), I not only relax totally, but the problems disappear; I am then in the field of mere awareness or awareness of the body. The body is itself a surface phenomenon. When the relaxation is deep enough, even the awareness of the body as such merges in the general awareness. I can feel the tension in the head when I am in the middle of a problem and when I let things go, my attention goes back into the spine area in the back of my head, instead of being caught in the top of the head. That relaxes the system and helps the energies flow freely. I hope I have made this clear enough. I don’t need any approval for this from anyone, including UG (he never gave it to anyone, anyway). I am hoping this possibility -- or, ability -- to step out of things can be used by others as well. In that sense, the book is hopefully within the realm of understanding, communication and teachability.
I believe this book is still within the fold of the general teachings of effortlessness, because UG often said that any movement of the mind, in any direction, will make you stray from your natural state. My book explores all the problems involved in trying achieve the natural state while keeping that goal in mind and using various methods. It’s just a way of showing the ultimate futility of effort in this area. Of course, even this can be taken as some kind of positive teaching and offering a method, but unfortunately, nothing that is read or communicated can escape that fate. The human ‘hearing’ mechanism is such that the very hearing creates a goal and looks for a directive.
Thought and Knowledge: The final problem I have to deal with is thought, namely, that all this relaxing is an activity of thought, driven by the motivations of the self. For instance, how do I know when I am totally relaxing or giving up everything? How do I know whether I am in the state of being merely aware of the body? Isn’t the whole enterprise driven by thought? If it is, one cannot be said to be really free of the self as long as there is the self in the background, calculating and conniving. Indeed, I have myself raised such a question to UG: how does he know whether he is free from thought? What told him? Couldn’t one say that the self, and hence knowledge, has been there in the background? UG’s answer was always that he doesn't know and that Life knows itself.
Sometimes he said he knew it now (when he was talking), but didn't know it "then". My answer is somewhat similar to this last answer of UG: although one starts with the motivation of the self, one realizes that as long as there is any motivation to be free one cannot be free. But when one is free, there is an awareness of freedom; and when thought and (knowledge) operate, then one knows that he or she has been free. Of course, such knowledge can bring about further motivation and bondage; but that’s the nature of the case.
Differences: There lies the essential difference between UG and me, however. With UG, the freedom had become permanent and final. (You could say there was a change in his "hardware". The getting rid of motive had become automatic. (That’s the context in which he would say, "thought cannot enter, it will get burnt up every time it enters.") In UG there was a perpetual state of unknowing in which knowledge occasionally entered and created a temporary duality of UG and the other. In me, it’s the freedom that is occasional.
There is something else that is totally different about UG: I felt at times that UG was a mere appearance and that some force or power from another dimension was operating through UG. Thus to my mind UG represents the unknown. We get hints of this when we know that his words and deeds are not what they seem to be and have effects which are unfathomable to our ordinary knowledge and experience. I have no problems with that unknown. To that I totally surrender myself and pay homage. And I have no way to speak of or account for it. I just simply am awed when I sense its presence.
In spite of these differences, I feel that the attempt here is not a totally futile. Although the release that I experience may be only provisional and lacks the finality of the liberation of UG, it shows possibilities of freedom in everyday life.
Despite the differences, I have always felt there is a fundamental unity between UG and me. Underlying us is the unity of life, of existence or what you may call it, as was attested to so many times by my sense of being in the same "field of awareness" when I was around him, where there was (and is) neither UG nor me. I know that some others had similar experiences.
UG’s Relationship with Me: What is my relationship to UG? Was he a friend, or was he a master or a teacher? I have been interested in the teachers I mentioned in my Introduction (Gora, Chalam, J. Krishnamurti and UG) primarily because they helped me in my own investigations. Their teachings spurred me to make advances in my thinking and ways of living and thus to various degrees have become an integral part of my intellectual life as well as my living. Gora, Chalam and UG all became my friends as well. Yet, I never hesitated to criticize them, especially Gora and UG. This applies to J. Krishnamurti as well. In other words, I never submitted myself totally to any of them; I didn’t implicitly obey them nor did I uncritically accept what they said. I have the greatest regard for UG as well as unbounded affection. So, my unqualified answer to my question is that regardless of an occasional skirmish or two between us, UG was my friend as well as my teacher.
