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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Thought
RESPONDENT: Richard, I have some questions: Is ‘human intelligence’ or ‘thinking’ or ‘thought’ (as distinct from the mind of a dog or even a gorilla) the result of or the property of or the ability to abstract? RICHARD: No, not necessarily ... in evolutionary terms the long, slow evolution of intelligence has its roots in the most ‘on the ball’, the most shrewd and/or sharp and/or smart and/or cunning and/or wily and/or sly, and so on, outmanoeuvring the least ‘on the ball’ – the most dumb – and there is nothing abstract about that (the term ‘survival of the fittest’ does not mean the survival of the most muscular, as is often commonly misunderstood, but means those most fitted to the environment live to pass on their genes whilst the least fitted languish and die out). And, even more prosaically, the long, slow evolution of intelligence is also the result of successfully negotiating what has been called the vicissitudes of life: not only obtaining such basic necessities as air, water, food, shelter and clothing (if the weather be inclement) in the face of fire, flood, famine, tempest, vulcanicity, pestilence, disease, and so on, but prospering whilst doing so because of tool-making, for instance, or the utilisation of fire, for another ... none of which are abstract. Intelligence Incidentally, abstract (conjectural) thought is but one of the many ways of thinking: for instance there is practical/impractical thought; pragmatic/ imaginative thought; reasoned/ expressive thought; adventitious/ principled thought; prudential/ philosophical (or politic/ philosophic) thought; insightful/ intuitive thought; judicious/injudicious thought; rational/ irrational thought; logical/ illogical thought; salubrious/ pathological thought, as well as illative thought (inferential, deductive, inductive thought) and reflective thought (contemplative, meditative, pensive thought) and so on. As thought is broadly categorised as being perceptive thought (sensible thought), or realistic (extrinsic) thought, and imperceptive thought (intelligible thought), or autistic (intrinsic) thought, then I guess the latter could be broadly categorised as abstract thought. RESPONDENT: Is cause/effect the way thought must operate, otherwise it is not called ‘intelligence’ or ‘thought’? RICHARD: Perhaps it would be clearer to say that non-causative (unrelated to cause/effect) thought is not intelligent thought? RESPONDENT: Is language a property of abstraction? RICHARD: No, but that would be because this is what abstraction means to me:
Whereas, seeing that you link abstraction with symbolisation (further below), it may very well mean something like this to you:
For what it is worth, as the development of language can only ever be speculation, I would guess that, as the affections are both primal and primary to cognition, language/thought ever-so-slowly developed as an extension of the growling, grunting, groaning, moaning, whimpering sounds that are so expressive of the feeling of what is happening ... most histrionic words have an affective etymological root, I have noticed. Thus the ‘first’ thoughts in humanoids most probably would have been inchoate expressions of the primal feelings that are evident in the higher order animals. For example, tests on chimpanzees show that, when communicating with sounds (they do not have a voice-box capable of language), the Broca’s Area – the region of the frontal cortex of the human brain concerned with the production of speech – of their brain is activated. * RESPONDENT: Does an animal need the power of abstraction to have ‘theory of mind’? RICHARD: No ... being self-conscious (not to be confused with being embarrassed) is the essential
requisite for ‘theory of mind’ RESPONDENT: If a dog buries a bone, or a squirrel stores nuts or a chimp hides food to eat alone later, is all this due to a distinction of me/not me? RICHARD: I have seen a documentary where squirrels storing nuts were put through exhaustive tests to determine that it was purely instinctual – thus it has nothing to do with ‘self and other’ (let alone ‘theory of mind’) – and the same applies to dogs burying bones ... of the three examples you give only the chimpanzee deceives (hides food so as to eat alone later) as only the chimpanzee is self-conscious (monkeys, for instance, are not self-conscious) and thus capable of ‘theory of mind’. RESPONDENT: Do you need the power of abstraction to distinguish self/other? RICHARD: No, all sentient beings (sentience means being capable of sensation or sensory perception) are able to distinguish ‘self and other’ (not to be confused with being self-conscious and thus ‘theory of mind’) ... all sentient beings are conscious as consciousness (the state or condition of being conscious) is what sentience means. Vis.:
Or, to put that another way, sentience is what consciousness is at its most basic ... perception means consciousness (aka awareness). Vis.:
And to be [quote] ‘aware or conscious of a thing’ [endquote] is what being capable of distinguishing self and other is: a dog, for instance, lifting its leg on a tree is aware that, not only does what we call ‘tree’ stay where it is whilst she/he can come and go, but that it is different to, and thus distinguishable from, what we call ‘cat’, and so on. Whereas a virus, for example, not being sentient cannot. * RESPONDENT: Is mental imaging abstraction? RICHARD: As a mental image of an orange, for instance, is obviously not the orange then ... yes. RESPONDENT: Is there any other way to abstract than with language? RICHARD: Given that you link abstraction with symbolisation then ... no. RESPONDENT: Can I have a mental picture without an attending emotion? RICHARD: That would be something to find out for yourself as I cannot know what you experience and, furthermore cannot form mental images anyway as there is no imaginative/intuitive faculty extant in this body (the affective faculty’s epiphenomenal psychic facility vanished along with the affective faculty) ... from what I can recall I would say no. RESPONDENT: Is memory due to the power of abstraction? RICHARD: Not as far as I am concerned ... for me memory is due to the power of reference (more on this further below). RESPONDENT: Are emotions abstractions? RICHARD: Ha ... there are no emotions in actuality (there is nothing affective here in this actual world). * RESPONDENT: Also, when you say apperception is consciousness aware of being conscious, is it the function of the neo-cortex aware of the function of the amygdalae, which is to say, thought aware of consciousness? RICHARD: No, apperception – from the dictionary definition ‘the brain’s perception of itself’ – is where being conscious of being conscious (aka the awareness of being conscious or the awareness of being aware) is unmediated or direct ... in contrast to the normal ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious. Incidentally, I would not locate consciousness in ‘the function of the amygdalae’ as the seat of consciousness is arguably located in the brain-stem, probably in Reticular Activating System (RAS or RS) in general and possibly in the Substantia Nigra (towards to top third of the RAS) in particular ... the amygdalae, in concert with the limbic system in general, function as a reflexive process only (as in the startle response) when identity is extinguished. RESPONDENT: But thought is not an awareness, is not a perceiving faculty, not a sense organ, so that couldn’t be right. RICHARD: Indeed not ... apperception happens irregardless of thought (thought may or may not be operating). RESPONDENT: What is the relationship of thought, language, intelligence, the power of abstraction and apperception? RICHARD: There are too many things mixed up together to make a meaningful all-inclusive response ... thought and language are related, obviously, but do not necessarily have a relationship with abstraction; beneficial ways of thinking are related to intelligence, obviously, but do not necessarily have a relationship with abstraction; neither thought/language nor intelligence – let alone abstraction – have any relationship with apperception: apperception occurs irregardless (when alive, not dead, awake, not asleep, and sensible, not insensible). This is because apperception is current-time awareness, in that it takes place presently, at this moment in time, and is the unmediated perception