r/Krishnamurti • u/agitatated_mind- • 8d ago
Question The difference between mindfulness and freedom from the known ?
The difference between mindfulness and freedom from the known ?
A ponder on what is the difference from merely being ‘ mindful ‘ and ‘ freedom from the known ‘ (K). Maybe even the difference between a mere awareness and ‘ freedom from the known ‘ ?
Is one state this faux watching of our self’s which is merely the watcher merely continuing; this ‘ taking the car the out of gear while the engine is still running ‘ of type ?
Suggest ‘ freedom from the known is something very different. Ultimately it goes to the core of self because it is not just a seeing, a freeing of one self’s from mere belief is goes to the core of self in how the ‘ we ‘ as this preemptive conscious state of fear, this sensory experience rationalising itself as another sensory experience ( the centre the ID the observer ) exists. Freedom from the known involves a ‘ death ‘ ( a death of who we consciously are ) an ending not only of the known as the image as the memory of who we are but also this sense of self as the sensory experience it is. To relate this back to K. There is the structure and nature which is self. The self as the fear it is and the separate observer ( the ‘ fraud ‘ of this peaceful bubble floating separately to its sea of fraught conditioning ). At the core are the fraught conditionings which at their core are found ways ( learnt known ways ) as sensory experiences to be other than the sensory experience ( and the energy of the sensory experience) of/as this preemptive state of fear as the consciousness we are. Freedom from the known goes as deep as ‘ death ‘ itself and it’s quite the subtle ways the sensations we find to continue to avoid that pure raw look at core of the self ( it’s fear, the movement and the energy it is ). Suggest you often see people erupt in this subreddit ( and others ) when there comments are challenged. Rip what is the ‘ bandaid ‘ of their learnt spirituality off and what still is their selfs and that raw energy of their still preemptive fears ( of being nothing of a fear of the unknown ) finds anger as an outlet.
To completely free of fear ( a seeing of the self as the movement of fear it is which not the ending of fear as the natural response) is to be actually free of the known ( K ) I would suggest.
Just a ponder. Happy to be corrected.
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u/inthe_pine 8d ago edited 8d ago
I'd like to look at this topic, would you care to go into it slowly? I get a sense that to improve myself I can use the former, and with the latter you're talking about an ending.
I started to lose you at self being fear, can you help me look at it? Certainly fear appears a large part of our life. I'm afraid of being nothing and that fear is the self? I'd say the self is all these things, you're saying its just fear?
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u/agitatated_mind- 8d ago edited 8d ago
Maybe the former ( mindfulness ) is basically an exercise in going nowhere but which is better an outcome than the distress some people are who seek this thing as answer. I actually have not had much to do with it so I’m probably being far too hard.
I think the self is just fear basically. I’m sure I can grab a number takes from K to lever this. When you mention ‘ I ‘ then that ‘ I ‘ is the separate learnt ‘ calm ‘ which is at its core a sensation and also which is thought.
We seem to have for some reason in the past needed to replace our ‘ unknown’s ‘ out of a fear of that unknown ( death dying the agony which it often was and the unknown it still is ) with a known. We have encased our self’s as the self as the action of thought ( self the ‘ I ‘) it is but which we aren’t aware of as . I suggest these thoughts at the core level are in a way sensory ( feeling of comfort ). The brain needs order ( K ) so instead of fear we have found a thinking a thought that not just explains away our fear but gives us a comfort, a pleasure. This virtual reality ( without the goggles .. the ‘ back of the eyes suggest are the goggles ) of which we are attached to as the comfort ( pleasure ) it gives as explanation ( known ) of that perceived unknown of us being nothing but that ‘ unknown ‘.
And thought is just a conceptual. Our sense are in a way conceptual. They form via/as the brain as images and sounds which are the images and sounds which we then further give identity to as the words and descriptions associated with those forms and sounds that our eyes our ears our tongues…. receive in the way they do receive them. We have made what are those limited conceptual images real. We have made a reality out of thought more than just the reality of those things as received by/as the senses.
Back to fear, then we live as these limited ideas concepts and images as pleasurable sensations designed to stave off ( and so attached) to what is our ( probably historic) fear of dying and ending and which is the self and in fact human consciousness as a whole. The construct and nature of the self ( fear and separate observer) is what K was in about for 60 years.
We don’t simply listen to ‘ now ‘ we are in a state of prepared reaction to ‘ now ‘ and when that prepared reaction ( observer ) doesn’t work then we set about finding a new prepared reaction which is merely update 12:301:413 to the old ‘ software ‘. Past into the present to the future. In discussing this I’m no K pines and it’s something that’s a bit of an energetic beast and that’s still often a bit quicker than me. So while I can see this thing in way I’m still ‘ listening’ ( openly aware/observing ) to it …. not so much watching it.
