Hi Andre [Willblake2 quoted] --
My computer suffered a breakdown the last couple of days but seems to have
recovered, so I'm just catching up with about 50 posts. Among them was your
exchange with Willblake, It caught my attention because it describes two
aspects of awareness in a way that we rarely see in this forum. You started
by quoting Krishnamurti. ...
[Andre]:
The 'self' is a product of thought, intellectualising being a process
of dividing. 'The content of our consciousness is the common
ground of all humanity...A human being living in any part of the
world suffers, not only physically but also inwardly. He is uncertain,
fearful, confused, anxious, without any sense of deep security.
So our consciousness is common to all mankind...and therefore
we are not individuals. Please do consider this.
We have been trained, educated, religiously as well as scholastically,
to think that we are individuals, separate souls, striving for ourselves,
but this is an illusion....We are not separate entities with separate
psychological content, struggling for reasults; we are, each one of us,
actually the rest of humankind". (from J. Krishnamurti "The Open
Door", a biography by Mary Lutyens, p 48).
This elicited a question from Willblake which you suspected was facetious:
But Andre, Why can I only see through my eyes, and not others?
[Willblake2]:
Perhaps I am displaying the my simplicity, but if individual
consciousness does not exist, what is the I that is seeing
through my eyes?
The truth is, neither of you was being facetious. Instead, you were
expressing contradictory epistemologies. You assert that "The 'self' is a
product of thought", and you define 'intellectualizing' as "a process of
dividing." What you don't specify is where the intellect resides. And this
is critical, because whoever "owns" the intellect also does the dividing.
Willblake knows that the intellect is proprietary to the self and a function
of conscious awareness, which is why he asks "what is the I that sees?"
You also ask us to consider that "our consciousness is common to all
mankind...and therefore we are not individuals." That's a non sequitor
premise. There are any number of properties common to mankind -- breathing,
feeding, speaking, walking on two legs, procreating, dying, etc. Yet none
of these human behaviors (or all of them together) proves that we are not
individuals. In fact, if you want to get logical, only an individual can
perform any of them.
Krishnamurti is only partly right. "Consciousness is the common ground of
all humanity," but "the content of consciousness" exists only in the mind
of the knower. Conscious awareness is known only to the self and is
non-transferable.
One needs only a small amount of experience living with others, and a very
small amount of empathy to realise the truth of these observations. But as
Krishnamurti said over and over again; please consider this, find out for
yourself. Do not accept my word for it.
I have considered it and don't accept your word for it, nor the word of the
author. It's the same fallacious reasoning that has led the Pirsigians to
conclude that intellect and value are universal attributes. These, also,
are the realization of cognizant individuals.
But thanks for a fascinating exchange.
Cheers to you both,
Ham
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