of what is happening right now, at this very moment, thus staying forever current, surging perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave, as it were, of this moment in eternal time and is the immediate experiencing of actuality at this moment in whatever form it takes ... there is only the pure conscious experiencing of the awareness of perpetuity as it is never not this moment in actuality. This moment in eternal time is the arena, so to speak, where all things happen ... and apperception makes this apparent. * RESPONDENT: Does the ability to symbolize (abstract) have anything to do with the cause/ effect nature of intelligence? RICHARD: Ahh ... symbolisation does not mean abstraction to me: symbols, be they words in thought, sound, print or pixels, refer to something, as far as I am concerned, rather than represent something, as far as some people are concerned (or so they have communicated to me). Therefore, insofar as symbols are referential they have everything to do with causation (cause and effect) and thus, with intelligence whereas, for those whom symbols are representative, they may not necessarily have anything to do with causation, or thus, with intelligence, as the representation (or so it has been communicated to me) exists in its own right. ‘Tis a fair bet that identity is the spanner in the works. RESPONDENT: If you start with sentiency as simple consciousness in a dog and then proceed up to apperception in humans I’ll appreciate it. RICHARD: Given the distinction between the reference to/representative of something (concrete/abstract) all of the above may be more confusing than clarifying ... so perhaps the most significant thing to say here is to stress that consciousness is the state or condition of a body being conscious (the suffix ‘-ness’ forms a noun expressing the quality of a state or condition) be it of a dog or a human or any other sentient being. In popular usage, however, the word ‘consciousness’ can also mean the (illusory/delusory) identity who is being conscious ... whereas the word ‘awareness’ does not usually carry that connotation. Therefore, while the word ‘conscious’ can mean the same as what the word ‘aware’ means the word ‘consciousness’ can also mean something other that what the word ‘awareness’ means ... it can mean the (supposedly immortal) phantom entity who (supposedly) makes a sentient being alive and not dead (as in the phrase ‘consciousness has left the body’ to signify physical death). That the vast majority of animals are not self-conscious (are not self-aware) is the reason why, by and large, it is generally held that animals do not have a consciousness which ‘leaves the body’ at physical death. Thus apperception as you referred to it further above – ‘consciousness aware of being conscious’ – simply means the condition of a human body being conscious (that is, consciousness), sans identity/ affections, being conscious of being conscious (an unmediated/immediate awareness of being conscious or a bare/direct awareness of being aware). To put that the way I prefer to put it: all experiencing is awareness of what is happening whilst it is happening; the mind, which is the human brain in action in the human skull, has this amazing capacity to be, not only aware, but aware of being aware at the same time (a simultaneity which is truly wondrous in itself). And it is where this awareness of being aware is unmediated (apperceptive awareness) that this universe knows
itself. RESPONDENT: When asking myself ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ what should I observe? Thought – there is approximately one thought rising every second – 80,000 seconds in a day equals 80,000 thoughts a day. Therefore every time I ask ‘how am I experiencing this moment’ answer should 99% of time be ‘I am thinking something’. RICHARD: Although ‘approximately one thought rising every second’ may sound like a lot when multiplied by 80,000 it pales into insignificance compared with sensation ... I recall reading an article many years ago that somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 sensations happen every second. But I will leave it to you to do the maths. RESPONDENT: Feelings – There are countless sensations going on though out the body at any one time, some are more intense than others. RICHARD: Do you find it illuminating that, although you acknowledged the preponderance of sensation, your ‘approximately one thought rising every second’ observation took precedence over your ‘countless sensations at any one time’ observation when coming to your ‘99% of time’ conclusion about thinking? RESPONDENT: Emotion – what is emotion? RICHARD: Basically it is an instinctual survival package (such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire) genetically endowed at conception ... there are many cultivated derivations, of course, refined over the years by socialisation. RESPONDENT: Isn’t it just a intense thought? RICHARD: No ... infants feel long before they think. * RICHARD: ... only a person that can stand on their own two feet and think for themselves is likely to be free of all the ills of humankind. RESPONDENT: Only outside of thought is there no conditioning. We have lived in and acted from thought for umpteen million years, and the more we think, the worse are the ills of humankind. Logical and complete thought is necessary to understand why thought cannot be free. RICHARD: As I never bought the ‘Teaching’ that thought was the problem (I questioned everything ... including the speaker) I was able to apply clear, rational and sensible thinking to the root cause of all the ills of humankind – the instinctual passionate ‘self’ which all sentient beings are born with – with a remarkable result. As this flesh and blood body only (sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) thought is a delightful episodic event. * RESPONDENT: I am 30 years old, work rotating night shift as a security officer and have always being a deep thinker (not good) which has drawn me to the ‘spiritual life’. RICHARD: Why is it ‘not good’ to be a deep thinker? Thought, thoughts and thinking are what sets the human animal apart from the other animals. And now that intelligence, which is the ability to think, reflect, compare, evaluate and implement considered action for beneficial reasons, has developed in the human animal the blind survival passions are no longer necessary – in fact they have become a hindrance in today’s world – and it is only by virtue of this intelligence that blind nature’s default software package can be safely deleted (via altruistic ‘self’-immolation). No other animal can do this. RESPONDENT: Mental hospitals are full of deep thinkers. RICHARD: As this implies that the way to stay out of psychiatric institutions is to be a shallow thinker perhaps you may care to reconsider your response? RESPONDENT: Animals experience more happiness that humans because they don’t think (worry) and we do. RICHARD: As ‘worry’ is a feeling – be it an anxious feeling, an apprehensive feeling, a fretful feeling, a nervous feeling and so on – I would suggest looking deeper than thought, thoughts and thinking before coming to a conclusion. And, as animals can be anxious, apprehensive, fretful, nervous and so on, it is highly questionable whether they are more happy than the human animal. But whether they are more happy or not is besides the point anyway: the point being that only the human animal has the ability to think, reflect, compare, evaluate and implement considered action for beneficial reasons ... thus only the human animal can dispense with the blind survival passions. Then one is not only constantly happy but constantly harmless as well. RESPONDENT: (snip) ... The inner world lives in universal present time, The outer world is structured progressively in past time. RICHARD: What happens to ‘universal present time’ when the ‘inner world’ ceases to exist? RESPONDENT: Interesting question. RICHARD: It is indeed ... so what happens to ‘universal present time’ when the ‘inner world’ ceases to exist, then? RESPONDENT: What are your thoughts? RICHARD: As I understand it they are an electro-chemical activity in the neurons of the brain. RESPONDENT No. 19: Feelings and thinking are inextricably linked where there is re-action. RICHARD: Not necessarily ... and feelings come first in the reactionary process (albeit a split-second first) anyway. This has been scientifically demonstrated under strict laboratory conditions, again