“Life” By Faith Inglis
There is more to self-knowledge than meets the eye
INTRODUCTION
Please note at the outset that the essay that follows this opening explanation regarding holistic living which is mentioned throughout the article will be unfamiliar to readers who may be expecting to find contemporary thinking via reason and logic (cause and effect) understanding of mental illness/disorder as medicalised pathology.
It is not pursuant to that line of thinking; so what other manner would be appropriate to consider? It is written from an oblique perspective of “intelligence patience” which is a holistic approach meaning it is different from future linear projections of thought shaped by reference to psychological reaction to what is actually happening now. It is a fact that past, present and future psychological time is all contained in the now, Consequently, the future is happening now. Holistically, tomorrow is psychologically unknowable because living is a self-evident non-linear phenomenon that’s changing in and of itself, unpredictably from moment to moment, not static.
BASIS FOR DIALOGUE
The proposal put forward in this written form of dialogue concerns awareness of matters arising from the daily living situation of individual and collective consciousness of humanity. It attempts to draw out the affective movement of psychological images present at all times that thinking takes place. The emphasis is primarily on learning about aspects of “what is” the actualising force behind what’s presently happening, and not being concerned so much with codifying emotions and behaviours into fixed categories or how to instigate changes to better control the psychological effects by abstract ideas, which are secondary matters arising from causes and effects.
What is psychological energy, from where is it generated and how does it impact consciousness? The enquiry is looking at the origins of thinking, not the resulting content called thoughts.
“Thought is not something inside as we’re all been told. It is something as physical as anything. In fact, it is everything. The very eye movement captures thoughts and so does all the other senses. But, they don’t get collected anywhere. It is just one passing movement in absolute union with the movement of life. What’s inside is just some disjointed bones and decaying flesh and blood. And, this information or thought is also getting captured by you from the outside, from a physical source right now”…..Beyond UG
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
For over 25 years I have been connected with the mental health system in Brisbane, Australia through being a family carer of my son who has received a diagnosis of chronic mental illness. I have closely observed the workings of the psychiatric treatment of inpatients and the outpatient system now referred to as community based mental health services. I have also been associated with several not for profit community organisations that provide information to families affected by mental illness.
All the while, I have looked for alternative sources of wisdom probably because of my scepticism of the closed one pointed way that mental health professionals insist that mental disorder/illness is due to pathology in biology and therefore requires suppressive intervention using psychotropic medications as the primary remedy.
I have also been interested in the progress of worldwide scientific research aimed at finding a cause or causes for the range of psychiatrically diagnosed conditions, particularly the fact that while there’s a myriad of theories receiving positive coverage in scientific journals, online sources like YouTube and in the news media, nothing conclusive is emerging from all the research efforts. The public message from professionals is that proof of biological causation will be found from advances in neuroscience or genetics in the near future and the expectation is that the breakthrough will lead to more effective treatments. Early on there was an expectation that the DNA sequence of genes would reveal the missing evidence, and more recently epigenetic research has gathered momentum. What’s not adequately recognised in all these research endeavours, predominantly by big pharmaceutical companies, is the placebo effect.
The placebo effect comes into focus as primarily psychologically directed ways and means which appear to be the action of words forming positive urges that motivate temporal shifts in the brain and nerves that imitate or initiate biological mechanisms in particular aspects of future change. So, its effect is through the channels of the psyche rather than a chemical induced physical change. It’s often referred to as mind over matter and can’t be a permanent new state because it uses memory pathways and patterns that stem from movement of old thought processes to create an appearance that seems new, but isn’t new biological material. It’s effective because it bypasses the duality of contradictory limitations by adopting a singular state of mind possibly through self-hypnosis, unwittingly.
In reality, placebo is an important indicator that there may not necessarily be a specific biological issue that warranted fixing in the first place, but professionals are reluctant to accept this verdict because they believe in their diagnosing and treating methods thoroughly and consequently they resist the possibility of errors in their systematic analytical approach. The placebo effect and also the nocebo effect are thorny issues for practitioners because the implications are mostly doubted. Why? The answer may have something to do with the interventionist attitude adopted by practitioners which goes like this: “We don’t have the luxury of doing nothing” and that includes the ‘idea’ that the patients also expect to be given a drug palliative for their ailments. The alternative approach of ‘watchful waiting’ is scrapped altogether. That was the original meaning of ‘asylum’ as a refuge allowing ‘time out’ for people experiencing distress. The mental illness paradigm has no patience for withholding the commencement of drug remedies.
SCIENCE VS SCIENTISM
For the sake of general knowledge regarding the extent of mental illness/disorder in the community, it is essential that what the medical profession’s studies about mental diseases findings are a good starting place. The following is not well known by the public, but it is worth noting: “Half of the population will meet criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder during their lifetime, with many meeting criteria for multiple disorders. High levels of psychiatric comorbidity complicate efforts to differentiate among psychiatric disorders. These challenges are heightened because psychiatric disorders are defined by signs and symptoms, as the underlying pathophysiologies remain largely unclear.” Reference: nature paper December 2025
How does this information which indicates “uncertainty” at the fundamental core of psychiatric determinants influence our belief in acceptance of psychiatric diagnosis? It’s suggesting that half of the population have or will experience mental problems that require psychiatric intervention. Is it so? Surely, it must be approached with scepticism?
By questioning and doubting the efficacy of the science behind the Pathogenesis explanations for mental disorders/illnesses, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that mental health professionals are practicing diagnostic and treatment methods that are more consistent with adaptive knowledge of scientism, rather than medical science. Scientism, in this context, is generally considered to be linked with philosophical positivism concepts. In this case, investigational practices are converted into conventional theories of pathology by reference to the DSM guidelines published by the American Psychiatric Association.
The accredited interviewing process underpinning psychiatric and psychological determinations is vastly inferior to empirical scientific testing that forms the basis for authentic biomedical practices. It’s a tick the box dialectic method that’s prone to arbitrary assessment motivated from specifically designed questioning techniques for the purposes of obtaining ‘echoed’ responses that confirm the already pre-determined conclusions. To a hammer everything begins to looks like a nail!
Behavioural crisis emanating from disturbing thought processes is obviously attributed to biological pathology in the medical model for mental disorders/illnesses. However, its basis in science is assumptive and presumptive, not proven by empirical scientific evidence. Hence, it may be plausible to conclude that it is fundamentally scientism, not empirical medical science, particularly while there is an absence of proof for biological causation.
One is reminded of Feynman’s definition of science. He said “science is a body of knowledge some of which is nearly certain, some quite uncertain, but none that is completely certain“.
THE CRISIS IN CONSCIOUSNESS
So where does that bring me to the interest in holistic awareness and the view that the crisis is primarily in consciousness. That consciousness is its content: all the things that man has accumulated through centuries, his fears, his dogmas, his beliefs, his superstitions, his conclusions, and all the suffering, pain and anxiety. These conditions are thus common to all of humanity. Therefore, why is the emphasis placed on the personal experiencing of various forms of this content?
Consciousness as we know it in its highly conditioned structure is motivated by impulsive and compulsive thoughts and behaviours that take up most of the space in the conscious and unconscious memory mechanisms in the brain, which is also common. It’s obviously the grounding for habits to develop and persist, but it’s whereabouts are mysterious. Clearly, the psyche, the self, “me” exists somewhere intangible, but nevertheless it is wholly responsible for simulating this messy consciousness. Our daily lives are predominantly simulations sourced from the past remembrances of psychological images that the collective authority of society has inculcated in us through programmed conditioning in almost every aspect of our endeavours, be it by religious instruction, systemic education, politics, the influence of psychologists/psychiatrists and counselling or social/moral norms.
Unless there is a radical mutation in that consciousness, outward activities will bring about more mischief, more sorrow, more confusion. And, to bring about that mutation in consciousness, a totally different kind of energy is required; not the frictional energy of thought, of time and measure. Is there a life force other than the conditioning states that have evolved since the beginning of human life, whether by creation or evolution?
Obviously, conditioning is the man-made conceptual mindset that is impermanent and temporal, then the question arises: is there a non-conditioned psychological state? If so, then it’s without any sense of pre-arranged authority, intentionality or time. And, mathematically it would be aligned with the zero point that fundamentally contains all of the various numerical values. Momentum wise, it is the perceptible turning point between nothing and anything in movement, similar to quantum physics where nano-particles are also observable as waves of energy.