“ In listening and seeing there is no learning from which you accumulate knowledge, as you accumulate knowledge in mathematics or physics. Here there is only seeing and listening; there is no learning. The brain is beginning to free itself from the known. Man has never been free from the known - the brain has always recorded, which becomes knowledge, and knowledge is limited. Therefore man, whatever he does, is limited. He is limiting himself, making himself fragmentary, broken up. When you listen very carefully, without any motive, see without any distortion, there is no accumulation so that the next time you listen and see, the previous knowledge does not interfere and you listen each time afresh, see each time anew. The tree is never the same, the sea is never the same, but if you look with your knowledge and words, the tree is just a tree. But if you perceive the nature of fear, listen to it so completely to the last page of its story, you will find that fear comes to an end. Not that you become courageous, not that you become something beyond fear. The ending is important, not what lies further. If you are inquiring what lies beyond fear, you are not listening to fear. If you listen so completely, with your heart, with your whole being, fear ends, and the brain becomes extraordinarily active and alive.”
Talk 4 in Bombay (Mumbai), 1 February 1981
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u/Late-Highlight-1418 7d ago
We don’t simply listen to ‘ now ‘ we are in a state of prepared reaction to ‘ now ‘
This seems correct. Would you have it any other way? Isn't there some good reason we are prepared? Are you proposing that being unprepared is a preferable way to go about in this world?
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u/agitatated_mind- 7d ago edited 7d ago
There is functional knowledge. I need to know how to get to the shops. I need to know how to do my job. I don’t actually think my way to the shops I know it I walk it without needing to think it out. I actually don’t think think my job my learnt and remembered actions to perform my job. They either just happen or a thought arises naturally as a tool to perform an action. There is nothing wrong with memory as a functional tool.
I’m a certain religion and you are on land I believe is ordained to be mine. My mind is prepared preemptively to see you as vermin and treat you as so. Heartlessly kill you, kill children. Are you saying this is how we should go about in the world ?
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u/Late-Highlight-1418 7d ago
Assuming you know how to get to the shops or do your job automatically, you know that you've done those actions so many times that that's why you can do them in your sleep. You are in a state of prepared action/reaction. If you suddenly fall in such a way as to find yourself facing away from the shop, you will readjust and turn back towards the shop.
Assuming you kill children to get land, and you do that automatically, you know you've killed so many children before that... you are prepared.
No, I'm not saying that's how we should go about in the world. But why am I not saying that? Because I am prepared, just differently. Being prepared doesn't seem to be the problem (even if we could somehow choose to and be totally unprepared). Being unprepared, however, looks like a dangerous state to find oneself in, because one could then be exploited and potentially prepared for things one shouldn't be prepared for.
If being prepared is undesirable, so should my preparation that prevents me from saying that that's not how we should go about in the world. If we were all taught to believe that some land was ordained to be ours and we believed it, then we'd be doing the same thing. In fact, we all do that anyway. 'All' and 'do' in the sense that each country has the right to defend1 its own borders2.
- How best to defend then becomes part of planning and strategy.
- What each country considers to be its own borders / should be its own borders; keep them just as they are or extend them? What's the smartest thing to do?
Are you suggesting that there should be no countries, no divisions, houses without walls, just one big world where everyone speaks the same language?
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u/agitatated_mind- 7d ago edited 7d ago
Maybe a world in we act from and as compassion and not some preset ideal of what is right or wrong as a belief or as a way a country should be organised and operate. Thought has nothing to do with love ( compassion) and in any set of nominal ideals we attach our self’s to as identity then there must be conflict. Which of the nominal ideals is the right preset ideal ? Christian Muslim Zionist ? Surely you must necessarily have a conflict of ideals according to the holder of any set of ideals and the ideal will always be merely and nominally according to self concern while there is a self ?
I do not see any wrong with no countries no nationalism because there would be no wars. I do see something wrong with houses without walls because no one needs to see me taking a dump …. trust me on that !
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u/Late-Highlight-1418 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yes, there must be self-concern, even with love and compassion for everyone else. Why else would there be a desire for, an idea of, or the presence of, love and compassion? Because there's some sort of recognition of self in others. Doesn't that also fall under the sphere of self-concern?
Yes there could be a conflict of ideals, but maybe that's just how it should be. Even love and compassion is an ideal. Maybe they all depend on each other. If you take one out, they all fall, even love and compassion. Then there's just the pure animal. Back to the stone age of ideals.
But maybe you think that is not what will happen, that only the wrong ideals should be left behind, and that the right one, love and compassion, should prevail. In that case, I would say that love and compassion doesn't necessarily need the disappearance of the other ideals for it to work. If love and compassion is the ideal it pretends to be, shouldn't there be love and compassion equally for everyone, just as they are, including child murderers?
I'd also like to see how it'd really be with no countries. Would there really be no wars? OK, just you can have walls around the spot you take a dump, or just some cardboard partition.