and again, by Mr. Joseph LeDoux, for example. It takes 12-14 milliseconds, from the first sensate contact, for the nerve signal to reach the amygdala (where the passions are triggered) and a further 12-14 milliseconds for the signal to then reach the cerebral cortex (where the thoughts are triggered). RESPONDENT: What was the instrument used to measure all this? RICHARD: In the article I read three or so years ago implanted tungsten electrodes were used. RESPONDENT: How is thought measured and how is it determined as arising from that source? RICHARD: There are many methods of determining thought activity ... apart from implanting electrodes as already mentioned there are surface receptors that can be attached to the scalp to detect up signals as well as RI scans (Radio Isotope), CAT scans (Computerised Axial Tomography), CT scans (Computed Tomography), NMR scans (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography), MRA scans (Magnetic Resonance Angiography), MRI scans (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and fMRI scans (functioning Magnetic Resonance Imaging). There are literally hundreds of books on the various fields of neuroscience and thousands upon thousands of articles. Speaking personally, I did not know of any research on this subject when I started to actively investigate the human condition in myself 20 or more years ago: as I intimately explored the depths of ‘being’ it became increasingly and transparently obvious that the instinctual passions – the source of ‘self’ – were the root cause of all the ills of humankind ... it was the journey of a lifetime! Thus I found out for myself ... I only provide examples (such as above) so that nobody has to take my word
for it. RESPONDENT: Many feelings are felt only when the thinker is thinking on it, but when the thinker stops and there’s silence those feelings also stop, seeming that the thinker and the feeler are only the two sides of the same coin. RICHARD: The surface emotions, the agitated feelings, stop but not the deepest, most quiet feeling of being ‘me’ (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being which is ‘being’ itself). RESPONDENT: Yes, the surface ‘conscious’ thinker stops and then the surface emotions also stop, but whereas the thinker and his worries are still boiling in the deepest of conscious the deepest emotions and wishes would not stop. In this way, the thinker and the feeler can be the same yet. RICHARD: If so, then this is not yet ‘silence’ ... ‘silence’ is when the thinker is not. That is, ‘silence’ is pure feeling (usually called ‘pure being’ or ‘a state of being’). RESPONDENT: I mean when there’s a bit of silence because conscious thinking stops for a while. Then, the associated feeling (fear when thinking on whatever) also fades away seeming that it was a thinking dependent process. It seems that there’s not fear if there’s not re-cognition (thought, conscious or unconscious). Fear seems to be a physical response to factual events, triggered when a threat is re-cognised. Fear wakes up the body in a nanosecond and provokes a movement of fleeing or attack; it promotes survival, it seems natural and good for survival, a momentary physical response to factual event, like sleep or be thirsty. When child, a small dog is a factual threat and there’s fear, but when we are grown up and 195 tall the small dog is not a factual threat and there’s not fear. Fear rises or not as a physical bodily response to threats. But when there’s a thinker operating and the response of fear is triggered by interpretations and hopes from this thinker, fear becomes an insane response. You point out that, when there’s not thinker (‘I’ as ego or first I), remains the feeler (‘me’ as soul or second ‘I’) as source of fear and it must fade away, but I can not understand this. RICHARD: It all depends upon one’s aspirations ... does one aspire to only be free of thought-induced fear (what you call the ‘insane response’) or does one also aspire to be free of ‘natural’ fear (what is mostly called the ‘sane response’)? Can there be peace-on-earth whilst one is still subject to the sane response (‘natural’ fear) from time-to-time? * RESPONDENT: When mind is in this situation observing a sunrise, without the thinker operating, there’s only the sense of beauty without the sense of a feeler feeling it. RICHARD: Rather, without the sense of a personal feeler feeling it: impersonal feeling. That is, pure feeling or pure being (sans the personal identity) is impersonal identity or impersonal ‘being’. RESPONDENT: It seems that the sense of observer and feeler does not exist then, only exists apperceptive awareness as what is observed (the sunrise) and the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it. RICHARD: I can easily agree that when the observer is the observed there is only observation as that ‘what is observed (the sunrise)’ ... except where there is ‘the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it’ (impersonal feeling) there is impersonal awareness ‘as what is observed (the sunrise)’ ... and not apperceptive awareness. Although I do not have the corner on the phrase ‘apperceptive awareness’, this impersonal awareness is best called ‘choiceless awareness’ here so as to avoid confusion of terms. RESPONDENT: In this way, the thinker and the feeler seem to be the same again. Do you consider this observation correct? RICHARD: If the observer is the observed (and there is only observation as that ‘what is observed (the sunrise)’ ) then, yes, this observation is correct. However, apperceptive awareness, in the way I am using the term, is when ‘the feeling (‘beauty’) without a sense of a feeler feeling it’ (impersonal feeling) is not. It is bodily awareness ... as the senses (and not through the senses). RESPONDENT: I see, ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ feelings, I think I grasp what you are conveying here: when there’s not thinker remains yet a feeler (a being who can feel), and these feelings are impersonal (without an ego-thinker feeling it), and in this state there’s also impersonal (choiceless) awareness. Right until here, but you are going beyond and pointing that there’s an state where this impersonal feeler also fades away, and in this state there’s ‘apperceptive’ awareness, [‘bodily awareness ... as the senses (and not through the senses)’]. I cannot understand this because it seems to me that an ‘impersonal feeler’ is inherent to be alive, how can exist a being if there’s not an impersonal feeler? RICHARD: It is the ontological ‘being’ which cannot exist if there is not an impersonal feeler ... not the flesh and blood body (a human being). RESPONDENT: Without grasping the last, I can not understand what do you mean by ‘apperceptive awareness’ and why is it different of impersonal (choiceless awareness). Can you elaborate further on it? RICHARD: Yes, ‘choiceless awareness’ is where the fragment (the ontological ‘being’) is the whole (an autological ‘being’ usually capitalised as ‘Being’) ... whereas ‘apperceptive awareness’ is where the fragment – and therefore the whole – has ceased to be (‘being’ and/or ‘Being’ itself is not). * RESPONDENT: The feeler seems to be a thinking-dependent process in the first case and independent of conscious thinking in the second. RICHARD: The ‘thinking-dependent process in the first case’ is all-too-common and leads to the notion that thought creates feelings. They do not ... thought can only trigger off the prior existing feelings. RESPONDENT: Many feelings as shame are triggered off by thought when remembering past lived experiences stored as memory and the thinker lives them anew, giving rise to the feeling of shame anew, so that the rising of the sensation of discomfort called ‘shame’ seems to be just a process dependent of the thinker and of memory. The instinctive bodily sensation named ‘shame’ seems to be a natural reaction when the thinker is making a situation of insecurity through his interpretations. In this way, it seems that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations, but also there’s not the rising of the instinctive discomfort named as ‘shame’ without the action of the thinker. RICHARD: Indeed it is so that ‘thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of instinctive bodily sensations’ if by ‘bodily sensations’ you mean bodily feelings (affective feelings) ... and there is no ‘natural reaction’ called ‘shame’. Shame, and all its variations (such as embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, disgrace, dishonour, ignominy,) are cultivated feelings, socialised feelings, cultural feelings. Speaking personally, I have no shame whatsoever (hence no pride nor its antidotal humility). RESPONDENT: By bodily sensations I don’t mean affective feelings, I mean bodily physical responses of discomfort to a threat (rubor, tachycardia, sweating ...). When the threat is to our self image then, this physical discomfort associated to a thinking process on self image, is named ‘shame’. The threat is an illusory thinking process but it is a threat, so that the bodily physical response also arises. The thinker seems to be again the problem, making an illusory self image and later a threat to this self image, triggering a natural physical response to the illusory threat, and naming all it as ‘shame’. RICHARD: I will put it this way: the ‘natural responses’ (such as the heart pumping furiously; the palms sweaty; the face ruddy; knuckles gripped; body tensed and so on) never occur where the instinctual passions are not. * RESPONDENT: So that thought as thinker is not the primordial creator of bodily sensations but the thinker is what can trigger off them, what can create a response of fear or sorrow when it is indeed unnecessary. RICHARD: It is emotional memory ... a non-verbal memory located in what is popularly called the ‘lizard brain’ or ‘reptilian brain’ at the top of the brain-stem/base of the skull. RESPONDENT: It seems to me that in the human there’s: 1. thought as no-emotional memory and thought as emotional memory (dates associated to bodily sensations): 2. bodily physical sensations. Why do you consider that emotional memory is not thought? Memory is registration, is thought. RICHARD: Because it is a feeling memory (affectively registered) evoking an emotional response and not a thought memory (cognitively registered) eliciting a thoughtful response. RESPONDENT: It seems that in the lizard brain there is not a self conscious thinker, there’s a feeler-being and physical reactions to the environment leading their behaviour. But there’s also capacity of memory (registration and remembering), a rudimentary kind of thought I would say. RICHARD: Indeed it is so that in the lizard brain there is no ‘self-conscious thinker’ (the saurian brain cannot think) ... there is an intuitive self-consciousness residing there. Sentience does not necessarily require thought, thoughts or thinking ... not even a ‘rudimentary kind of thought’. RESPONDENT: It has been observed recently that hamsters and dogs can remember and relive past events from memory when dreaming, it seems thought again. A class of monkeys and also dolphins have sense of self existence and can recognize themselves in a mirror, it is thought again, memory. And humans have made a thinker-entity from thought. RICHARD: Is it not possible to allow that the hamsters, dogs, primates, dolphins and so on have a feeling-entity? Why does the feeling of ‘self existence’ necessarily involve imputing thought, albeit rudimentary thought, into animals? There is no evidence that animals can think (as in observe, recall, reflect, appraise and propose considered plans for beneficial results) ... in a drought or famine, for instance, animals languish and/or die through lack of foresight. RESPONDENT: All they, from lizards to humans, have instinctual survivals passions but only humans seems to have a thinker and to live in sorrow. RICHARD: In the canine family, for just one example, it is easily observed that dogs can and do pine. RESPONDENT: It seems that the thinker is the creator of sorrow and that there’s no problem with these instinctual survivals passions when there’s not an ego-thinker leading them. RICHARD: Yet the saints, sages and seers display that they are still subject to sorrow from time-to-time. * RESPONDENT: This points me that the instinctive bodily responses and sensations can exists by themselves without a so called ‘feeler’ at their root, they are an essence of the body, they seem to be natural and it is not necessary to extinct them, it seems only necessary to extinct the thinker, who makes false interpretations of reality and creates unnecessary situations of insecurity and threat, triggering off then these prior existing bodily responses and sensations. Do you consider the above correct? If not, why? RICHARD: No, because they not only ‘seem to be natural’ ... they are indeed natural. It is natural to feel fear and aggression and nurture and desire ... these feelings are blind nature’s instinctual survival passions. However, now that a thinking, reflective brain has developed sensible thought, thoughts and thinking these instinctual survival passions can be safely eliminated. In fact, what was once essential for survival is nowadays the biggest threat to survival. RESPONDENT: Why? Don’t you wish a drink when you are thirsty? RICHARD: No, there is no thirsting whatsoever. Nor any hungering for food, a craving for sexual congress, a yearning for love ... or a hankering for pleasure, for that matter, either. All desire ceases forthwith where there is no ‘being’. RESPONDENT: Are survival passions a threat to survival or is the thinker leading these survival passions the unique threat? RICHARD: There is no question that thought, thoughts and thinking have occasioned sophisticated ways of harming both oneself and one’s fellow human being in ways that animals can not and do not. But to sheet home all the blame onto thought is to ignore all the evidence that animals can and do commit what humans call tribal war, murder, rape, cannibalism, patricide, matricide, fratricide, infanticide and many other deleterious behaviours (deleterious to both individual and communal well-being). And the only way to not ignore this instinctual animal behaviour, whilst keeping your argument consistent, is to attribute the ability of thought, thoughts and thinking onto them. Again: there is no evidence that animals can think (as in observe, recall, reflect, appraise and propose considered plans for beneficial results). * RESPONDENT: Recognition is a very quick unconscious thinking process, so that thought seems to come before feelings. RICHARD: Yet this ‘unconscious thinking process’ is a non-verbal, or affective feeling process (stored as emotional memory). Animals display this method of learning environmental dangers and safeties very clearly ... to even the most casual observation. RESPONDENT: But if it is memory, so it would be thought yet. I can not understand why ‘memory’ is thought but ‘emotional memory’ is not thought. RICHARD: Maybe it is the very word ‘memory’ that creates the difficulty? The word ‘memory’ can also used in other, non-verbal, situations as well: a computer’s ‘memory’ has nothing to do with thought, for example, or the ‘genetic memory’, for another instance, relates to information stored as the sequences of nucleotides in chromosomal DNA or RNA ... wherein thought plays no part at all. Thus emotional memory, which all animals operate from in their day-to-day living, is distinctly different to – and separate from – thought memory ... and predates such conscious memory by billions of years. ‘Tis atavistically embedded deep within the human psyche. * RESPONDENT: Also, it has been scientifically demonstrated that the amygdala can process subliminal information, without conscious thinking involved, and this can rise a feeling. But subliminal information can only be re-cognised in an unconscious way if thought is operating in the deepness, so that thought as thinker seems to be again the first and the trigger of natural bodily responses named ‘feelings’. RICHARD: All this you say depends upon unconscious recognition genuinely being ‘thought operating in the deepness’ and not the non-verbal emotional responses. RESPONDENT: Yes, that’s the problem, I can not see these non-verbal emotional responses as different of the own thought operating in the deepest, through recognition and memory. RICHARD: Are you suggesting that thought is all-pervading? Even in the ‘subliminal’, the ‘non-verbal’, the ‘unconscious’, the ‘deepness’? RESPONDENT: These bodily responses can be raised by the thinker, in a conscious or unconscious way, as un-sane response to events of the reality. RICHARD: In a ‘conscious way’ yes ... the ‘unconscious way’ is the non-verbal emotional response. RESPONDENT: It is unconscious but it is based on memory and recognition so that it seems to be thought operating in an unconscious