THOUGHT AS A MATERIAL PROCESS
Krishnamurti stated that thought is a material process. He would not be drawn into the question of matter, but he espoused that beyond thought there’s nothing except energy.
Albert Einstein, had investigated energy from the perspective of physics that affects all aspect of life. The following is an explanation of Einstein’s view:
“Concerning matter, we’re been all wrong. What is called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. Matter is spirit reduced to a point of visibility. There is no matter.
The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness. Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.
Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes by which we think. Time does not exist we invented it. Time is what the clock says. The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Thinking is a movement in time, ie. distance from here to there takes time. However, in regards to the psychological movement in time other things impede like limitations and conflict. Reacting to the superficial discontent, the thinker seeks to stop or change the activities of thought, but the falseness element is actually the movement of time not thought per se. Thinking is a natural flow of living, time is not something naturally occurring. Thinking cannot be stopped. Neither can it be successfully reduced to fixed categories. Therefore, can there be an insight into the false notion of psychological time?
PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTS V NON-FACTS
So, this fundamental question about what is happening in daily living arises from a serious demand for an intensive investigation into the whole of consciousness, not looking at each fragment separately as bits of knowledge and from that try to integrate the separate parts so as to form a whole mental picture which is akin to the scientific approach that regards disorder as exclusively the domain of an individual consciousness.
The quality of perception in terms of factual observation comes down to whether awareness is revealed directly or if awareness is falsely affected by past knowledge and experience coming from memory. Briefly, when there is the absence of thought, which is time, then you’re completely confronted with the fact, and then the fact operates on you – you do not operate on the fact. Conditioned thinking reverses the perceptual phenomena giving the incorrect viewpoint that you are constantly manipulating the fact so as to make it more amenable to particular desires. And, it compels you to keep on doing its bidding irrespective of immediate outcomes.
Any attempt to alter the fact of the present situation is certainly going to invoke conditioned concepts and principles arising out of past knowledge and although it seems like it can effect a particular change of the fact, it only brings about conflict, confusion and limitations because remembrances are abstract ideas and therefore produce more and more problems over time. Thought processes emerging from memories that repeat over and over again are non-facts. The common fallacy is that one may not be satisfied with whatever is actually the fact, but attempting to change it is bound to not just fail, it causes additional problems that can’t be fixed.
TRANSFORMATION AND CHANGE
Let’s take a closer look at some examples of New Age approaches to change: Psychedelics, Therapy, and Meditation – The Machinery’s Favourite Tools.
Think psychedelics are gateways to cosmic truths? Think again. Therapy a cure? Try narrative traps. Meditation for clarity? Just hallucination in slow motion. These aren’t tools for liberation – they’re the machinery’s favourite tricks to keep you in endless loops of delusion. Psychedelics amplify the noise, therapy reprograms you for compliance and meditation feeds your illusions of peace. The hum continues, indifferent to your trips, tears and silence. Stop playing along. “Wisdom from the Nacre God” YouTube Channel
THE AFFECT OF WORDS
Mentally, phenomena is identified by vocabulary descriptions that makeup the content of the known. Actually, the word is never the thing it describes. However, we are driven by words because of an insatiable desire to make everything known as if to avoid the fear of a death-like emotional consequence of not knowing. The fear of not knowing leads to speculative conclusions about whatever is actually happening rather than admitting that the solution to psychological questions is unknown. Conditioning makes living into personified problems and gives us ideas about how to solve them.
The intellect refuses to say outright that ‘I really don’t know’ so it resorts to guessing in order to disguise it’s ignorance and all this is part of the interpersonal and communal conditioning that pervades vast aspects of traditional values underpinning society. To overcome the disappointment when guessing fails, tactics like — ‘fake it till you make it’ are utilised. So, traditional ways and means are not beyond condoning dishonesty whenever it becomes necessary to maintain a particular chosen stance adopted by the status quo. Obviously, examples of this disingenuous behaviour abound in families, popular celebrity scenarios, politics and business circles. Are we bound to comply with the strictures of the society that we were born into or can one stand alone in life?
FRAGMENTED V NON-FRAGMENTED THINKING
For some considerable time I have been investigating the vast published teachings of J Krishnamurti (K) and the associated work of Dr David Bohm (B) who featured in many dialogues with K over the years that they conducted enquires into the limitations of fragmented thinking processes. By substantiating the facts of these limitations, they opened up the other questions around what’s involved in holistic approaches to life without duality in fundamental psychological understanding.
PROPOSED SUBJECT OF DIALOGUE
The question open for dialogue is whether thought in it’s very nature constitutes the primary sources of human psychological problems and whether the movements that the contents of consciousness make once registered in memory can be observed for the part it plays in the manner that the three major psychological issues confronting daily living – ‘fear’, ‘the pursuit of pleasure’ and ‘suffering’ affects the mind, brain and nervous system of all people, but particularly with respect to those who are pre-disposed to hyper-emotional reactions.
LOOKING AT IMAGES AND IMAGE-MAKING
K and B have provided valuable insight into the thought-based phenomena that we can readily understand as the images that abound as the common ground for interaction between people and by extension families, groups, tribes, nations and so on. The images obviously form the basis for holding particular associations that we take for granted as the necessary ingredient for competitive interaction within society. It’s long been recognised that tribal societies hold past triumphs and tragedies as motivation for producing ever deepening tensions and wars.
Locally, we are pressured to struggle for our share of life’s basic necessities as well as things desired to separate the privileged from the underprivileged members of the community. These irreconcilable differences in the face to face distinctions between people are easily recognised as grounds for extrapolation of majority and minority divisions within the society. I refer of course to the “us versus them” mentality that grants favour to the winners and despair for the losers, ruthlessly. Psychologically, if life is a contest then one must engage in a push-pull battle of leverage which entails intentionally pushing your opponent down in the belief that it will swing you upwards, automatically. Obviously, this is the mechanical cause and effect thinking process that is widespread.
However, this also makes the ground for hypocrisy about the religious notion of love thy neighbour that society holds dearly to at the same time. Can man seriously believe in serving two or more divergent masters?
“Society is our extended mind and body. Yet the very society from which we are inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate. Society, as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self-contradictory rules”………Alan Watts
It seems that this imagery begins in infancy and may carry on with pretty much unaltered characteristic features through schooling into adolescence and adulthood. Consider the catastrophic effect that notions of absolute certainty pertaining to self images have on the formative relationship between the self and others. A notion of absolute self-certainty would have repercussions for the field of motivated reasoning in terms of the likelihood of developing and maintaining an attitude of rivalry that is constantly acting out of a ‘warrior mindset’ and therefore unreasonably propagating or defending one’s beliefs and opinions, even in the face of clear perceptual evidence of erroneous conclusions (face saving).
Also bear in mind that self-induced spellbinding can begin early as a protective device to defend the ego from unwanted outside influences thereby laying the soil for self deception which continues for the whole lifetime in many people. Self pity, petty tantrums and scapegoating are prevalent avoidance of responsibility tactics. Self hypnosis is observed in many aspects of normal life including traditional respectably regarded social structures, not just confined to the young folk who find themselves analysed by mental health professionals.
“We are all hallucinating all the time, including right now. It’s just that when we agree about our hallucinations, we call that reality” … Anil Seth, neuroscientist.
“The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering”…..Carl Jung, psychologist.
What makes for self hypnosis? So, worrying is an example of self hypnosis. I am worried and I ought not to worry, but because I can’t stop worrying, I’m worried because I worry and you see where that could lead to. It leads exactly to the same echoing situation that happens when there’s too much feedback in the telephone (loud static noise) and that is what we call anxiety trembling.
The outcomes of self hypnosis may range from mild forms of distress at the lower end of the scale, and includes neurosis through to psychosis at the upper level. This is a big call: the common antecedent for all variations may turn out to be the architecture and maintenance of illusory images which forms a fairly fixed structure of the emerging ego. Just as massive computing machines began as simple binary codes, so also the inner world of self images, images of others and everything else in the domain of psychological thoughts like symbols, stereotypes and so on may develop from minute linear and binary constructs in fragmented thinking processes.