Main Conclusion of this Book: The main conclusion that might emerge from the different essays in this book is that release (I am deliberately desisting from using the term “enlightenment”), while being total, sudden, final and acausal in someone like UG (and I can think of others), might also be piecemeal, relative and provisional in others.
UG’s Teachings: Once, during a conversation, UG vehemently denied that there is any such thing as relative freedom. In fact, he at times even denied (although I doubt if he had meant it) that there is any such thing as enlightenment. UG also often said that you cannot strive for “enlightenment” or total freedom: “You do not choose it; it chooses you.” Nevertheless, he laid down some necessary conditions: the mind must be stultified to the point that all desire must be burned away and all movement in any direction must stop. Yet, this, in his view, is not an effect you can aim at or try to achieve. This may be so. Yet the problem remains that the mind’s nature is to seek, if not to seek goals, at least to seek to avoid pain. As long as the mind is operating, it keeps seeking for this or that. The question is whether one can give up seeking ultimate goals such as what UG might call “permanent happiness,” “nirvana” and what not. That’s why UG always said you don’t really give up anything.
My Approach: I might want to opt for shutting life down, renouncing everything that I am and all that I have, say my house, relationships, property, food (when I am hungry I will find out where to get food), and so on. I could just walk away from everything. But would I be free from the goal of shutting life down? As UG says, it’s the goal you have to be free from. But could you? Giving up the goal still presupposes a reason for giving up the goal, which is the goal itself. Thus it becomes a game we play with ourselves. (As UG said, “the negative approach is a positive approach.”
My discussions in the book should have shown that while there are persistent goals (or attachments), there are also moments when we can just simply surrender to the inability to let the goals go. That effortlessness, to my mind, lets you become detached from the goal itself. So, the moral of the lesson here is not just to try to let things go, but to discover in oneself a place where there are no goals and surrender yourself to the prospect of living without any goal. Once we see the state of mind where there are no goals of whatever kind (including being free or enlightened), then I think stepping out of the process of striving for goals is not such a hard thing to do.
While a total and final change may be the "real" thing, I can’t just sit there and wait for it. For whatever it is worth, I have to live my life now, facing my problems and working things out, nevertheless not losing sight of what is fundamental in life. I see a gradual evolution (or development, if you will) in this process and it may or may not culminate in a total transformation. For example, it’s a lot easier for me now than before to let go of things and people.
I know such a release is at best relative and provisional and there is no finality about it. Final liberation can only come about when the will in some fashion or other withers away and that unfortunately is not in our hands.
Can I say that I attained some kind of breakthrough, or that I am enlightened? I have absolutely no claims to enlightenment. At times, I feel like that with certain limitations in my present makeup, physical or psychical, it may not possible for me to be anything other than what I am. That doesn’t render what I have been discussing in this book totally useless.
One of the facts of my life is that I too am conditioned like everyone else. UG used to say, “You can never be free from conditioning. Conditioning is intelligence.” I don’t know if these statements are indeed true. But I know that I do react and it may take me some time for those disturbances to run their course. I can see that as long as conditioning operates, one must live in the world of duality. In that sense, UG himself, as far as I know, to the extent he was operating under his own conditioning; he too was subject to duality (as he would say, “’UG’ comes into the picture”).
Method: The whole book may seem to advocate adopting a method, practicing it and thereby trying to progress toward a goal, and so on. It may seem as if I haven’t become free from goals after all. (You might ask, “Or why write this book?”) Also, when I write, what I write must perforce be taken as a method or a “directive”, to use UG’s term.
Take the other side of the picture: If having goals is a problem, and yet UG says that you cannot give up anything (including goals) except in order to gain something in return, then the main question is, why in the hell did he talk about anything at all? Why didn’t he just say what he had to say once and walk away? If UG kept hammering away at these issues, dinning the same thing over and over again into people’s ears, it may be that he was doing it so that it might have the effect eventually of people quitting their goal-seeking and their quests.
