Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Movement Of Thought

 

There is conflict inner and outer when the world presents a challenge to an individual and demands a response. The mind in order to deal with an ever changing world imposes a certain pattern on it based on past experiences and which has a means – end structure. This gives direction to all human actions which are teleological i.e. they are always goal directed. How exactly does such a process arise? Three distinct processes can be discerned but these should not be seen in a chronological but in a functional sense:

a)     Means – End Structure

First there is sensation, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Memory records it and mind projects a future state where that same sensation can be either repeated or avoided. Thought arises parasitic on memory and allows the perpetuation or the continuity of the past. This is the beginning of psychological time – a past state seeking continuity in the future and conditioning response in the present. Thus JK says that the movement of thought is also the movement of time. Psychological time is distinct from chronological time i.e. time by the watch; in this that psychological time has a certain significance for human endeavour – it gives meaning to human action for intentional actions are always goal directed which is only possible in time – a present effort conditioned by past response for a goal to be accomplished in future.  

 b)    Conditioning

How does past condition a present response? The movement of thought dedicated to continuity of the stream of consciousness; to secure this stream thought seeks anchorage in a pattern made available by memory of either a successful or unsuccessful action or through tradition. Such a pattern becomes a norm for future actions. It regulates our response to future challenges that the world brings to us. Such patterns are stored in memory as symbols or concepts or images. These thereafter guide future actions. These symbols acquire significance due to past experiences. Mind continuously translates new experiences in terms of past and is never able to meet an experience completely. This creates a schism between challenge and response, for challenge is always new while response is always anchored in the past.  

 

c)     The Self

However experiences are changing constantly like changes in the world. Security demands the presence of a centre for the operations of the mind. This centre is the self. Human actions do not have significance through a teleological structure alone. Ever action is to fulfil a goal, but the goal acquires significance because of being the goal for a self. The end has to be achieved for a self; who is the beneficiary of the fulfilment of the goal. So it is the self that is the end of all human actions. Self is brought about by thought through identification – taking whether experiences or objects as mine – the self identifies with things it finds desirable or undesirable; to acquire the former and avoid the latter. The entire psychological field of desire, fear, hope, envy, anger gains significance in relation to the self; for it is the self who desires, who is angry or envious. The source of self is thought. In awareness there is no division of self and the other; the self only arises with the advent of thought.  The movement of thought divides every experience into observer and the observed. The observer is the past because it observes through a centre – through its anchorage in past knowledge, beliefs and concepts. This movement of thought in its entirety is the stream or the field of consciousness.

Why is it that thought is a blunt instrument with which to bring about a fundamental change in consciousness? This is because thought illicitly transposes the means – end structure to the mind. Seeing that it is violent for instance, it cannot end violence at once. Thought invariably is a movement away from what is - it projects a future non-violent state to be pursued as an ideal - to be made actual through some kind of practice. But violence is a fact while non-violence is only an ideal. While at an ordinary level a sculptor for instance can fashion clay in accordance with an ideal, transposing this model to the mind leads to various problems that can be elucidated in a four-fold way enumerated below:

a)     The sculptor does not create anything new but only modifies an old existing material giving it a new form while the old material subsists through the change. Violence however cannot be turned into non-violence – mind can however initiate an action based on a pattern it comes to associate with non-violence – which is a state projected as the opposite of violence and through practice it seeks to move away from violence to non-violence working in a field of duality. Violence nevertheless does not end – for duality does not end - it is implicated in the very idea of the practice that seeks to bring about a change.

 

Violence however persists in a modified form. Modified continuity of the past lies in practice of a habitual pattern opposed to another one. But this newly acquired habit of being non-violent may not be due to an inner state that expresses itself in non-violent behaviour. In fact the very practice of non-violence implies the absence of the state of being non-violent since the two cannot co-exist. The job of practice is to make a skill permanent through habit – entrenchment of a behaviour even if all along violence continues underneath surfacing every now and then – causing friction and constant effort to do away with it and thereby leads to a wastage of energy. Mind can forge a new habitual pattern but not end the old – which may continue in a modified form. Practice can entrench a habit but it is not creative – it cannot bring about a natural state of non-violence. Real change for JK is however creative – bringing about something entirely new untouched by the mind.