THE SELF CONSTRUCTED BY THOUGHT
The common denominator in looking at the conscious and hidden variables of psychological distress is clearly that it always involves or affects “me” which is obviously the images that define who or what I was given at birth by a name to distinguish me from everyone else in the family that I will grow up with and others that I will come into contact with along the journey of life. Now, is that identifying factor somehow structured into the brain’s biology or does it exist as part of what is merely a social mindset that is separate from the brain networks, but interacts with the psychological movement of living. This “me” is not something permanently fixed in either the brain or elsewhere in the body, it only enters reality through the processes or movement of socially construed thoughts as potential actions predetermined by conscious or unconscious direction or motives.
Now, the mysterious nature of the ‘me’ has to be looked at, not from the way it presents itself as a subjective entity which is divided from the object of its interest, but in its actual context which in fact is the total accretion of the past knowledge and experience of individual and collective memory. So, fundamentally it’s an objective perspective, consisting of all the past remembrances rather than personal subjective. The subjective ‘me’ is the illusory element resulting from a centred perspective of fragmented thinking. To see this with clarity brings about the ending of the dualistic division (me and not me). The ending of divisive thinking means that psychologically, consciousness is fundamentally whole (holistic) not individual.
The self-centred perspective of ‘my’ importance/fears colours the emotional aspects of our private and public mental status. The question is, can thinking take place psychologically without a personal operator in the centre controlling thoughts and feelings according to biases and predilections? Could it be possible that “ME IS NOT MINE”.
LIMITED AND UNLIMITED THINKING
Geometry dictates that wherever there is a centre there must be a circumference which infers that movements back and forth between the centre and any point in the circumference are relatively connected and therefore limited and finite. No active centre means that relativity is no longer functioning making space unlimited and infinite. This is a psychological state free from the shackles of the controlling centre that represented all the content of the past memory which is consciousness according to the conditioned self (ego). Unfortunately, the thought processes that give rise to the establishment of the ego are lacking proprioception and that prevents it from being aware of the dangers inherent in the contradictions that plague its interference in matters that are living, not static objects. The ego doesn’t use memory, it is memory.
If the “me” (psychological memory) is totally silent or insightfully abstains from deliberately trying to control the immediate situation, the facts will play out naturally and the images are neutral at least until the after effects are realised by reflection of thinking, usually as ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ according to the sensibilities of the ego. Intellectually, we know that with regard to linguistics this is the verb ‘to be’ and ‘not to be’ acting on the verbal knowledge base.
OBSERVING
What is not obvious is that the fact of what actually happens occurs instantaneously in a non-verbal space and it leaves no marks in the memory capacity of the brain. There is no separate “me” present at the timeless point of any action. Actually, there is no observer observing the observer, there is only observing of ‘what is’. In relationship between two human beings, observing is non-separate ‘aliveness‘ which is wordless and timeless. Fundamentally, there is no psychological division, only the action of observing. Human Beings, per se, have no separating self-nature. The whole physical makeup of man is made only of non-man elements. The psyche commonly known as the ego consists existentially in the guise of particular forms of conventional designations given out traditionally by society for the purpose of identity and interpersonal social connections. Any attempt, whatsoever, to elevate the fundamental common grounded features of aliveness to facilitate a higher dimension, so-called spirituality, corrupts the basic factual qualities because it introduces a psychological future time factor that is illusory.
However, in the split second following action, the responses and reactions from the self image get registered even though they are non-factual abstracts felt as matters arising from the impact of the actual fact on self-centred sensitivity by way of subsequently thinking about it. This is clearly the continual moving nature of thought (becoming) and associated emotional content of memory which is commonly referred to as uniquely individual consciousness.
BRAIN AS MEDIUM OF REGISTRATION
This is the kernel of my proposal: that registration of my psychological events as memory occurs post-facto and therefore the brain’s existing biological system can only participate in the physical aspects of survival at the point of ‘what is’. It is impossible for the brain’s biology to participate psychologically in the holistic phenomenon that is ‘what is’. It is evident from examining events such as accidents that whatever happens is not related to the normal thought processes at the moment of happening. Thinking about it occurs later. Obviously, time is synonymous with thought with respect to psychological movements. Time does not end the past, time and thought is the past.
PSYCHOLOGICAL FREE WILL
For its purposes or desires, the psyche, not being a genuine biological instrument, is seemingly able to exercise free will to invent or imagine almost any thing it wants to choose in order to refine or project ideas or ideals from the prevailing imprints of past matters selectively accessed from memory. So because it is operating outside the control of bios and logos, the psyche is thus able to invoke ‘chaos’ and other forms of irrational and immature actions in the quest of getting its own way.
It also has many ‘masks’ which enables it to present itself in a myriad of veiled images that it projects onto the environmental space around itself. Self-image can cleverly decide to conceal itself from outside visibility and when it does this successfully it thinks that it’s superior to the surrounding environment of other perspectives. This secretive approach is obviously the grounding for self-deception and delusional thinking to flourish. In this way the nebulous centre becomes the dominant censor that fixes itself as the permanent driving force in its way of existing, in its innermost working (thinking) and also its relationship with the outside world. This authority, having been established as the dominant factor, has effectively separated itself into fragments which cannot be later integrated into a coherent unified psychological structure. In the exaggerated sense, this inner secrecy is the basic cause for mental disorders/illnesses. Psychological personal secrecy is not silence. In fact, the imagery processing machinery of thought produces contradictory ‘noises’ that prevent the natural protective effects of quietness. The outcome may be the manifestation of troubled inner ‘voices’ that are commonly experienced by people diagnosed with psychotic illnesses.
Because of the learned inability of the ego to live foremost in regard to facts, the factors of ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ form parts of the personal perspective of the psychological consciousness and cause further activity over time as neurotic thinking patterns and psychosomatic behaviour which is witnessed as symptoms of disorder. In this manner both like and dislike leave impressions in the brain’s memory capacity as cause and effect residues that impact the psyche’s images, horizontally or vertically. Obviously, disliked images accumulate so as to generate problems negatively and the stress thus caused may lead to common deleterious effects on the life experience. On the other hand, accumulating liked images may also cause conditions like grandiosity and other narcissistic forms of distortion in the makeup of the psyche. Either way conflict forms, mostly felt inwardly, in subtle or gross measures affecting the pleasure/pain threshold in the psychological structures of consciousness. Simulated feelings are old forms of felts that are still actively playing out in present moment action as interceding thoughts/emotions affecting the thinking process by wedging between the observer and the observed and causing confusion and conflict, inappropriately.
Thought is continually seeking more and more pleasure believing that it provides happiness and attempts to fob off the reverse sensations of pain and discomfort, largely unaware that pleasure and pain are only temporal divisions, psychologically. Managing conflict and contradictions is an endless and elusive pursuit usually referred to experts for help although it often remains subdued in the inner sanctum of the psyche. Distressing symptoms in the form of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) possibly emerge from these origins.
The unrelenting desire for happiness is the popular drug of society and this endeavour is written into some nation’s constitutional values and rights of citizens. There are institutes that provide courses in happiness irrespective of whether such a thing exists apart from fleeting thought processes. Mind can never find happiness. Happiness is not a thing to be pursued and found. Sensation can be found again and again, for it is ever being lost; but happiness cannot be found. Happiness is a general disposition, not particular forms of sensation. Seeking any objective thing that is not fixed is futile and consequently a waste of energy.
THE DOWNSIDE OF IMAGINATION
Imagined thoughts can be extended in many directions by the psyche, but they are still programmed and consequently governed by the limitations stipulated by the particular moral values of the society in which one lives. Take the example of a young male who has dyslexia that goes unnoticed for the duration of his education period preceding the onset of puberty. He only partially hears the scholastic information that he was expected to retain because he has trouble with remembering or is easily distracted by the antics of other males who like him are not that interested in the curriculum. He and his friends don’t necessarily understand the full consequences of being a school dropout. So, what are the alternatives for a future without a basic stable background from schooling.