UG’s common response to this dilemma was to say that when someone asking him questions, the answers come out of him as if from a machine, automatically. When involved in some discussion or debate, UG often ended the debate by asserting, “It’s two dogs barking at each other.” He claimed that we “interpret” whatever he says or does according to our background, prejudices or predilections. There may be no problem with words, his or others', they being just noises made and everything being mainly an interpretation. This may be a consequences of his non-dual state, but it also has the consequence of his being wrapped up in a bubble of immunity to criticism, challenge or personal involvement. You can either admire him or throw up your hands in despair.
People who heard or read UG often couldn’t help taking what he said as directives either. He knew that. But he kept talking, knowing full well that people would interpret him the way they in fact do. His answer to the problem is to say, “Being exposed to what I say will unburden you.” For instance, UG said to someone who was bothered with a neurotic fear of silence that he should try to change nothing but should merely accept the fear. And the person eventually did find relief by letting his fear be. To my mind, such changes are possible only because people have learned to let things go, especially their goals. That is indeed how their lives become unburdened.
One of the common answers UG gave to people raising their problems in front of him was to say, “There are no problems. You have no problem.” If a person was saying he gets depressed, UG would say, “Be depressed!" or he would say, "Unless you are contrasting it with another state, where is the problem?” Or he would say “You have problems only because you want two things at the same time. If you want just one thing (and are willing to do everything to get it), there is not a thing you cannot get.” When he himself was in a rage, he never looked at it as a problem. He just rode it out. In that sense he never wanted to change the given. He never moved out of his nonduality.
Goals and Lettings Things Go: To come back to my own writing: what I have been trying to do is primarily to agree with what UG says about being disillusioned about goals (my writing should confirm this), yet, at the same time, I am trying to work out the nitty-gritties of it (the actual workings of it). My “letting things go” may sound like I am advocating a method. It’s rather a “non-doing” without any specific goal in mind, done only because one is confronted with a problem or set of problems. You might say that this, i.e., becoming free from a problem, is indeed a goal and is bound to set up a duality in your mind between yourself and the problem you are trying to deal with. I agree, and that’s where I point to the idea of “surrendering to a problem” (including to the inability to give up a goal). In other words, although your intention (or goal) is to solve a problem to begin with, you realize at some point that as long as you are attached to the goal, you cannot truly solve the problem.
Notice that in view of my analysis of mental states, it should be clear that I am not advocating advancing toward some goal. Rather, I am talking about repeatedly letting things go (and this may be telescoped into short moments, meaning that the time it takes will become much shorter). In that sense there is a progress or evolution, but not in any sense of gaining something. In fact, the whole thing will surely backfire if one does it with a view to achieve some result or gain something or attain a state (even if it is just to become free from a problem). If one has in view any solution outside of the problem, that surely would set up a duality and throw one headlong back into the problem.
I am writing more in a spirit of explaining the structure of problems and gaining an insight into them rather than trying to provide a solution or method which can be mechanically applied. Of course, just as with UG, this too can easily be misconstrued as advocating and teaching a certain method, a path, a practice and so on.
To me, what words you use don’t really matter. What matters are the facts: The fact of the matter is that one can be relieved from the burden of one’s past: This can happen by becoming free from specific problems as well as any and all problems, landing in the field of awareness (energy if you will). This "landing" is a function of our ability to relax totally to the point where nothing matters, including living, dying or enlightenment. The contrary side of the picture is that when problems mount up in myself or my mind, I can feel the tension going up. And when I stop caring for the problems or solutions by letting things go (and letting the problems be), I not only relax totally, but the problems disappear; I am then in the field of mere awareness or awareness of the body. The body is itself a surface phenomenon. When the relaxation is deep enough, even the awareness of the body as such merges in the general awareness. I can feel the tension in the head when I am in the middle of a problem and when I let things go, my attention goes back into the spine area in the back of my head, instead of being caught in the top of the head. That relaxes the system and helps the energies flow freely. I hope I have made this clear enough. I don’t need any approval for this from anyone, including UG (he never gave it to anyone, anyway). I am hoping this possibility -- or, ability -- to step out of things can be used by others as well. In that sense, the book is hopefully within the realm of understanding, communication and teachability.