way. Why do you consider that it is not thought? RICHARD: For number of reasons: through personal experience; by interaction with human babies; by observation of animals both in the wild and in human environment; via reading about and watching scientific demonstration ... by being open to possibilities that the ancient wisdom (aka ‘atavistic wisdom’) just does not countenance. RESPONDENT: Again, the thinker seems to be the problem and the creator of sorrow, and not the bodily responses aka feelings which are triggered by the thinker. How do you interpret it? RICHARD: The intuitive feeling of being a ‘self’ is the creator of sorrow ... thought merely formalises the feeling (and complicates through adding complexity). It is all so very simple. RESPONDENT: I observe that when there’s not thinker there’s not sorrow, but the sense of self existence seems to remain, so the thinker seems to be the creator of sorrow anew. RICHARD: Again: the saints, sages and seers display that they are still subject to sorrow from time-to-time. Which is why, when reading a saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words and cross-referencing them with other saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words, so as to gain a reasonable notion of what they are describing (pointing to), there is no need to travel into that tried and failed cul-de-sac ever again. There is a third alternative. * RESPONDENT: It seems that you consider ‘mind’ and ‘being (soul or second ‘I’)’ as different, which are these differences? RICHARD: The mind is the human brain in action inside the human skull (cognition is a neuronal activity) whereas the ‘being’ is the instinctual passions in action in the ‘lizard brain’ at the top of the brain-stem (at the base of the skull). RESPONDENT: But then the so called ‘being’ is also a neuronal activity. RICHARD: Is ‘lizard brain’ activity ‘neuronal activity’ (do reptiles have a mind)? RESPONDENT: Yes, ‘lizard brain’ activity is neuronal and chemical. As you know, they have a lot of neurons responding to environment and leading their behaviour. RICHARD: I see that I put that sentence rather badly ... put simply: does the ‘lizard brain’ activity give rise to a mind? RESPONDENT: Furthermore, measured responses induced by social stressors of aggression with those provoked by physical stress are the same in the lizard brain. It seems to me that, like in humans, survival passions are inherent to the body and can be triggered by physical or social events, or the own thinker (in humans). The problem seems to be the trigger instead the survival passions. In humans, the thinker is a trigger working in a crazy way. If there’s not an insane trigger, why are survival passions a problem at all? RICHARD: Yet a ‘trigger’ cannot trigger anything unless there be something to trigger (the emotional ‘being’) ... which is why I asked if reptiles have a mind. I only put it the way I did because the atavistic wisdom stresses that the ‘no-mind’ state of being as being the solution to all the ills of humankind (ostensibly no ‘neuronal activity’). RESPONDENT: If so, could these instinctual passions be a natural neuronal activity, sensitive, inherent to the body, so that all the problem is originated by another insane neuronal activity, cognitive, aka the thinker? RICHARD: In these discussions, no matter how well-explained, the focus invariably comes back to thought copping all the blame whilst feelings get off scot-free. RESPONDENT: Sorry :) Richard. I am trying to grasp what you are trying to convey but, by now, I find all the above difficulties. RICHARD: I am, as always, endeavouring to provide focus to the place where focus has not been directed before. RESPONDENT: Thought as thinker seems to be always behind, making the sorrowful human condition, I cannot see why instinctual passions could be a problem if there’s not an insane thinker leading them. RICHARD: Okay ... this comment of yours (‘an insane thinker’) appears often: are you suggesting that if this ‘insane thinker’ is not (which is what the saints, sages and seers recommend) then the instinctual passions, such as fear and aggression and nurture and desire, will not ‘be a problem’? How so? For just a few generalised examples (and this is neither an all-inclusive nor exhaustive list): to deal with fear they advocate faith and/or trust; to deal with aggression they advocate restraint and/or pacifism; to deal with nurture they advocate detachment and/or celibacy; to deal with desire they advocate asceticism and/or austerity ... and so on. Is it not simpler to be totally void of fear and aggression and nurture and desire? * RESPONDENT: Do you consider that the first or the second ‘I’ or any residual activity of thinking or whatever can remain in any form when the body dies? RICHARD: None whatsoever. It goes on in other people, of course, meaning that all babies are genetically encoded with the instinctual survival passions the moment the spermatozoa penetrates the ova and the first cell starts doubling. RESPONDENT: When reading saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words and crossing references with other saint’s, sage’s or seer’s words so as to gain a reasonable notion of what they are describing (pointing to), there’s similitude: 1. Tibetan Buddhism understands all post-mortem experiences as mentally-projected images, making the world beyond ‘akarmically corresponding image of earthly life’. According to the Bardo Thodol, those visions which appear in the intermediate state (bar-do) following death are neither primitive folklore nor theological speculations. Vis: ‘After death, a person is engaged in every sense, memory, thought, and affection he was engaged in the world: he leaves nothing behind except his earthly body’. (The Bardo Thodol Chenmo text, Ch. LXVII, LXVIII). 2. Mr. Krishnamurti seems to point that part of the personality survives bodily death. Vis: ‘Then there is this problem that the vast majority of people, of human beings, never come to the freedom from death but are caught in a stream, the stream of human beings whose thoughts, whose anxieties, pain, suffering, the agony of everything that one has to go through, we are caught in that stream. And when a human being dies he is part of that stream. (...) And the Psychical Research Societies and other societies, when they, through mediums and all the rest of it, when they call upon the dead, they are calling people out of that stream’. (3rd Public Talk, Ojai, 14th April, 1973). ‘When you die your thought of yourself goes on in that stream as it is going on now – as a Christian, Buddhist, whatever you please – greedy, envious, ambitious, frightened, pursuing pleasure – that is this human stream in which you are caught’. (Talks in Saanen 1974, 6th Public Talk). ‘To step out of the stream is to step out of this whole structure. So, creation as we know it is in the stream. Mozart, Beethoven, you follow, the painters, they are all here’. (‘The Reluctant Messiah’). Many supposed observations have been recounted and they point to some residual activity which remains when the body dies. How do you interpret all this? RICHARD: There is no need to interpret as the genetic inheritance via the germ cells is not even considered let alone addressed. So: again thought cops the blame for all the ills of humankind; again feelings get off scot-free. RESPONDENT: Right, but even if the thinker or first ‘I’ is indeed a creation of a feeler or second ‘I’ genetically inheritance via the germ cells, the question would be the same: can any residual activity of this thinker or whatever remain in any form when the body dies? RICHARD: None whatsoever ... it goes on in other people, via genetic inheritance, however. RESPONDENT: The ashes of the physical body remain, could ashes of the thinker remain? I was curious about why many supposed observations and saints, sages or seers including the own K said it in different ways. RICHARD: There is no phoenix to arise from the ashes here in this actual world. If I may re-quote Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti from another thread? Vis.:
He says that sorrow ‘goes beyond thought (...) you can feel it’ (emphasis added). RESPONDENT: Well, at least you are grasping that K said exactly what he said on afterlife. RICHARD: Yes, he is very clearly impressing the urgency of before-death action ... to step out of the stream prior to physical death else the stream goes on in the after-death state (thus occasioning re-birth).