Jordan Peterson spells out the journey into psychological fantasy territory in the video on YouTube titled: “Men who are trapped in Childhood” based upon the Peter Pan pantomime that has linkages to real life syndromes for primary and early secondary school dropouts. When the crunch comes and reality dictates that one’s childhood expectations of an easy life are completely thwarted, staying in the phantasm of a delusional mindset is perhaps not unexpected, but it’s an inner world of continuing crisis and chaos, unfortunately.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME IMPACTING CONSCIOUSNESS
The proposal advanced by this essay is that the brain’s biological mechanism is called into the picture only at the post factual phase of the phenomenon of conscious activity and is therefore dealing with the non-factual or illusionary notions of symptoms or behaviour displayed by people reacting to their own image-making patterns that are felt as real, but are abstractions not true representations of the preceding facts which are neutral in nature and therefore should not affect the equilibrium of the brain’s homeostasis or emotional states. The factors that one is not cognisant of in this regard is the trouble brought about by psychological time interfering as past, present and future outcomes of fragmented thought movement which is illusory, but nevertheless felt as personal reality by the conscious mind due to the consequences of conditioning by society, particularly that each person is a uniquely individual consciousness.
The past, the present and the future are all the past and this past is what we call living. The mind is the past, the brain is the past, the feelings are the past, and action coming from these is the positive/pragmatic activity of the known. This whole process is your life and all the relationship and activity that you know.
It’s interesting to note that the so-called individual doesn’t exist at all, for he draws on the common reservoir of conditioning which he shares with everyone else, so the division between the notion of the community and the separate individual is false, there is only conditioning This conditioning is action in all relationships – to things, people and ideas. When examined closely, conditioning separates into two psychological polarities (negative and positive) which both assume absolute importance, but each is formed out of thinking that can only be relatively true because of the nature of opposites inherent in their fundamental structure. This polarity activated by conditioning is the factor that causes selfishness to evolve and flourish within human cultures. It also results in opposites like optimism and pessimism etc.
HERITABLE INFLUENCES CARRIED FORWARD FROM PAST GENERATIONS
Unknowingly, our forebears set out the false psychological pathways that we inherited from their fundamental mistakes in conditioning the mind/brain according to the individual or fragmented modalities of consciousness. It’s their intellectual world that we’re living in because they thought up all this stuff and then we are acting out the consequences. How can we take control of the reality creating machinery and then direct it in a way we want to go. No culture on earth has ever done this or even conceived of the idea. Therefore our present human fallibility, based on the momentum of past errors, is probably likely to continue unless a naturally occurring radical transformation takes place. Suffice to say that traditional, conservative leaning society will do everything in its powers to resist a transformation of this enormity. Furthermore, it has to be an holistic change without effort, not radical in the sense of terrorist inspired bomb throwing and warring.
Education and religions are founded on personal connections and hierarchical structure as the ways and means to attain success in virtually all aspects of society. Many people are completely taken over by the popular notion that: “knowledge is power” and therefore use that slogan as the basic drive for success in their social endeavours and chosen careers. Another slogan that involves psychological growth and development over time is Bronowski’s “Assent of man through knowledge”. Obviously, these theories operate in gradual ways of progress or evolution looking forward to a particular or collective future that is better in some or other aspects than now. Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory of human development is a classical example of hierarchical thinking based on a range of academic research findings of highly regarded developmental scientific experts. It’s all about ideas that circulate around unannounced egoistic images that undergoes a journey of inward and outward development from alpha to omega and supposedly beyond to spiritual dimensions, like ‘kundalini’ or ‘enlightenment’. Gullible people are easily enticed into believing that an individual can experience spiritual heights, foolishly.
Taking a close observation of the concepts and principles that underpins the programming of conditioning, it means that we are reacting all the time with all these images, constantly, in terms of like and dislike, and adding to them; that we are always doing this? It is called progressive action, I like, therefore I must hold onto or I don’t like, therefore I must get rid of it. That is my central observer, always separate from the thing he observes and he is always doing something about it.
The central observer is past thought and thought is predominantly sensation. Thought is also reaction, and reaction is always, in one way or another, the source of enmity. Thought is opposition, hate; thought is always in competition, always seeking an end, success; its fulfilment is pleasure and its frustration is hate. Conflict is thought caught in the opposites. Opposites can never produce a synthesis. An integration can take place only when there is no opposition; but ideas always breed opposition, the conflict of the opposites. Under no circumstances can conflict bring about a synthesis.
Now, when the observer realises the fact that he is the observed – the images – then psychological conflict ceases. That is, when I realise I am fear – not, that there is fear and me seperate from that fear – then I am that fear, I can’t do anything. So I don’t rebel against it or accept it or run away from it – it is there. Now what has happened? All simulated action, which is the outcome of the reaction of like and dislike, has come to an end. There’s only awareness – there is neither the observer nor the observed in the mode of a ‘spectator’ who thinks it’s a participator. The mind is becoming intensely aware; from that intensity there comes a different quality of attention, extraordinarily sensitive and highly intelligent. When awareness of a psychological paradox is suspended without either a questioner or an answerer, a phenomenal event that dissolves meaning attached to the thought/thing occurs, naturally. Test it for yourself.
THE MIND’S CAPACITY
There is general agreement that an enormous untapped capacity resides within the brain that is currently unknown. Little attention if any is given to enquiring into the image-making process that lies undetected in the fundamental hidden world of human consciousness. This may hold clues to why certain people act and react to emotional or social stimulation differently to others. The formation of ideas and ideals can vary between people and much of the more unusual characteristics may form secret niches in the internal mental confines. Therefore, I can never fully know what another is thinking, and vice-versa no one else can fully know what I am thinking unless I am willing to make it known.
RESEARCH INTO CAUSES AND CURES
Dr Bohm’s discoveries about the fact that thought processes actually move us rather than us using thought is largely overlooked or not given weight by professionals. He explained it in the example of: Master and Servant, in which the master is assumed to be guiding the servant. However, psychologically the servant (thought) is controlling the master (thinker). Ultimately, there’s no thinker, only thought.
Interestingly, cognitive science undertaken by Donald Hoffman, Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, Irvine into perception has shown that perceptions are tuned to what he called ‘fitness payoffs’ as the outcome of evolution and therefore not necessarily seeing reality in terms of actual existence. This research puts evolutionary game theory into the picture of consciousness fairly and squarely. The notion of fitness payoffs is a novel argument for explaining how adolescents, in particular, go about trying to get ahead in the competitive world that is governed by the contradictions of psychological images. Whether the psyche is imitating good or bad habits is irrelevant, but the fact is that the conditioning per se leads to the formation of psychological habits due to the underlying fragmented thought processes and the desires that drive competitive outcomes.
Clear observation reveals that most forms of persistent mental distress are intrinsically connected to problematic habits. However, when you fight a habit, you give life to it, and the fighting becomes another habit. If you are simply aware of the whole structure of habit, without resistance, there is freedom from habit, and in that freedom a new thing takes place.
WHAT KEEPS MENTAL DISTURBANCES FROM ENDING
From the discussions of K and B into continuity of thoughts as activity that repeats over and over as remembered impulses or urges from the past, registered in memory as abstract images coupled with emotional scars, it may become clearer, by observation, that the centre created by thought (ego) is the mischief maker that organises this repetitive recollection of past mental wounds which plague the conscious mind in a game of justified indignation. The resulting conflict gets caught by the illusion of psychological time in the forlorn hope of becoming free of these mental afflictions.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”……Albert Einstein
To the conscious mind it all appears realistic and much energy and effort are expended on the exercise of will which doesn’t bring the matter to an ending because the fragmented thinking processes move away from ‘what is’ to ‘what should be’ automatically as a reflex. In trying to be helpful, thought searches for a solution and brings in the time element to achieve the proposed solution that never occurs. What’s not apparent is that the past that supposedly gave rise to the distress is over ‘dead’ and it is inattention that’s responsible for resurrecting the past unfinished feelings by the selective memory.
It is only when the thought processes are investigated deeply, particularly into the separation of the observer from the observed, that the nature of the self or centre is revealed as the dualistic mechanism influencing consciousness. As K reminds us, the complete seeing is the instant ending, no remedial action is necessary. Any movement in thought at this point to fix the problem must take the issue back to the becoming process which is endless. Unfortunately, as K remarked the experts wouldn’t consider any of this ending to distressing thoughts by natural occurrence as feasible because it is not something taught in university studies. It cannot be systemised or categorised as it happens, not through change or modification of accumulated knowledge, but by negation of the psychological structure that thought has built around its centre (me) so as to sustain it through time. This is the survival mechanism of the psyche that resorts to enormous efforts to ward off the action of insight.