I believe this book is still within the fold of the general teachings of effortlessness, because UG often said that any movement of the mind, in any direction, will make you stray from your natural state. My book explores all the problems involved in trying achieve the natural state while keeping that goal in mind and using various methods. It’s just a way of showing the ultimate futility of effort in this area. Of course, even this can be taken as some kind of positive teaching and offering a method, but unfortunately, nothing that is read or communicated can escape that fate. The human ‘hearing’ mechanism is such that the very hearing creates a goal and looks for a directive.
Thought and Knowledge: The final problem I have to deal with is thought, namely, that all this relaxing is an activity of thought, driven by the motivations of the self. For instance, how do I know when I am totally relaxing or giving up everything? How do I know whether I am in the state of being merely aware of the body? Isn’t the whole enterprise driven by thought? If it is, one cannot be said to be really free of the self as long as there is the self in the background, calculating and conniving. Indeed, I have myself raised such a question to UG: how does he know whether he is free from thought? What told him? Couldn’t one say that the self, and hence knowledge, has been there in the background? UG’s answer was always that he doesn't know and that Life knows itself.
Sometimes he said he knew it now (when he was talking), but didn't know it "then". My answer is somewhat similar to this last answer of UG: although one starts with the motivation of the self, one realizes that as long as there is any motivation to be free one cannot be free. But when one is free, there is an awareness of freedom; and when thought and (knowledge) operate, then one knows that he or she has been free. Of course, such knowledge can bring about further motivation and bondage; but that’s the nature of the case.
Differences: There lies the essential difference between UG and me, however. With UG, the freedom had become permanent and final. (You could say there was a change in his "hardware". The getting rid of motive had become automatic. (That’s the context in which he would say, "thought cannot enter, it will get burnt up every time it enters.") In UG there was a perpetual state of unknowing in which knowledge occasionally entered and created a temporary duality of UG and the other. In me, it’s the freedom that is occasional.
There is something else that is totally different about UG: I felt at times that UG was a mere appearance and that some force or power from another dimension was operating through UG. Thus to my mind UG represents the unknown. We get hints of this when we know that his words and deeds are not what they seem to be and have effects which are unfathomable to our ordinary knowledge and experience. I have no problems with that unknown. To that I totally surrender myself and pay homage. And I have no way to speak of or account for it. I just simply am awed when I sense its presence.
In spite of these differences, I feel that the attempt here is not a totally futile. Although the release that I experience may be only provisional and lacks the finality of the liberation of UG, it shows possibilities of freedom in everyday life.
Despite the differences, I have always felt there is a fundamental unity between UG and me. Underlying us is the unity of life, of existence or what you may call it, as was attested to so many times by my sense of being in the same "field of awareness" when I was around him, where there was (and is) neither UG nor me. I know that some others had similar experiences.
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Paradox of Being Yourself
UG often used to say that you don't have to be anything and that being yourself is the simplest thing you can do. Unfortunately, being yourself may not be as simple as it sounds.
‘Being yourself’ is contrasted with trying to be (or become) someone other than yourself. If, for instance, you think you are inferior than someone else, or you feel inadequate or are afraid, in being yourself (trying to be yourself) you don’t change what you are into something which you are not, namely superior, adequate or not fearful.
Part of being someone or something other than what you are at the moment includes not being elsewhere at anytime.
You accept your lot, whatever it is. Shall we say you remain content.
Man’s condition is such that he or she cannot just be (or be anything) without being aware of that condition. But the problem with being yourself is that the mere awareness of what you are implies a judgement about yourself or your condition and in that very act of judging is imbedded an attempt to transcend it, to be something else or someone else -- at any rate, an attempt to be rid of the problem and thereby improve one’s condition.