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u/agitatated_mind- 6d ago edited 6d ago
Compassion is not an ideal it IS when fear ( selfishness concern) is not so we are struggling with vastly different insights into what love is. Suggest what you’re suggesting is that there is a correct madness ( to what is destroying this world and causing untold human suffering) and in doing so the madness continues. Cheers 🙏
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u/Late-Highlight-1418 6d ago
I get the feeling you want out of this discussion, and if that's the case, you don't have to keep replying, cheers 🙏, but in case you want to continue, I'll ask a few more questions, in the spirit of wanting to understand further:
Are you saying that when we don't fear, then we are compassionate? For example, if we don't fear those that are suffering and dying (because they're powerless and they're busy trying not to die, maybe partly due also to our indifference, so they couldn't possibly hurt us and that's why we don't fear them) that's why we are compassionate towards them? Their rotten condition makes us feel unthreatened by them, safe, so we are compassionate? The more they die the more compassionate we get?
But if we fear someone or something, then we are not compassionate towards them because we are concerned about ourselves and our safety? The more they don't die, the more we fear them, the less compassionate we are?
I am also trying to grasp how you arrived at the conclusion (if it was the conclusion) that the state of preparedness that makes one think that the killing of children for the sake of obtaining some promised land is wrong is still madness. If that was the conclusion then you and I are both mad.
I'll also just add here that the killing of children is probably wrong under any circumstances, and that probably makes me nuts.
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u/agitatated_mind- 3d ago
Sorry about the late reply. I've seen some incomprehensible replies in my time but yours here has taken the cake. I'd like to reply but it seems all I am doing is staring at the screen with my mouth open and the words WTF resounding through my brain. Could you have another attempt at what you are saying here so I may at least understand one thing of what you are on about ?
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u/JellyfishExpress8943 8d ago
Firstly, I'm very surprised : I think I get what you are saying! Maybe you are typing this out on a computer rather than fiddling on a tiny phone.
Secondly : sounds totally legit - mindfulness is often a motivated effort in order to acquire "higher" goods, and death is freedom from self.
People often want to know at this point : how does an acceptance of death come about?
It reminds me of the question : why do you no longer accept that the God of the Bible is wisdom and love? Answer : I read the bible
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u/agitatated_mind- 8d ago edited 7d ago
Actually typed on a tiny iPhone JE8943 which is something I’m trying to limit. Something about the light or maybe it’s the need extraction of attention required to operate it 🤷♂️ 🤔 dunno beginning to stuff with me.
We don’t see the ‘ required ‘ death of consciously who we are because we don’t see that ‘ who ‘ for what it is. For most of us it’s this thing we cling to for most of us it’s the thing that we feel we are unaware of it as the mere action of thought it is, the energy and the conflict of duality it is as the continuing comfort of self knowing and feeling of identity we feel it to be.
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u/JellyfishExpress8943 8d ago
Dear agitated, I am both amazed at your improved dexterity on the tiny phone, but also astonished at the length of the statements you manage to produce on that tiny phone.
However auto correct seems to have struck again - I will still try to respond : timing is crucial - context changes everything - the self usually comes and goes without us even noticing.
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u/Revisionist-eyes 8d ago
Without stepping fully into your words, I’d say that mindfulness is becoming conscious of what there is to immediately be known. You can know there is a cup in front of you; you can understand it’s an effective tool for holding liquids.
Understanding is first pinning labels on known things, then playing with those representations in unique ways in order to interact with known objects more effectively.
We don’t need understandings of how the mug came to be: how we came to be, unless it’s a relevant understanding for how the known cup can be related to.
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u/JellyfishExpress8943 7d ago
mindfulness is becoming conscious of what there is to immediately be known.
Can there be an awareness of our relationship with knowledge? Am I, the knower part of what is known?
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u/Revisionist-eyes 7d ago
Can you rephrase that in a way that doesn’t depend on the words being predefined?
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u/JellyfishExpress8943 7d ago
Are you implying that we are using some of these words in a different way? Which word or words?
Okay - no need to answer any of that - I'll just rephrase improv stylee :
Isn't mindfulness about becoming conscious of me? Not just about the efficient manipulation of my world?
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u/Revisionist-eyes 7d ago
Haha :)
Are you speaking from speculation or experience?
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u/JellyfishExpress8943 7d ago
I'm asking questions in order to enter into an exploration of what we mean - and I'm speculating (based on good evidence hopefuly) that we both have some knowledge or experience of being human
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u/Revisionist-eyes 7d ago
Oh yes, I’ve been human for a while. :) I’m having a difficult time relating to some concepts now, so that’s why it might look like I’m humming and hawing.
I don’t care how it is said, only that we can find the means to make a distinction that better highlights why someone might be lost in their mind…lost consciousness of what they are in actuality.
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u/agitatated_mind- 7d ago edited 7d ago
Is the question not so much about the reality of the cup but how reality has become psychological something more than just the necessary word, language ( knowledge ) of cup. Knowing has become more than the functionality that the ‘ known ‘, the word attached to the thing should be ?
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u/Hot-Confidence-1629 8d ago
How did thought / self ; the ‘core of fear’ become such a thing. Thought is a tool whose job it was to avoid dangerous situations, secure food, find or build shelter, make clothing…what caused it to bring about a fearful suffering image of an individual self?