THE KEY TO ERASING IMAGES
I have been experimenting with K’s statement that the most intelligent action is ‘complete inaction’. The significance of this suggestion is not obvious because if you take the meaning of the words into account, the thinking mind forms an idea or image from the language and deliberately wants to foresee the benefit derived from it’s solution or has some trepidation around what will happen, I might regret it. Therefore a subtle form of effort/resistance is introduced and time enters the thought process. The movement from the past to the future prevents instantly seeing the fact that the usual slavery to words fouls up the perception actually present at that very instant when coherent action is necessary. Non-verbal perception is definitely different from seeing through the screen of images including the general meaning of descriptions. Why do we base our actions around words? Thought is the author of the storyline and consciousness works on implementation of chosen actions, always from past knowledge and experience therefore there is no space for anything new to be considered.
This was perplexing, what’s K mean by complete inaction? I stayed on this question listening and looking into several texts and recordings of K for more clues. If thought, reason, knowledge, experience and discipline according to the authority of another or oneself cannot bring about fundamental radical transformation of the psyche, then what will bring about necessary changes?
Impersonal persistent enquiring may reveal insights into the fact about everything that prevents naturally occurring transformations, negates the prevailing psychological impediment thereby opening up the clarity of intelligence that is called ‘complete inaction’. So total inaction is action of the whole mind and because it’s ‘compassionate’ nature is the greater religious force it absorbs the lesser, being partial actions instigated by conditioned thinking processes operating as psychological images which have no religious relevance. Mindfulness practitioners, in my opinion, are operating completely in the dark about holistic awareness.
DISSOLVING MIND IMAGES COMPLETELY
Just prior to writing this blog, I was listening to an audio replay on YouTube of K in dialogue No 2 with Jacob Needleman at Malibu 1971 when they were discussing images and their impact on consciousness. The discussion became focused on questions about space within the boundaries of thought and space beyond the boundaries meaning space with no centre created by thought. It went on, K raising the question whether the mind was capable of emptying all of its content so that it’s space was unoccupied. K said that he did not know how, but it was something that must be solved otherwise one is left in a mental prison. This question was put forward in the context of a holistic demand, nothing personal. Then he went on to make the extraordinary statement: “if you don’t make an image, now, the other images from the past have no place”. So, the mind can empty itself of images by not forming an image now. If I form an image now, then it is related to the past images. So consciousness, the mind, can empty itself of ALL the images by not forming an image now. So there is space, not space round the centre. This simple statement has tremendous consequences for the psychological freedom of everybody, not just personal freedom. There’s growing evidence emerging that nature is self-similar over scale.
This statement also substantiates other statements by K that seeing the fact that psychological images held by oneself and another are accumulating as residue of feelings of fears, sorrow, hurts and wounds, eliminates the images at the moment of seeing the relevant fact. The catch is that the actual seeing involves the art of learning which integrates the whole range of senses and nerves totally and therefore seeing the fullness of it is coherent. The insight that acts instantly is aligned with the unknown, not the known. But, it’s uncommon for us to be so holistically aware. The emptying of consciousness of all its content is to have unfettered movement in perception and action. But, it is not linear time meaning: perception, then thought followed by action. The quality of full perception is inaction which is action of a different quality altogether, based upon observation of ‘needs’ in lieu of ‘wants’.
Traditional conditioning limits the act of seeing to merely a series of fragmented symbols and word-generated ideas moving from the known through the prism of passing time that goes on and on monotonously without having fundamental cohesion. So, living psychologically in the stream of ideas continuously is the breeding ground for non-facts (illusion) to survive.
PARADIGMS OF ACTION
Consider how we live our lives, we generally don’t deduce our lives, we live them and new possibilities come up and we go and do them and it creates adjacent new possibilities. In other words, the potential for ceaseless sensitivity without deliberately making psychological efforts. Sensing the simplicity of psychological freedom is a naturally occurring phenomenon involving innocence and humility.
The psyche, on the other hand, has built within its illusory self-created world, solid defensive egoistic barriers to resist the integrity of humility, it wants to accrue self benefits from its thoughtful approach. The general disposition of the psyche at any moment is not as open as one may think. Elsewhere in this essay there are some explanations as to why habitual thoughts actively retain old impressions of previously known actions and reactions.
So, what is providing the force driving all these actions? It looks suspiciously like traditional conditioning is the ground from which the past knowledge and experiences dictate the patterning that exercises control and choice in our daily living reality. If that is so, then the motive and direction for what to do in any given situation is pre-determined by memory. It’s already set by the system of time/thought deducing what to do based on ideas or ideals, therefore there’s nothing new, only old patterns repeating themselves.
Alternatively, there is the possibility of action or non-action that emerges from directly observing the whole situation anew, which can only happen when the above fixed patterns are seen to be too inflexible to rely upon solely, because of the inherent contradiction in oppositional thinking processes. In this sense, the affects of inappropriate conditioning are seen to be irrelevant, self evidently and consequently its boundaries fall away. This falling away occurs naturally as a consequence of the persevered spirit of enquiring.
What happens may instantly offer up potential for low levels of randomness in the general disposition of the psychosomatic spectrum that affords open space for creativeness to emerge, unawares. In this scenario, the observance of ‘what is’, which is incomplete in and of itself, acts in simple ways that are unfolding into non-conditional heartfelt implications, diachronically — a state of freedom enabling the whole organism to function basically according to biogenesis, without secondary changes, psychologically induced by thought.
MEMORY FIELD
Learning about what the connection between personal consciousness and its relationship with collective memory reveals about thoughts (images), psychologically was integral to Krishnamurti’s insight into consciousness. It opened up the notion that he stated as “you are the world and the world is you” meaning that consciousness is whole, not divided into fragments: your consciousness separated from my consciousness. This is counter intuitive to the traditional mainstream conditioned approach to understanding consciousness.
The only thing that really matters is that there be an action of goodness, love and intelligence in living. Is goodness individual or collective, is love personal or impersonal, is intelligence yours mine or somebody else’s? If it is assumed to be acting personally as yours or mine, it is not intelligence, or love, or goodness. Goodness is not in the backyard of the individual, nor in the open field of the collective; goodness flowers only in freedom from both. When there is this goodness, love and intelligence, then action is not in terms of the individual or the collective.
If love, goodness and intelligence can act in daily living, then the question of the collective and the individual is quasi-academic and therefore irrelevant, because academics can only analyse fixed notions, not living movements sometimes described as being in constant flux. All existence is in relationship. So the first thing is to become aware of one’s relationship to everything and everybody, and to see how in this relationship the “me” is born and acts. This “me” that is both the collective and the individual; it is the “me” that separates; the “me” that acts collectively or individually, the “me” that creates heaven and hell. To be aware of this is to understand it. And the understanding of it is the ending of it. The ending of it is goodness, intelligence and love. Now the way conditioning conceived ‘me’ as a product of matter, everything ‘me’ constructs by thought is dualistic in its derivative polarisation and therefore limited in the way it performs actions. So that’s why ‘me’ lives always in conflict, contradiction and confusion. The consequences of psychological polarity remain present in mind, the effects may be modified or refined by thinking about it, but the self centred experience is not able to be eliminated by fragmented thought movement.
THE PROBLEM OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONFLICT
The traditional way of dealing with conflict never solves it, but only adds more conflict: being violent, which is conflict, trying to become non-violent adds to the conflict. All social morality and all religious dictions are that. From the beginning of time man has tried to deal with all his problems, either by going beyond them, resolving them, overcoming them or escaping from them. Do not think you can push all that programming aside lightly, with a verbal pronouncement. It makes up the very structure of everybody’s mind and it is certainly the reactive element. Can the mind now, understanding all this non-verbally, actually free itself from the Book of Oneself which is also the Book of Mankind. To perceive with a heart and mind that are completely cleansed of the past is critical.
Negation is the most positive action. Negation is synonymous with mutation and therefore it calls for radical action. Radical in the holistic dimension that Krishnamurti refers to is insight which doesn’t require effort in order for observation, it is impersonal or choice less by nature. We begin by realising that we must investigate into ourselves, and ourselves is the known, so empty the known. From that emptiness all the rest of it flows naturally. This is real meditation. If you start investigating with knowing it ends up in doubt. Whereas, if you start with not knowing it ends up with certainty. Perception of the whole, psychologically, is via insight that is unfamiliar to the ways of the conditioned mind that struggles forever with fragmented concepts and principles that seeks solutions from feeling discontented due to the limitations of the known.