Unless you include these various attempts to be other than yourself (or be elsewhere) to be part of yourself, the notion of ‘being yourself’ is a contradictory notion; or at least it seems so; for to be yourself must necessarily bring an awareness of one’s self and that awareness is automatically also an attempt to become someone or something other than yourself, that is not being yourself. In that case ‘to be yourself’ paradoxically means ‘not to be yourself’. Or you could say, that ‘not being yourself’ is what constitutes ‘being yourself.’
When you are so aware, and also become aware of your attempt to transcend your condition, you can try to be what you are by telling yourself that there is no point in changing your condition, that there is nothing wrong with it, or that no solution to a problem has been shown to succeed, and so on. This telling yourself might help you succeed in returning to yourself momentarily. One could say then that one has learned to accept oneself or learned to be content with what one is.
But the mind is a comparative instrument. It not only is aware but it also compares -- the awareness and the judgment that comes with it are comparative. The comparative judgment has to bring in (no matter how much one tells oneself otherwise) a process of becoming something other than oneself or be in some other condition (that may only be as a fantasy or daydream).
Cutting the Gordian knot: This paradox, in my mind, can only be resolved by letting oneself be even in the state of becoming – you are aware of the process of becoming; and you just go through that without resistance to it. At some level or other you must come to terms with what you are – even if it be just to keep trying or keep becoming. When we are able to do so even at the most superficial level, then sooner or later, the acceptance or letting go will penetrate through layer after layer until you can accept your condition, fear, pain, guilt or whatever. Total acceptance has to involve surrendering, if you will, to the pain, fear or guilt. Then you are not yourself, because the self structure has been dissolved (at least relatively or momentarily) and you revert to mere consciousness or bodily awareness; you just are. So, in the final analysis, when we get through the structures of the self, ‘to be yourself’ means just ‘being,’ being without trying to become something else.
‘Being yourself’ is contrasted with trying to be (or become) someone other than yourself. If, for instance, you think you are inferior than someone else, or you feel inadequate or are afraid, in being yourself (trying to be yourself) you don’t change what you are into something which you are not, namely superior, adequate or not fearful.
Part of being someone or something other than what you are at the moment includes not being elsewhere at anytime.
You accept your lot, whatever it is. Shall we say you remain content.
Man’s condition is such that he or she cannot just be (or be anything) without being aware of that condition. But the problem with being yourself is that the mere awareness of what you are implies a judgement about yourself or your condition and in that very act of judging is imbedded an attempt to transcend it, to be something else or someone else -- at any rate, an attempt to be rid of the problem and thereby improve one’s condition.
Unless you include these various attempts to be other than yourself (or be elsewhere) to be part of yourself, the notion of ‘being yourself’ is a contradictory notion; or at least it seems so; for to be yourself must necessarily bring an awareness of one’s self and that awareness is automatically also an attempt to become someone or something other than yourself, that is not being yourself. In that case ‘to be yourself’ paradoxically means ‘not to be yourself’. Or you could say, that ‘not being yourself’ is what constitutes ‘being yourself.’
When you are so aware, and also become aware of your attempt to transcend your condition, you can try to be what you are by telling yourself that there is no point in changing your condition, that there is nothing wrong with it, or that no solution to a problem has been shown to succeed, and so on. This telling yourself might help you succeed in returning to yourself momentarily. One could say then that one has learned to accept oneself or learned to be content with what one is.
But the mind is a comparative instrument. It not only is aware but it also compares -- the awareness and the judgment that comes with it are comparative. The comparative judgment has to bring in (no matter how much one tells oneself otherwise) a process of becoming something other than oneself or be in some other condition (that may only be as a fantasy or daydream).
Cutting the Gordian knot: This paradox, in my mind, can only be resolved by letting oneself be even in the state of becoming – you are aware of the process of becoming; and you just go through that without resistance to it. At some level or other you must come to terms with what you are – even if it be just to keep trying or keep becoming. When we are able to do so even at the most superficial level, then sooner or later, the acceptance or letting go will penetrate through layer after layer until you can accept your condition, fear, pain, guilt or whatever. Total acceptance has to involve surrendering, if you will, to the pain, fear or guilt. Then you are not yourself, because the self structure has been dissolved (at least relatively or momentarily) and you revert to mere consciousness or bodily awareness; you just are. So, in the final analysis, when we get through the structures of the self, ‘to be yourself’ means just ‘being,’ being without trying to become something else.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Announcements
Please note the following article I just posted to the blog.