RESPONDENT to No. 12: Good and evil refer to the basic ways that men are inclined. Do you think all are equally inclined? Don’t think if you don’t want to. It will not change the reality of things. Even your statement that thought is full of crap is thought. The question is whether the thought is based on something seen by the higher light or something seen by your own light. Until it runs through your mind, you don’t write it down. Men will be what they are and higher spiritual powers will determine whether there are good men or not and who is what. In the meanwhile, we think, whether we like it or not. The only question is where is the thought coming from. The bad man draws bad thought; the good man draws good thought. He creates neither. He is moved by them. RICHARD: In response to your question ‘where is the thought coming from’ the following quote may be of assistance:
RESPONDENT: Earlier this afternoon, before it stormed here, I was outside watching a bird fly/flutter through a background of blue sky and the green leaves of trees and I was taken away by the utter fullness of it! Upon reflection of that brief glimpse of total attention, it seems thought is simply too one-dimensional to touch the multi-faceted fullness of that. I was stunned by thinking how rarely I stop and allow awareness to operate. RICHARD: How effective has being ‘stunned by thinking’ been for you? How many times since this afternoon have you consequently stopped and allowed awareness – the utter fullness of total attention – to operate so that you will be taken away by the multi-faceted fullness of that? In other words: has this stunning thinking, subsequent to the event, done the trick by enabling that which is talked about so often to happen? Just curious. RESPONDENT: Being stunned by thinking was just an expression expressing that the homeostasis of thought (aka: the psychological self – ‘No. 25’) was stopped for a moment. RICHARD: Oh? You would know best, of course, yet going by what you wrote at the time I would have considered that ‘being stunned by thinking’ was ‘just an expression’ of thinking how rarely ‘the homeostasis of thought (aka: the psychological self – ‘No. 25’) was stopped for a moment’ ... rather than that you were stopped. You certainly convinced your co-respondent what a stunning thought it was that it is such a rare occurrence, anyway. Vis.:
RESPONDENT: That stopping was not a crisis either – as in an accident, physical trauma, etc. RICHARD: Indeed not: the way you wrote of the event was that it was precipitated by ‘watching a bird fly/flutter through a background of blue sky and the green leaves of trees’ ... total attention, in other words, rather than being ‘stunned by thinking’ how rarely you stopped and allowed awareness. RESPONDENT: Thought attempted to re-establish its dominance through reflecting on what was. I don’t think that has been effective at all in terms of allowing all of ‘one’s’ being to be given to the ‘multifaceted fullness of that’. RICHARD: Ahh ... then reflecting and being ‘stunned by thinking’ how rarely you stopped and allowed awareness – the utter fullness of total attention – to operate is of no use whatsoever, eh? Is this because ‘thought is simply too one-dimensional’ to produce anything other than a one-dimensional stunning of the thinker would you say? What does it take to produce a 3-D stunning of the thinker? RESPONDENT: But I do think that the ‘glimpse’ which stunned thought has planted a seed. RICHARD: Are you sure? Is it not the glimpse of the utter fullness which total attention makes apparent that is the trigger for stunning the thinker ... does not thought need to operate episodically as is required by the circumstances? If one thinks ‘upon reflection’ that ‘it seems thought is simply too one-dimensional to touch the multi-faceted fullness of that’ then the thinker concludes that thought must stop for that to happen ... thus precluding a twenty-four-hour-a-day happening. RESPONDENT: In fact, ‘it’ happened again today. But I am not experiencing it with continuity, if that is what you’re getting at. RICHARD: Nope ... what I am getting at is why praise ‘one-dimensional’ thought for its
ability to stun its thinker (as in impressed by its own brilliance in thinking that thought) when it is the glimpse of the utter
fullness which total attention makes apparent which is the trigger for the event. May I ask? What was instrumental in evoking ‘it’
again today? RESPONDENT: I can’t say. It seems like it was the energy/order that happened simply re-aligned. It is almost as if that is calling one, though there is fear to answer that call ... . RICHARD: Does the fear increase if you allow yourself to consider that the words ‘it is almost as
if that is calling one’ are the same-same as saying: this utter fullness is this brain’s destiny; this is what one is here
for? * RESPONDENT: Of course, when ‘it’ happens, to stick with K’s vernacular for describing it, the self is not there to experience ‘it’. RICHARD: Aye ... you already made that clear where you wrote ‘I was taken away by the utter fullness of it!’ RESPONDENT: Would you be so kind as to share why you find this thread interesting enough to respond to, and what is it you are trying to point to or go into? RICHARD: I simply found it quaint that two correspondents – on a Mailing List that condemns thought in no uncertain terms – should be so much in agreement about being ‘stunned by thinking’ how rarely they stopped and allowed awareness – the utter fullness of total attention – to operate ... what with thought being so ‘one-dimensional’ and all. The best that this mutual back-slapping congratulatory fervour can produce is a vow, a resolution, a promise and so on. In other words: effort. What I am ‘trying to point to or go into’ is that it is wrong thinking – rather than thinking per se – subsequent to the event as being that which prevents the happening from occurring just here right now as you read these words. Thought cops so much blame ... thus the thinker gets off scot-free. RESPONDENT: Oh, I don’t know. No. 4 and I are trying to look at what thought is doing ... and missing. RICHARD: Yea verily ... and it is because the thinker is polluting thought that thought is doing what it is doing ... and missing. RESPONDENT: I see what you are saying. RICHARD: Good ... having established this fact, it is important not to turn the thinker into the villain, an enemy: the thinker is thus one’s greatest ally ... now that this fact is seen. * RESPONDENT: Are you back-slapping yourself by positing your own authority on this in contrast to your characterisation of No. 4 and I? RICHARD: Of course I am. I praise success and criticise failure because I like my fellow human beings ... peace-on-earth is at stake. RESPONDENT: Do you have a method to experience the fullness of ‘that’? RICHARD: Ask yourself (as an open question) what am I here for? RESPONDENT: Do you think there is anything worthwhile for two (or more) people to convey to one another in regards to ‘that’? RICHARD: Oh yes indeed ... if they bear in mind that they are but two thinkers communing in lieu of unadulterated thought communicating with unadulterated thought. * RESPONDENT: That ‘preclusion’ [of a twenty-four-hour-a-day happing] may have allowed man to develop a great deal of technological capacities, but it seems to have usurped its limited place and practically refuses to abate. RICHARD: It is the thinker that reduces thought to being ‘one-dimensional’ . RESPONDENT: Yes, the thinker is the water bug disturbing the immaculate, clear surface of the pond of awareness, thus clouding the clarity so that the transparency is eclipsed. RICHARD: Excellent analogy. * RESPONDENT: When thought is provided with the topic of the absurdity of it adulterating with one dimensional, dissonant noise over the harmonious fullness of ‘that’, thought is inclined to stop and allow that fullness to operate, unadulterated with noise. RICHARD: You say ‘inclined to’ ... but is it a fact? By which I mean: does it happen? Does it occur? Does it actually work? Has the fullness been able to operate because thought has faced that absurdity? I am curious. RESPONDENT: No, it doesn’t. It just gives the thinker something to turn its ongoing commentary to. RICHARD: Okay ... now, knowing this as the fact, one no longer invests in these commentary-type thoughts (such thoughts will continue for it is the nature of the thinker’s mind to provide a running commentary) thus freeing-up all of the mind’s passion to be able to be invested instead in that which is vitally important: the awareness known as total attention. RESPONDENT: The fullness comes in when the thinker is in order/gets out of the way. RICHARD: Yes ... and you now know (from direct experience and not just by reading about it) that the utter fullness ‘comes in’ when there is awareness – total attention – operating. Such total attention is all-embracing – for it exclusive of no one and no thing – thus it easily accommodates commentary-type thoughts without getting sucked into them. This is the beginning of order. * RICHARD: The thinker is forever divided from ‘the fullness of that’ ... the thinker is false, an illusion. The only constructive thing the thinker can do is allow itself to be disappeared ( ‘I was taken away by the utter fullness of it!’). RESPONDENT: Yes, but do you think that such an occurrence is the result of a direct action by thought (‘allowing itself to disappear’), or is it triggered by the proactive perception of that fullness? RICHARD: It is the result of a ‘direct action by thought’ inasmuch as it is the thinker thinking a seminal thought which is directly inspired by the ‘perception of that fullness’ (and not through reading about it). That inspired thought which the thinker thinks is the very thought that paves the way for such an occurrence. To wit: ‘I’, the thinker, joyfully agree 100% to allowing ‘myself’ to be ‘taken away by the utter fullness of it!’. It is a conscious decision. RESPONDENT: So the thinker can align/be in harmony with that. That is so simple. And here ‘I’ was looking for a situation where the thinker was at odds with harmony, hence my predicament. You seem to be pointing to the actual possibility for order, yes? RICHARD: Yes ... order is concordance. Now that ‘I’ know, via direct experience, that ‘I’ can never, ever become perfect or be perfection ... then the only thing ‘I’ can do – the only thing ‘I’ need to do – is to say !YES! so that the already always existing perfection can become apparent (‘I was taken away by the utter fullness of it!’). So when ‘I’ ask (as an open question) ‘what am I here for?’ ... the essential character of the perfection of the infinitude of this universe which born me, is living me and will die me in due course, is enabled by ‘my’ concurrence. ‘I’ give ‘myself’ permission to allow this moment to live me (rather than ‘me’ trying to live in the present) ... and let go the controls. * RICHARD: It is because the thinker is polluting thought that thought is doing what it is doing ... and missing. RESPONDENT: I see what you are saying. RICHARD: Good ... having established this fact, it is important not to turn the thinker into the villain, an enemy: the thinker is thus one’s greatest ally ... now that this fact is seen. RESPONDENT: Now you seem to be turning the tables. But, provided thought is acting in harmony, what you say seems to hold water. The divided thinker which assumes separation must go! RICHARD: Yes ... the ‘divided thinker’ is, in fact, divided against itself ... whilst peoples beat themselves up for not being good enough or for being ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ (or whatever description) they have no chance of ever enabling the ‘fullness of that’. None of this mess is ‘my’ fault ... ‘I’ was born like this. Now that ‘I’ realise this ‘I’ can willingly, cheerfully be in concordance. RESPONDENT No. 25: Would you be so kind as to share why you find this thread interesting enough to respond to, and what is it you are trying to point to or go into? RICHARD: I simply found it quaint that two correspondents – on a Mailing List that condemns thought in no uncertain terms – should be so much in agreement about being ‘stunned by thinking’ how rarely they stopped and allowed awareness – the utter fullness of total attention – to operate ... what with thought being so ‘one-dimensional’ and all. RESPONDENT: You might find it more honest to say ‘I am assuming’, than to speak with authority and finality pertaining to what I said. If you read my words again, you will not see the phrase, ‘stunned by thinking’. RICHARD: Yet if you read through my words you will see that you are assuming that I said you wrote the words ‘stunned by thinking’ ... from the very first E-Mail (Message #00757 of Archive 00/06) and all through this thread I have been attributing that phrase to its correct author and not to you at all. Therefore, if may I make a suggestion, if you are going to remonstrate on that which you assume is what another person is ‘assuming’ would it not be useful to ascertain the facts first? ‘Tis only a suggestion, of course. RESPONDENT: And the reason you won’t is because thinking is not stunning to me. RICHARD: If you think this is so then it is so ... for you. I have no notion whatsoever what goes on in your mind other than what you chose to write ... not being a mind reader how would I? As far as I am concerned the reason I will not find the phrase in your words is because I never said that you wrote them in the first place. What I wrote was that you were in agreement with what your co-respondent was stunned by thinking about ... and I provided a snipped quote to show my source (Message #00800 of Archive 00/06) because you clearly say ‘to think that ...’ directly after your ‘it is stunning isn’t it’ agreement. Vis.:
As I say ... I have no notion whatsoever what goes on in your mind other than what you choose to write. If you cannot write in a way that expresses what you mean then what am I to do? All I can go on is the words you write ... I take them at face value. RESPONDENT: What is stunning, beautiful, intrinsically eloquent, is the mind that sees without the reactions of personal thinking. RICHARD: Would you not agree, that unless ‘the mind’ that you are describing is currently operating, then this sentence is the product of the ‘reactions of personal thinking’? RESPONDENT: And you also shouldn’t generalize about the mailing list. RICHARD: I am somewhat puzzled ... surely you are not instructing me on what I should or should not do? Not that I mind, of course, if you are ... it is just that you make a big thing about others not being authoritative. RESPONDENT: The negative characterization, or any other characterization of others doesn’t really establish oneself as singularly unique or clear. RICHARD: Oh? What would ‘establish oneself as singularly unique or clear’ then? That is, how would uniqueness and clarity express itself on this mailing list if uniqueness and clarity is to be hog-tied by all the restrictions you are futilely attempting to impose upon others writing to this list? Because ‘a mind that sees without the reactions of personal thinking’ would not be so authoritative as to dictate to others what they can say or not say ... would you not agree? RESPONDENT: Although I won’t defend the list ... RICHARD: Too late ... you already did (vis.: ‘you shouldn’t generalize about the mailing list’). RESPONDENT: I will say that it is obvious to me that thought has its uses. If that was not so, you wouldn’t be able to correspond meaningfully in Listening-I or in any other situation of daily living. RICHARD: Where have I ever said that thought does not ‘have its uses’ ? In fact I go much further than that: I praise thought highly. Vis.:
As a suggestion only: if you are going to continue to teach others would not doing some research be of assistance in establishing your authority to do so? * RICHARD: What I am ‘trying to point to or go into’ is that it is wrong thinking – rather than thinking per se – subsequent to the event as being that which prevents the happening from occurring just here right now as you read these words. Thought cops so much blame ... thus the thinker gets off scot-free. RESPONDENT: Who is blaming thought for anything? RICHARD: I am not going to provide you with a list of names ... it would take far too long. RESPONDENT: To me – again – it is quite clear that thought has its uses in the world of human living. The observation of the ineffectiveness of self-centred thinking is not blaming thought. It is simply the acknowledgement of certain of its limitations. RICHARD: Okay ... as you say that this is what you think then that must be what you think. It does