Insight into images in Krishnamurti’s terms is like the proposal of Rupert Sheldrake whose hypothesis of morphic resonance is founded on a unifying principle: all self-organising systems draw upon a collective memory from similar systems of their kind. The morphic field may be synonymous with “the world” proposed by Krishnamurti. There are numerous ancient cultural teachings/beliefs that imply connectedness, one that comes from Taiwan is called ‘Vecik’ that links all tangible things with each other. Of course, the spiritual teachings of the Indian and Tibetan societies are similarly well known. Therefore it makes possible the proposal of Krishnamurtis’ that by denying self images totally, the collective images are similarly denied. If this happens, it removes the pervasive psychological placement of images right across the board.
Consciousnesses being instantly rendered “spacious” is psychologically equivalent to the quantum vacuum field also called zero-point field. Can the free (undivided) mind be acausal, non-local and coherent? In Quantum Theory, Bohm stated the quantum of energy between objects is indivisible. That’s consistent with Krishnamurti’s statement of the fact about the observer being indivisible from the observed.
WHAT’S AT STAKE HERE?
The discovery of whether human beings are capable of ending images and questions about what happens when and if in fact it actually occurs is obviously a subject requiring careful consideration. It is a very complex matter with many aspects emerging during the course of any such enquiry. Krishnamurti in dialogues with Alain Naude held in Malibu 1972 (available on YouTube), explored this subject extensively following all the twists and turns that inevitably arose during these dialogues. Krishnamurti and Bohm also investigated the issues extensively and their dialogues are recorded in the published books “The Ending of Time” and “Truth and Actuality”. It is not intended in this text to attempt to provide a precise extract of the vast workings that went into those discussions, except to state that it covers the core of what is the premise of putting this proposal into written form.
Note of caution here – the holistic state of mind has no identifiable characteristics, it comes into effect from itself as order in lieu of disorder. Being whole it is not put together from particular bits like a jigsaw game, so it’s not a set of ideas to be added onto the fragmented parts in some amalgamation sense, it replaces the old parts of ego’s content completely, not piecemeal. That’s scary and exciting isn’t it?
The obvious next question is who or what decides as to what goes and what remains? It comes down to impersonal action by holistic intelligence: whatever is factual stays imbedded as truth, whereas what is non-factual (false) is dissolved. It has nothing to do with the man-made mind and no mark is made on memory. When the self is not, insight affects the collective mind to purge it’s incoherent content as a natural occurrence. Can you envisage living without the favoured romantic notions, sentimental values, superstitions, tribalism, psychological, political and religious authority and so on? Whoa, now this is serious stuff, just like K often pointed out, no one can take your hand and lead you to it, a brave leap is required into the unknown, otherwise you remain entrenched in the limited field of the known, psychologically.
WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH MENTAL PROBLEMS ?
From my observation of the crisis that affects my family’s daily living activity, I have held dialogue with myself over a lengthy period out of which there’s several things about the traditional approaches by professionals that are unconvincing to me from the standpoint of what is available to be learned from an holistic approach to awareness of psychological states of mind. Conclusions adopted from biological standpoints contains ignorance along with knowledge, there is no complete knowledge of anything.
As a layperson, I make no claim to understanding how the brain works in so far as biological processes are concerned. On the other hand, after looking into consciousness, I have some clarification as to the calamitous affect due to the conflict present in the fragmented nature of images in movement from the past, modified in the present and projecting to the unknown future. Thanks to K and B for their meticulous care in discovering the nature of thinking as we know it and it’s obvious limitations.
Repetitive movement is an observable phenomenon endemic to the illusionary world of psychological images due to the corridor of opposites or binary concepts underlying the attempts to control thinking by the ego. The question of what constitutes a fundamental change to the accepted security aspects of thinking is most important to understand. Is this something different merely an opposite, or does it belong to a different order altogether? If it is merely an opposite then it is not different at all, because all opposites are mutually dependent, like hot and cold, high and low. The opposite is contained within, and determined by, its opposite. It exists only in comparison and things that are comparative have different measures of the same quality, and therefore they are similar. So change to an opposite is no change at all. It’s just a wastage of energy.
The other interesting thing to note when considering the consequences of conclusions and determination reached through psychological analysis is the fixed and closed effect of such action. The meaning of the word ‘determined’ is nothing but the terms of the matters so determined are possible, thus excluding any further considerations whatsoever. Such decision making is made concrete and unalterable by the decision-making processes learned from other sources and adopted by the analyser. Without the analyser taking on second hand knowledge gleaned from colleagues, it would not be possible to make a conclusive decision about the natural human psychological movement of living because thinking is a common fundamental part of everyone, so whatever is determined for any one particular person is not separate from others, holistically.
SUMMATION OF THE PROPOSAL
I could be wrong, but I feel that the thought processes emanating from the image-making machinations of so-called individual consciousness make sense as the primary sources of actions and reactions in the psychosomatic system. Can it be possible that biological nuances in the brain regions are the instruments of simulated consciousness, not the other way round? Donald Hoffman, researcher into neural cognition states that “the reason we can’t figure out how brain activity causes conscious experience is because it doesn’t”. He bases his research on the premise that consciousness is fundamental, that’s akin to Krishnamurti’s contention that every human crisis is a crisis in consciousness. David Bohm also stated that “There is no thinker producing thoughts”.
New research by Hoffman is looking at neural correlates of consciousness and finding that there is a whole field of predictive coding operating from top down pathways in the brain. We’re constantly making these models, predicting what we should see and we’re just checking this against the data coming into focus from stimulus via the five senses. Signalling is thus taking place outwardly and inwardly. If the actual outcome is otherwise to what is predicted, then the brain’s predictive system gets either a bit or a lot confused. At this point, the psyche has to choose between sticking steadfastly to the dogma of it’s predicted model which comes from the past memory or refining it due to the phenomenal nature of incoming new data. Old data, because it is known to memory, obviously gets preference over new data. Herein is a possibility for self deception or delusions to occur. Images (egos) are obviously playing a major role regarding the fact or non-factual choices that must occur whenever the psyche is thus challenged by its surrounding psychological and physical environment. The unseen secret agenda of the ego is actively influencing the conclusions reached.
For it’s part, the brain’s role is only to assist the organism as a whole to survive physiologically and biologically. The psychological survival is the realm of mind. Fragmentation, being cause and effect movement, leads to contradiction, conflict and confusion. Thought broken down into bits means that the bits attempting to coincide non-separately are restricted into point to point correspondence of choices which is clearly incoherent.
It is a startling consequence of the origin of nihilism in the forgetful vanishing of the whole mind into mere nothing by fragmentation, that all efforts at integration and synthesis are inherently nihilistic. This must be so, since the attempt to build the whole from the side of seperate things reinforces the forgetful vanishing of the whole. But, it is in just this way that the counterfeit wholes of science, technology, and indeed the whole of contemporary culture, are produced.
WHERE DOES THE DIAGNOSED PERSON FIT INTO THE PICTURE
Obviously, the person diagnosed with schizophrenia or other mental disorders is central to the question of whether any change in circumstances is possible under the proposal made in this submission. This is the big issue and it’s the area where no one knows the answer. Experience tells me that the patterns of thinking and the thinkers’ behaviour are largely concreted into the brain memory having a long history of repeated actions and reactions. Also factor in an equally long period of taking prescribed medications as medical treatment for the ‘disease’ pathology according to the psychiatric guidelines and side effects thereof. The side effects are not just simple irritations, they carry quite devastating reactions that are noticeable physically in addition to severe mental distress. So that’s clearly a professionally induced alteration to the brain’s biological chemistry that causes harm to the recipients.
Perhaps, there’s little prospect of any meaningful change. The other avenue that may have some bearing on the situation gets back to what K mentioned about relationships as being the most important aspect of human interaction. He also gave pointers on the force gathered from negation of false psychological patterns and habits. In this regard, love and compassion are necessary and the effects thereof are not common knowledge to our current dimension of consciousness. But, he indicated that intelligence, love and compassion are one and the same movement coming out of silence and returning to silence with no continuity.