1) If you want to know when a new posting is made to the blog, there is a good way to find out: consider subscribing to "Atom" feeds which can be found at the bottom of the right column. I think by doing so you will get an e-mail intimation about any new posts that are made to this blog.
2) Also, I have put together all the articles in this blog prior to the current one ("Looking Within") along with an additional article ("Science and Spirituality -- The Teachings of UG Krishnamurti -- A Case Study") in a book and edited it with a cover page and a back cover picture. If you are interested in an electronic copy of it please write to me at the following e-mail address and I will be glad to mail you one. (That way I would also know who is reading my blog page!)
moorty@pacbell.net
1) If you want to know when a new posting is made to the blog, there is a good way to find out: consider subscribing to "Atom" feeds which can be found at the bottom of the right column. I think by doing so you will get an e-mail intimation about any new posts that are made to this blog.
2) Also, I have put together all the articles in this blog prior to the current one ("Looking Within") along with an additional article ("Science and Spirituality -- The Teachings of UG Krishnamurti -- A Case Study") in a book and edited it with a cover page and a back cover picture. If you are interested in an electronic copy of it please write to me at the following e-mail address and I will be glad to mail you one. (That way I would also know who is reading my blog page!)
moorty@pacbell.net
Looking Within
Just the other day, I was watching how my mind was going through various solutions to the problem of the neck pain (or some other pain) I sometimes have. Normally, every time I experience some discomfort or pain, there is an immediate looking out for a solution, say a dietary supplement, a homeopathic remedy or the chiropractor, a surgeon or what not, even if I had already gone through several of them before to no avail. If it is a new symptom I experience, it immediately triggers a panic response in me, and the effort to look for a solution immediately goes into operation. That day, I became aware of the process (not that it was the first time that it ever happened); then my mind stopped looking for a solution. My attention was turned ‘inward’ to the discomfort itself and soon there was no discomfort (not that this happens every time). One can say that I ‘accepted’ the pain. (Please note that I am not suggesting here that merely 'accepting' pain will make it go away or that one should not get medical help when one is in pain or that medical help is useless.) It was in this context the meaning of ‘looking within’ became rather clear to me. When the problem had disappeared on this occasion, there was no ‘within’ or ‘without’, nor anything like looking within.
What came through in this experiment was that the awareness of the discomfort was enough to trigger the duality of the mind, with its accompanying panic, which implies a solution other than myself (and of course, making the effort of looking for it), as well as the time process, i.e. creating a future which implies a hope or dread or whatever.
The experiment reminds me of one of the angas of Patanjali’s ashtanga yoga, i.e, pratyahara, which is normally translated as withdrawal of the senses. I used to explain this step to my students as withdrawal of one’s attention from external objects. The next step is dharana, holding your attention on something and then you have dhyana, meditation. Maybe my experiment condensed all these processes into one and removed the duality of the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ as well as of myself and the world. My experiment also presupposes that within the duality of the mind, there are no ‘external’ or ‘internal’ objects as such; yet the very idea of an object as other than myself ipso facto presupposes that it is external to me.
‘Looking inward’, ‘looking within’ are phrases used in the spiritual world. In psychology, the more common term is ‘introspection’. In either case, the most common things one does with oneself are being aware of one’s memories (for instance, by honing into a past scene and reacting to it, often as if it were happening now), or being aware of parts of the body, thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions or intentions. What we are aware of and respond to is part of our mental world. All transactions take place within this field – the field of consciousness where objects are present in our mental world. And the response or reaction takes place from a certain point of view, which we generally acquired in our past, and which we are at the moment. (We may that the point of view is what constitutes the ‘I’ or the ego.) Hence the duality. Time and time-consciousness are inherent in this process. That is, divisions of past, present and future are created through the process of self-consciousness.