seem rather strange that all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and
loneliness and grief and depression and suicides and the such-like are caused by the failure to make ‘the acknowledgement of
certain of [thought’s] limitations’, though. RESPONDENT: This separation is the beginning of intellect. RICHARD: Yet intellect is the faculty of reasoning, knowing, understanding ... thought is intrinsic to human beings. RESPONDENT: Intellect is only intrinsic to ‘human egos’. RICHARD: Not so ... intellect (the faculty of reasoning, knowing, understanding), along with ‘I’ as ego, is innate at birth. When ‘I’ as ego dies and/or dissolves and/or whatever description ... intellect keeps on operating. Enlightened people can do sums, for example, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, working in fractions and so on. The ability to recognise, remember, compare, appraise, reflect and propose considered action for beneficial reasons – intelligence – is what sets the human animal apart from all other animals ... thought, thoughts and thinking are vital for both individual and communal well-being. RESPONDENT: The Birthing of Human Beingness begins when ‘intellect’ is Let Go. RICHARD: You do seem to be referring to that ‘get out of your head and into your heart’ adage so prevalent in spirituality and mysticality. As in: Leave your mind at the door; surrender your will; and trust your feelings. * RESPONDENT: As intellect perceives the illusion of objects through the senses, memory is formed and stored. RICHARD: Memory is essential in order to operate and function in the world of people, things and events ... amnesiacs have a dickens of a job doing the most simple day-to-day things. RESPONDENT: Memory is only essential to operate in the world of ego. RICHARD: Memory is essential in order to operate and function in the world of this body and that body and every body; the world of the mountains and the streams; the trees and the flowers; the world of the clouds in the sky by day and the stars in the firmament by night and so on and so on ad infinitum. Enlightened people can remember people, things and events, for example. RESPONDENT: Memory is part of the Ego Complex. It is ego has cleverly distorted reality so you ‘think’ memory is important. RICHARD: There is a simple test as to the veracity of your statement: find an enlightened person of your choice ... and start asking questions. If they cannot remember anything that happened before this moment – each moment again – then your hypothesis is correct. Then come back and we can have a genuine dialogue about peace-on-earth in this lifetime ... as this flesh and blood body. A ‘post-enlightenment’ discussion, as it were. RESPONDENT: Enlightenment observes each Moment as for the first time. RICHARD: In actuality there is no ‘as for the first time’ ... there is only this moment. RESPONDENT: As I said: memories are illusions of a past, and thinking is the anticipating of a future. In Light, past and future do not exist. RICHARD: And as I said: the past, although it did happen, is not actual now; the future, although it will happen, is not actual now ... only this moment is actual. There is nothing other than this moment in eternal time. RICHARD: The second case is the demonstration of this being factual (as is the instant instinctive feeling of fear, for another example, in an imminently dangerous situation). It has been exhaustively tested and scientifically (repeatable on demand) demonstrated that feelings come before thought in the perception-reaction process. RESPONDENT: The feelings come before ‘conscious’ thought, but the feeling of fear does not arise in an imminently dangerous situation if there’s not recognition of this situation and what it means (when child, you are not afraid of fire whereas you don’t know its effects). RICHARD: Yet the child develops an emotional memory of danger (such as fire), even before thought, thoughts and thinking commences, in the ‘reptilian brain’ as an environmentally-learned supplement to the instinctual passions genetically endowed. RESPONDENT: Recognition is a very quick unconscious thinking process, so that thought seems to come before feelings. RICHARD: Yet this ‘unconscious thinking process’ is a non-verbal, or affective feeling process (stored as emotional memory). Animals display this method of learning environmental dangers and safeties very clearly ... to even the most casual observation. RESPONDENT: Also, it has been scientifically demonstrated that the amygdala can process subliminal information, without conscious thinking involved, and this can rise a feeling. But subliminal information can only be re-cognised in an unconscious way if thought is operating in the deepness, so that thought as thinker seems to be again the first and the trigger of natural bodily responses named ‘feelings’. RICHARD: All this you say depends upon unconscious recognition genuinely being ‘thought operating in the deepness’ and not the non-verbal emotional responses RESPONDENT: These bodily responses can be raised by the thinker, in a conscious or unconscious way, as un-sane response to events of the reality. RICHARD: In a ‘conscious way’ yes ... the ‘unconscious way’ is the non-verbal emotional response. RESPONDENT: Again, the thinker seems to be the problem and the creator of sorrow, and not the bodily responses aka feelings which are triggered by the thinker. How do you interpret it? RICHARD: The intuitive feeling of being a ‘self’ is the creator of sorrow ... thought merely formalises the feeling (and complicates through adding complexity). It is all so very simple. RICHARD: [quote]: ‘Then you find out that the outside is the inside, then you find out that the observer is the observed’. (page 36; ‘Krishnamurti on Education’; published by Krishnamurti Foundation India, ISBN 81-87326-00-X). RESPONDENT: Is the observer, then also, the outside? RICHARD: First of all there is a point which needs to be cleared up: you have titled the subject of this e-mail as being ‘is the thinker the outside’ which indicates that what your ‘is the observer, then also, the outside’ query really conveys is the question as to whether the thinker is, then also, the outside ... or not. As you obtained the quote which you start this thread with from the bottom of an e-mail in which three paragraphs were quoted I would draw your attention to the third one:
As you can see Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti specifically says [quote] ‘do not think’ [endquote] which indicates there being no thinker when the outside is the inside ... meaning that there is no thinker when the observer is the observed. Thus the ‘observer’ being referred to is the feeler, not the thinker ... for example (also from the same e-mail):
Put simply: it is an affective state of ‘being’ ... an oceanic * RICHARD: Here is my question: if the thinking self can get such rigorous scrutiny as the mailing list gives it ... why not the feeling self? Is the feeling self sacrosanct? RESPONDENT: Are you using the terms ‘thinking self’ and ‘feeling self’ in the k sense where they seem be extensions of one another or do you see them as different in substance? If it’s the latter, what is their substance? RICHARD: The feeling self (‘me’ as soul) is primal and the thinking self (‘I’ as ego) is derivative and both are, fundamentally, affective in substance: as the essential affective feelings are in situ before thought first arises in infancy – a baby is born already feeling – the feeler, as an embryonic feeling being, is innate in the species ... it is an hereditarily programmed, or genetically encoded, instinctually passionate inchoate presence, a rudimentary survival ‘self’ as it were. Any and all imprinting which happens after birth imprints itself onto, into, and as, this already existing basic set of survival passions that form themselves into being the intuitive presence which, at root, is what any ‘me’ ultimately is ... as does any and all societal, familial, and peer-group conditioning. Both imprinting and conditioning need substance to latch onto, sink into, and be ... it all washes off a clean slate like water off a duck’s back. Innocence is something entirely new to human experience.
RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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