It is relatively easy to work out that we spend most of our time, psychologically, in a world of ‘noise’, inwardly and outwardly. Thought is noise. Noise ends, but silence is penetrating and without end. One can shut oneself off from noise, but there is no enclosure against silence; no wall can shut it out, there is no resistance against it. Noise shuts all things out, it is excluding and isolating; silence includes all things within itself.
The radical action or inaction of total insight is a combination of negation, mutation and creation, simultaneously. The action of a fact contains no separate ‘me’ image, so there is no registration imprinted in memory. Alternatively, psychological actions which approximate ideas or ideals are abstractions attempting to imitate facts and so they are inevitably limitations and leave a residue in memory which the self centred entity feeds off.
In order for a new free consciousness to emerge, the reliance on traditional forms of psychological redress have to be set aside totally thus enabling the enormous burden of obsolete knowledge to be released through insight. Only then can the crisis in consciousness that was mentioned above be averted and living may proceed without fear and suffering.
Regrettably, you cannot approach the person directly with a spoken panacea such as “don’t make an image now so that all previous images no longer have a place”. That’s what is actually necessary, but it will not work from the perspective of a deliberate attempt to introduce fundamental change via a positive instruction from another person, even if the person delivering the message is someone held in high regard. The strange part about it is that to approach it with a proposition that something about the person is wrong, it will be rejected (veto) right away, subconsciously. Test it by asking seriously: what to you is truth? The answer will most likely be: “I am truth – what are you talking about!” That’s why talking remedies have limited sustained effect. What will possibly assist is if the person themselves desist in revisiting the stuff troubling them continually by quieting the activity of the ego through self knowledge. The simple fact of trial and error should not be dismissed outright, but the impetus must start afresh from self reflection, not trying someone else’s formula which is second handed thinking. One is required to be a light unto oneself, not a light lit by another.
Bohm once mentioned this constant thinking we all engage is literally a form of injury to the brain. The antidote appearing to be the ‘inaction’ that is referenced from Krishnamurti. When the noisy mind falls quiet naturally, the ensuing silence may move according to it’s own force to throw off it’s long carried burdens. Psychological burden cannot be changed fundamentally because the brain’s networks are programmed as a result of evolution which is the long process of time. Seeing the limitations and contradictions of time bound conditioning with complete attention breaks through the time barriers encoded in the brain cells resulting in a fresh homeostasis of brain cells attuned non-conditionally to operate without psychological divisions. Picking up on the affects of conditioning is meditation and insight into the whole living energies that are aligned with holistic consciousness, not through the traditional methodology that attributes everything to biological causes and effects.
GENERAL IMPLICATIONS AND INFERENCES
Curiously, it seems rather odd that on occasions that the categories of mental illness and disorders are explained in informational videos on YouTube that describes the various symptoms of individual diagnostic combinations. The comments made in response by viewers quite often include feedback in words like: “I have most of those symptoms” and then some well meaning comments from others suggesting that the person should consult a doctor about it. This is only anecdotal evidence of a common tendency of a broadening perspective regarding the incidence of mental distress occurring across the length and breadth of the general public’s consciousness. However, it’s indicative of a range of neurotic symptomatic conditions spread throughout the community, not just confined to the individuals who have been singled out by psychiatrists or psychologists using the guidelines of the DSM manual. The wider uptake of people admitting to being similarly affected by stressors or peculiar behaviours doesn’t seem to gel with the subdivisions adopted by professionals in the psychobiological methodology. On the other hand, it’s fairly easy to equate it with the predicated mind modelling of neuroscientists like Anil Seth and Donald Hoffman.
Is the mental phenomena something that needs to be looked at according to the fragmented structure of biology or can it be seen holistically as a total affair?
DISCIPLINE AND ORDER
Order is a necessary component for awareness that is synonymous with impersonal insight and an understanding of psychological discipline is essential learning. In the ordinary meaning of discipline as enacted by the military and educational instruction, compliance with the directive of an authority is called upon and order is seen to be achievable as the result of reward and punishment principles. The effects of enforced discipline are time bound and require repetition to be effective. Of course, repetition is the hallmark of a willing finite system. Will in this sense is synonymous with personal efforts to conform with an idea or ideal in order to reach a known psychological goal. Are known psychological goals illusory or actual?
Krishnamurti points to a different perspective for insight without effort — the ending of psychological disorder is the beginning of an order that has its own natural discipline, holistically and therefore the insight of that order is indelible.
FURTHER COMMENTS FOR CONSIDERATION
It may help to understand consciousness in this regard: fragmented thinking processes are activated from a motive or cause and therefore are always limited. Those limited thoughts are collated into mental silos with protective boundaries. Non-fragmented action has no cause, motive or direction and therefore it is choice-less, unlimited and the fact of it is total action. The fragmented and the non-fragmented cannot coexist, if one is the other is not. The fragmented action can only be partial and therefore requires a time element in order to move from ‘what is’ to ‘what should be’ gradually according to the agenda pre-determined by thought. The common description of this attempt to change is known as “trying” or “hoping”.
As psychological time is non existent, this attempted action is not successful in bringing about a fundamental change in brain activity. In the state of consciousness which underpins the collective mindset of society, consisting of traditional conditioning right through, thinking takes on the trying process automatically and is caught in the continuity of becoming, but never arriving. We might recognise that this thwarting effect results in frustration, despair, hope, annoyance, anxiety, depression and so on. Unrequited desire rests uneasily in the deepest part of the inner mind and it is not something made inactive over time. It’s the source of cogitation where aggression, paybacks, envy, jealousy, hatred; all the negative emotions and wounded pride fester and eventually invade the conscious mind causing severe distress and disruption of the psyche. So that’s what the separatist ‘me’ image gets caught up in and consequently searches through the accumulation of memory for someway to relieve the psychological burden of pain. And it can’t or won’t simply let go of it completely.
There is a law that applies to thinking that is uncommon knowledge: “That to which we give attention grows“. Meaning that if attention is given to illusory, irrational or disordered notions that disorder grows and strengthens through the very process of attention. So, by positing a symptom of behaviour as disorder and naming it by the process of analysis, any further attention (verbal or otherwise) towards substantiating that diagnosis over time must strengthen the perception of disorder, particularly emotionally. That’s what the psychiatric professionals and their patients both subsequently contribute to, and therefore the so-called particular disorder can never end. That’s the tragedy of psychiatry, inadvertently, inflicting increasing emotional harm to the patients every time they attend to the diagnosed disorder. Consequentially, that prevents any possibility of healing. Therapeutic intervention is reifying the condemnatory affect of words applicable to labelling of particular mental health diagnoses.
MEDITATION
Human beings are capable of learning the facts about wasting energy due to the fragmented thinking processes by understanding awareness through exploration of concentration, inattention and attention. It is necessary to see the futility of persisting with fragmentation and seriously consider ending it completely with non-personal insight. Krishnamurti and Bohm’s dialogues address the question of fragmented versus non-fragmented consciousness. To look into these questions thoroughly is meditation in its true quality, not the phoney practices brought into western countries from the east which are very fashionable in today’s culture. This is not my personal opinion, it’s the gist of what K said about the questions of meditation and the desired links to so called spiritual ‘enlightenment’.
Can a mechanical mind see something non-mechanical, something extraordinarily alive, something constantly in movement? See the truth of the fact that any system, whether in the scientific or technological world, or in the world of meditation, must make the mind dull, must make the mind so insensitive.
So meditation is insight and insight is meditation happening in daily life, it’s not that you meditate to achieve insight (enlightenment) as systems like transcendental meditation would have you believe. TM makes the fundamental error of setting out to change ‘what is’ into ‘what should be’ which is essentially the same movement as images – ‘me’ and ‘not me’, therefore psychological time and incurring expenses to pay for tuition.
Meditation is the flowering of goodness, it is not the cultivation of goodness. Meditation is not put together by the mind; it’s the total silence of the mind in which the centre of experience, of knowledge is not. The meditator can never know the goodness of meditation, it must come unbidden.