We know that such awareness is almost never neutral or impartial. We are partial to ourselves when we take a look a our own actions. More often than not, that point of view expresses itself through a thought which is more or less express, verbalized and conscious. In our attempt at introspection, we normally attempt to change what is given into what is we think is more desirable or pleasurable (or less painful), so that eventually we would appear to ourselves as more acceptable. When we do this consciously, we call the process self-consciousness. When we give directions to ourselves, we also do so with a view to better ourselves, be somewhere else or become someone better. Of course, the same processes could be done not so consciously; then we would not use the expression ‘looking within’, or self-consciousness.
When we withdraw our attention from the world of ‘objects’, the thought process mediated through verbalization is suspended, albeit for just a moment, until something else draws our attention and the thinking process is resumed.
Often, the process of self-consciousness is a battleground. There is a constant striving that occurs and it is driven by goals or objects we are attached to. We use the process not just to solve problems, but to plan, scheme and plot our path to achieve our desires or avoid painful things (such as fear, inadequacy and guilt), to maintain, enhance or protect our status, and to defend, justify or glorify ourselves, often at the expense of other people. This normally goes under the name of ‘thinking’.
When we stop looking for external solutions to our problems, we are giving up trying to solve the problem. Then presumably we accept the problem. At least for that moment, we cease to strive. (We ‘detach’ ourselves from the problem.) That’s when we can say that our attentions is turned within. But there is really no ‘within’ to look at. Just plain consciousness, if you will, or awareness of parts of the body, without any attempt to to change anything or become something other than what we are. There is neither a within nor a without. You just are.
Also, when we stop reacting to the problem, the personal point of view from which we look at the problem disappears. At least for the moment, the point of view, or rather the ego, the reactive mechanism disappears; at least it is held in suspension.
I know I am over-simplifying the process, making it look too easy. My interest here is to point out the elements of the process, not to claim it’s all that easy. I am not even claiming that the result is lasting.
Even when we become free from the thought process, i.e., when we give up a goal or an object we are attached to, this is done consciously. That means, an internal dialogue goes on in which we either explicitly or implicitly tell ourselves to let go of something, just about the same way as when we talk to ourselves when we plan, justify or defend ourselves, or try to calm ourselves when we are agitated. The directive that is given is through this talk, verbalization, although, when it happens, the result may be nonverbal.
This leads us to the question of whether there is anything like consciousness without the accompanying thought process. You can’t just say that thought goes on all the time. In fact, when, for instance, UG describes his state of mind when he looks at a clock, he says that his whole being is like a question mark -- “What is that thing?” This just means that he is just conscious of the clock, (even to say that he is conscious of the clock or “that thing” is misleading; it’s more appropriate to say that he is just conscious) without any knowledge that it is a clock or knowledge of what time it is. Of course, when he is asked later what he is looking at or what time it is, then, as he says, the answer comes like an arrow. That’s when he knows what he is looking at.
How long such a state of mere awareness or consciousness lasts is really not a relevant question. It is quite possible and indeed likely that when we get involved in a situation, or we are in the heat of the moment, we don’t get the chance to look at an object dispassionately or ask ourselves questions regarding our relationship to an object or a goal, thereby creating a ‘space’ between ourselves (i.e. our reactive mechanism) and the object. Here I am more interested in analyzing the process itself and pointing out the elements in it.
What came through in this experiment was that the awareness of the discomfort was enough to trigger the duality of the mind, with its accompanying panic, which implies a solution other than myself (and of course, making the effort of looking for it), as well as the time process, i.e. creating a future which implies a hope or dread or whatever.
The experiment reminds me of one of the angas of Patanjali’s ashtanga yoga, i.e, pratyahara, which is normally translated as withdrawal of the senses. I used to explain this step to my students as withdrawal of one’s attention from external objects. The next step is dharana, holding your attention on something and then you have dhyana, meditation. Maybe my experiment condensed all these processes into one and removed the duality of the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ as well as of myself and the world. My experiment also presupposes that within the duality of the mind, there are no ‘external’ or ‘internal’ objects as such; yet the very idea of an object as other than myself ipso facto presupposes that it is external to me.