 

b)    The idea of a self - directing the contents of the mind is based on the division of the observer and the observed brought about by the movement of thought. So thought itself cannot end by a movement brought about within the field of consciousness because any such movement would presuppose thought and would not negate it. Violence, envy, anger themselves are not problems; they are symptoms of a disease. The problem is mechanical thought. Thought has a valid sphere of application at the level of human skills; but it is the illegitimate transposition of thought to a sphere governing human relationship, with the world at large and other human beings that leads to conflicts. Even otherwise a pursuit of the Truth cannot be undertaken by thought for it always belongs to the past and cannot comprehend anything new – that is beyond thought. So it is thought that is the root of all problems, violence, envy, anger, desire these cannot end without the severing of their root which lies in thought. One has to keep this point in mind for examples of individual contents of mind in JK’s discourse are only illustrative – the point he tries to drill in is that thought is the real culprit – that it creates problems it cannot end – and conflict and suffering will not end till thought ends. But even if we can mitigate the effects of conditioning influences of thought to a certain extent – for pursuit of Truth to begin thought still needs to end. The ultimate end of inquiry into human condition, into the nature of thought for JK lies in the pursuit after the Truth; the inquiry begins with conflict but the end goes beyond ending the conflict - it is not negative but positive – the search for the source or the ground of the world so to say – which is beyond everything but there is nothing else beyond it.

 

Since mind cannot end this movement of thought it needs another instrument – something different from thought to end this movement. When the mind realizes its fallibility – that no matter what it does it can only perpetuate this stream of consciousness – then there is the ending of thought for such an understanding is not intellectual but is an insight into the entire structure of thought – it is like a man who realizes he has been walking in the wrong direction and this itself brings about a different movement in another direction. A different kind of intelligence takes root which is not mechanical but sensitive to facts and which does not require ideation to act. The perception is the action in this sphere i.e. the perception of the fact itself brings about the action there is no intermediate sphere where facts are made available for perception and rationally assessed in order to bring about an action; because such a processing is not required since perception in this case is complete – it is not anchored in the past but it sensitive to facts as they are – not facts in isolation with other facts but which thoroughly penetrates their interconnection. This is the nature of insight – scientists and philosophers are capable of having atleast partial insights - restricted to a sphere but total insight in boundless. Thus such an action born from such intelligence is immediate – there being no gap between perception and action. Such an insight is the result of (such a language though useful is misleading for JK emphatically says that insight is not an effect being a factor outside the mind) inquiry into the structure of thought pursued with complete seriousness. When one is choicelessly aware of the entire movement of thought - no conditioning influences can disrupt the inquiry for conditioning sneaks into the gaps of awareness; when attention to mind is not complete. When complete attention is given to every movement of thought to the entire contents of consciousness then an experience is seen to be born, flower and wither away – thought is not allowed in the process to bring in the process of identification and the division of observer and the observed. Then there is emptying of consciousness and birth of an entirely new intelligence which brings about an entirely new movement - a movement from moment to moment. Only when there is freedom from thought can one carry out an inquiry into Truth, thus for JK freedom has to be in the beginning not in the end.

 

So the movement of thought can end only by attending completely to the ‘what is’ without bring the observer into observation. When is perception complete? By not operating on the fact, the fact initiates its own movement - it can be seen to be born, flower and wither away – the experience is completely lived and not stored in memory. This involves dying to the past - because only then is there a constant renewal. JK explains this through the analogy of the difference between a stagnant pool of water and a river which through its constant ebb and flow is ever renewing itself or cleansing itself. This is an entirely different movement which is permanent but not static – for it is constantly in flow.

 

c)     That which is brought about through external circumstances is not permanent just like a noisy child who is silent when absorbed in play with a toy but gets noisy again when the toy is taken away from him – so an integration brought by external circumstances of inner fragments inherently in contradiction – is also disintegrated in time again being liable to be destroyed by external factors too. So JK says what is conquered once is conquered again and again.

 

d)    Man is not able to act on reason alone because action also requires a feeling component. In man however the locus of legislative and executive powers is different in reason and feeling leading to contradiction and the attempt to integrate them leads to constant friction and frittering away of energy but in the new kind of intelligence we talked about there is complete unity of command and thus summation of complete energy in every action.

Thus any real change which involves a birth of creative energy can never be brought about by the mind. The movement of thought can entangle but not disentangle. Its disentanglement can only be done from outside the movement of thought.