REASONS FOR POSTING THE PROPOSAL ON MY WEBSITE
This is perhaps a matter where dialogue in the manner that Krishnamurti and Bohm conducted most of their meetings would be most appropriate. The implications of ending images are far reaching for anyone serious about looking deeply into the difference between individual consciousness as man-made fragmented thinking (conditioned) and holistic consciousness encompassing all humanity. I feel that my essay needs to be aired in public space enabling others to give opinions as to what I have proposed or tear it to bits. I have previously posted two short blogs which also raised issues of a similar context which may be read in conjunction with this proposal although they represent earlier thinking of the subject matters.
I expect that this new material is likely to be ridiculed or severely criticised in many circles for it draws on things that are not widely regarded by mainstream intellectuals. However, it is my view that it’s consistent in principle or implied in the talks held by K, B and others engaged in dialogue or discussions over the course of the years that human consciousness was under their serious consideration.
THERAPEUTIC CONSIDERATIONS
As far as I am aware, neither Krishnamurti nor Bohm addressed the specifics of serious mental breakdown or dissociation directly as a topic for their dialogues. Neither of them were credentialed as medical professionals or involved with therapeutic pursuits, therefore they had no logical reason to delve into psychopathology. However, Krishnamurti, Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake and a psychiatrist (John Hidley) met together at Ojai 1982 for a series of four discussions about psychological disorder/distress — titled: 1 Roots of psychological disorder 2 Psychological suffering 3 The need for security 4 What is a healthy mind? Mainly, Krishnamurti pointed to the nature of self centred activity as the generalised beginning of all aspects of psychological disorder as his opening position and this set the tone of discussion that ensued. As evident in the distinction between fragmented and non-fragmented thinking espoused by Krishnamurti, there were grounds for understanding holistic principles in lieu of particularised consciousness. The talks are included in the YouTube video library on Krishnamurti’s published media.
Krishnamurti also met with a formidable group of professionals arranged by Dr David Shainberg in New York at which Krishnamurti addressed the possibility of the mind living in psychological freedom. The meetings raised numerous questions regarding the fields of psychotherapy, psychology and psychiatry. These discussions were robust and not restricted to a set agenda, so any aspects of diverse knowledge were subjects open to discursive exchanges. Dr Shainberg wrote a summary of the proceedings and it is included in the archives at the Krishnamurti Foundation Headquarters. It is fair to comment that the participants were surprised by Krishnamurti’s approach to psychological problems from an existential perspective that was clearly foreign to the understanding of the professionals on dealing with psychological diagnoses and therapies.
Krishnamurti and Bohm addressed the Salutogenesis perspective of mental health rather than delving deeply into the Pathogenesis perspective of mental illness and disorders that the mental illness institutions perpetuate.
REVIEW CONSIDERATIONS
So it’s now over to the people wherever they may be who value the nature of true dialogue to take the time to look at what’s presented here with all the best information available on holistic and non-holistic aspects of consciousness. It may be obvious that I gleaned much of the premise for this proposal from the extensive background left as a valuable legacy to human beings from Jiddu Krishnamurti and Professor David Bohm who together and individually shone an enormous light on consciousness.
FINAL NOTE
To revisit some of the wonderful insights of Krishnamurti, I recommend viewing “50 quotes from Jiddu Krishnamurti” on YouTube.
FAIR USE NOTICE:
This essay may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for non-profit educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as per the provisions of the relevant US Copyright Laws.
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Proud of you Graham.
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Thanks for that Graham. This is what the organisation SANE Australia present as causes of mental illness:
Researchers are still trying to understand what causes mental illness. There is no one cause — it can happen due to a mix of factors including genetics, how your brain works, how you grew up, your environment, your social group, your culture and life experience.
Some examples of these factors include:
Genetic factors: having a close family member with a mental illness can increase the risk. However, just because one family member has a mental illness doesn’t mean that others will. Drug and alcohol abuse: illicit drug use can trigger a manic episode (bipolar disorder)or an episode of psychosis. Drugs such as cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines can cause paranoia. Other biological factors: some medical conditions or hormonal changes. Early life environment: negative childhood experiences such as abuse or neglect can increase the risk of some mental illnesses. Trauma and stress: in adulthood, traumatic life events or ongoing stress such as social isolation, domestic violence, relationship breakdown, financial or work problems can increase the risk of mental illness. Traumatic experiences such as living in a war zone can increase the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Personality factors: some traits such as perfectionism or low self-esteem can increase the risk of depression or anxiety.
While the Mayo Clinic presents this:
Causes
Mental illnesses, in general, are thought to be caused by a variety of genetic and environmental factors:
Inherited traits. Mental illness is more common in people whose blood relatives also have a mental illness. Certain genes may increase your risk of developing a mental illness, and your life situation may trigger it. Environmental exposures before birth. Exposure to environmental stressors, inflammatory conditions, toxins, alcohol or drugs while in the womb can sometimes be linked to mental illness. Brain chemistry. Neurotransmitters are naturally occurring brain chemicals that carry signals to other parts of your brain and body. When the neural networks involving these chemicals are impaired, the function of nerve receptors and nerve systems change, leading to depression and other emotional disorders. Risk factors
Certain factors may increase your risk of developing a mental illness, including:
A history of mental illness in a blood relative, such as a parent or sibling Stressful life situations, such as financial problems, a loved one’s death or a divorce An ongoing (chronic) medical condition, such as diabetes Brain damage as a result of a serious injury (traumatic brain injury), such as a violent blow to the head Traumatic experiences, such as military combat or assault Use of alcohol or recreational drugs A childhood history of abuse or neglect Few friends or few healthy relationships A previous mental illness Mental illness is common. About 1 in 5 adults has a mental illness in any given year. Mental illness can begin at any age, from childhood through later adult years, but most cases begin earlier in life.
The effects of mental illness can be temporary or long lasting. You also can have more than one mental health disorder at the same time. For example, you may have depression and a substance use disorder.
Complications
Mental illness is a leading cause of disability. Untreated mental illness can cause severe emotional, behavioral and physical health problems. Complications sometimes linked to mental illness include:
Unhappiness and decreased enjoyment of life Family conflicts Relationship difficulties Social isolation Problems with tobacco, alcohol and other drugs Missed work or school, or other problems related to work or school Legal and financial problems Poverty and homelessness Self-harm and harm to others, including suicide or homicide Weakened immune system, so your body has a hard time resisting infections Heart disease and other medical conditions Prevention
There’s no sure way to prevent mental illness. However, if you have a mental illness, taking steps to control stress, to increase your resilience and to boost low self-esteem may help keep your symptoms under control. Follow these steps:
Pay attention to warning signs. Work with your doctor or therapist to learn what might trigger your symptoms. Make a plan so that you know what to do if symptoms return. Contact your doctor or therapist if you notice any changes in symptoms or how you feel. Consider involving family members or friends to watch for warning signs. Get routine medical care. Don’t neglect checkups or skip visits to your primary care provider, especially if you aren’t feeling well. You may have a new health problem that needs to be treated, or you may be experiencing side effects of medication. Get help when you need it. Mental health conditions can be harder to treat if you wait until symptoms get bad. Long-term maintenance treatment also may help prevent a relapse of symptoms. Take good care of yourself. Sufficient sleep, healthy eating and regular physical activity are important. Try to maintain a regular schedule. Talk to your primary care provider if you have trouble sleeping or if you have questions about diet and physical activity. By Mayo Clinic Staff
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Hi Andrew
Thanks for responding to my latest blog outlining my observations about mental disturbances. The information from SANE Australia and the Mayo Clinic contains a wider range of useful information about the many ways mental illness is manifested than the ‘pathology in biology’ references in my blog. Looking back to the early days of meeting other people who engaged in ‘caring and sharing’ sessions run by ARAFMI in Brisbane I recall how desperate the families of newly diagnosed patients were for something to make sense of their predicament. The pamphlets prepared by pharmaceutical companies that provided general information about the subject matters were keenly sought as it added to the verbal discussions at those meetings.
When I first came into contact with the mental health system it was a most disconcerting experience and I was hungry for any way to get back to what we would call normality. I recall that most people who were in similar situations felt much the same way.
Reading the content of the SANE and Mayo Clinic material has shown me how detached I have been from the experience of others who share the difficult journey with me.
Stay healthy, mate.
Graham
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And Graham of course I don’t seek to rain on your parade and of course this is real in my life, thought you’d endorse it too:
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