‘Looking inward’, ‘looking within’ are phrases used in the spiritual world. In psychology, the more common term is ‘introspection’. In either case, the most common things one does with oneself are being aware of one’s memories (for instance, by honing into a past scene and reacting to it, often as if it were happening now), or being aware of parts of the body, thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions or intentions. What we are aware of and respond to is part of our mental world. All transactions take place within this field – the field of consciousness where objects are present in our mental world. And the response or reaction takes place from a certain point of view, which we generally acquired in our past, and which we are at the moment. (We may that the point of view is what constitutes the ‘I’ or the ego.) Hence the duality. Time and time-consciousness are inherent in this process. That is, divisions of past, present and future are created through the process of self-consciousness.
We know that such awareness is almost never neutral or impartial. We are partial to ourselves when we take a look a our own actions. More often than not, that point of view expresses itself through a thought which is more or less express, verbalized and conscious. In our attempt at introspection, we normally attempt to change what is given into what is we think is more desirable or pleasurable (or less painful), so that eventually we would appear to ourselves as more acceptable. When we do this consciously, we call the process self-consciousness. When we give directions to ourselves, we also do so with a view to better ourselves, be somewhere else or become someone better. Of course, the same processes could be done not so consciously; then we would not use the expression ‘looking within’, or self-consciousness.
When we withdraw our attention from the world of ‘objects’, the thought process mediated through verbalization is suspended, albeit for just a moment, until something else draws our attention and the thinking process is resumed.
Often, the process of self-consciousness is a battleground. There is a constant striving that occurs and it is driven by goals or objects we are attached to. We use the process not just to solve problems, but to plan, scheme and plot our path to achieve our desires or avoid painful things (such as fear, inadequacy and guilt), to maintain, enhance or protect our status, and to defend, justify or glorify ourselves, often at the expense of other people. This normally goes under the name of ‘thinking’.
When we stop looking for external solutions to our problems, we are giving up trying to solve the problem. Then presumably we accept the problem. At least for that moment, we cease to strive. (We ‘detach’ ourselves from the problem.) That’s when we can say that our attentions is turned within. But there is really no ‘within’ to look at. Just plain consciousness, if you will, or awareness of parts of the body, without any attempt to to change anything or become something other than what we are. There is neither a within nor a without. You just are.
Also, when we stop reacting to the problem, the personal point of view from which we look at the problem disappears. At least for the moment, the point of view, or rather the ego, the reactive mechanism disappears; at least it is held in suspension.
I know I am over-simplifying the process, making it look too easy. My interest here is to point out the elements of the process, not to claim it’s all that easy. I am not even claiming that the result is lasting.
Even when we become free from the thought process, i.e., when we give up a goal or an object we are attached to, this is done consciously. That means, an internal dialogue goes on in which we either explicitly or implicitly tell ourselves to let go of something, just about the same way as when we talk to ourselves when we plan, justify or defend ourselves, or try to calm ourselves when we are agitated. The directive that is given is through this talk, verbalization, although, when it happens, the result may be nonverbal.
This leads us to the question of whether there is anything like consciousness without the accompanying thought process. You can’t just say that thought goes on all the time. In fact, when, for instance, UG describes his state of mind when he looks at a clock, he says that his whole being is like a question mark -- “What is that thing?” This just means that he is just conscious of the clock, (even to say that he is conscious of the clock or “that thing” is misleading; it’s more appropriate to say that he is just conscious) without any knowledge that it is a clock or knowledge of what time it is. Of course, when he is asked later what he is looking at or what time it is, then, as he says, the answer comes like an arrow. That’s when he knows what he is looking at.
How long such a state of mere awareness or consciousness lasts is really not a relevant question. It is quite possible and indeed likely that when we get involved in a situation, or we are in the heat of the moment, we don’t get the chance to look at an object dispassionately or ask ourselves questions regarding our relationship to an object or a goal, thereby creating a ‘space’ between ourselves (i.e. our reactive mechanism) and the object. Here I am more interested in analyzing the process itself and pointing out the elements in it.
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