Theos-Talk Archives (June 2000 Message tt00034)

On 5/11/00 Govert said:

<< As for the possibility of K advocating a method I'd like to come back to 
the quote reproduced in my previous e-mail:

"We are going to explore together very slowly, patiently, hesitantly, to find 
out.  It is like good scientists looking through a microscope and seeing 
exactly the same thing.  Because if you are a scientist in the laboratory 
using a microscope, you must show what you see to another scientist, so both 
of you see exactly what is."

K is, on first reading, clearly comparing here, in a positive way, his mode 
of exploration with the scientific method.  He is of course not saying that 
what he does is the same as the scientific method, but nevertheless he makes 
an appeal to our understanding of scientific method in order for us to 
understand better what K tries to show as his way of exploration.  For me 
this implies that somehow a 'mode' or 'way' or 'method' is involved in what K 
is trying to do.  >>

Dear Govert,

I believe I already responded fully to this point in a previous e-mail.  I 
may add here that "the scientific method" CONSISTS of developing hypotheses 
based on empirical testing & experience, & then testing those hypotheses, in 
order to develop THEORIES.  That is why it is a METHOD:  Like all methods, it 
follows a formula, an algorithm.
There is absolutely no such algorithm, formula, in any of K's work.  You have 
obviously not given an example.  Try again (& again, & again, & again...).  
You won't find it.
I saw K -- a number of times, at that -- reject totally something being said 
to him by his audience, in which he was being quoted.  I'll give you one of 
many instances, taken out of a discussion session from the 1970s in Ojai.  K 
was trying to get the ball rolling, as to what we all might want to discuss.  
It came to this:  "Why are we degenerating?"  So K threw that question back 
at the audience.  Someone yelled from the back of the room "Fragmentation!" 
thus quoting a word K had used & discussed thoroughly very many times, to 
show that fragmentation is indeed at the heart of our degenerating.
K's response was swift, intense, passionate.  He said:  "That's rubbish!  
Forget about that!  I don't want to hear that word again!  This is a serious 
inquiry into why the human condition is degenerating.  So the question is:  
Why are we degenerating?"
Though I put it in quote marks, the reference is from memory, & the words are 
probably not quite exact.  But I did witness, quite a number of times, K 
rejecting his own words.  You find him do just that quite a number of times 
in the various dialogues between him & scholars & others, which have been 
published.
K's work is most emphatically not about words, concepts, algorithms, methods, 
systems, or any other excrescence coming from the analytical mind.  One 
REALLY needs to get that.  Otherwise, we'll be going round & round, as if in 
a merry-go-round, not getting anywhere.  A major shift in the human organism 
MUST take place.  Such a shift will NEVER happen, for as long as one 
continues to rely on that most unreliable of all guides, the analytical mind. 
 One might say that the analytical mind is the mother of all unreliance, when 
it comes to exploring "what matters" to humans.

Aryel

Govert said:

Against this interpretation it could be argued that K's comparison of science 
and what he himself does, does not apply to that element of the scientific 
procedure called method, but to another element called intersubjectivity, 
i.e. the problem of communicating scientific results, or in K's words "show 
what you see... so both of you see exactly what is."  So, it's not so much a 
matter of procedure or method with which K is concerned here, but of sharing 
results, which in K's case are actually not results, in the sense of a final 
product of a procedure, but a shared clear view of what is.

Dear Govert,

As you say, "it's not so much a matter of procedure or method with which K is 
concerned here" (or anywhere else, I might say), "but of sharing results."  
This strikes me as an odd statement.  Can you find a single quote in which K 
said to anyone:  "See what results you get from what I'm telling you, & then 
compare them with my results"?  I don't think so.  You won't find such a 
statement, anywhere.

This is your own imagination, working too hard to create a straw man that you 
call "K," so you can then tear it down.  Look within, my friend.  Why are you 
doing this?  Where does this passion against K come from?  It obviously has 
nothing to do with K's work in itself.  So we must look elsewhere.  What do 
you think?

Aryel

Govert said:

As a formerly purist Krishnamurtian I might have been satisfied with this 
last formula [sic], but now, after not believing anymore in the complete 
enlightenment of K, nor believing anymore in the infallibility of his 
statements, nor believing anymore in his status as the telephone for the 
Masters, I feel compelled to submit K's teachings to a variety of 
investigations to sort out truth from error, both in K's teachings itself and 
also in the various criticisms leveled against him.

Dear Govert,

As Spock might say, upon witnessing some form of human behavior:  
"Fascinating!"  I think it's wonderful that you are no longer "a 
Krishnamurtian."  Neither am I.  Never have been one.  So it's great we both 
SEEM to belong to the non-Krishnamurtian club!  I have never "believed" in 
K's "enlightenment," either (whatever that might mean), much less in "the 
infallibility of his statements" (!!!!!!!!!!??????).  DID you ever REALLY 
believe in a person's INFALLIBILITY?  I find that very hard to understand.  I 
truly can't compute it.  WHY would ANYONE follow someone else in so slavish a 
manner?  I'm truly baffled.  "Fascinating!"
I do not believe, either, in "his status as the telephone for the Masters."  
I have RESEARCHED the issue, & noted that he himself stated throughout his 
very long life (contrary to what MOST others have said, including authors 
about his life) that he was indeed such a telephone, & that HPB had made 
exactly the same claim about herself.
Looking VERY CAREFULLY at K's work, I see it to be at the leading edge of 
philosophy, for reasons that will be spelled out for the benefit of 
philosophy scholars in my upcoming work THE ANALYTICAL FALLACY (I have been 
very fortunate to be able to discuss K's place in today's philosophical arena 
with some of the top philosophers in the world in various areas, & haven't 
encountered any peeps from them, so far, except, of course, when I first tell 
them, since "we all know" K couldn't possibly be anything but some kind of 
New Age freak"; but that's a story for another time.
But the question I have asked myself numerous times is:  Where did K's 
insights & observations come from?  Everyone who knew him said he was just a 
very shy, country-boyish sort of person, greatly interested in arming & 
disarming mechanical gadgets.  He had no formal education.  Flunked the 
entrance exams at Oxford three times, even though he had tutors working hard 
with him, to get him through (with the same help, his younger brother Nytia 
passed, the first time).  Apart from Agatha Christie & similar authors of 
"thrillers," he didn't read much.
WHERE, I ask, did his insights come from?  I do not claim to know.  Never 
have.  But WHERE did they come from?  I am truly asking that question of 
anyone within hearing of it.  Please, please, give me an answer.  Don't let 
that question pass.  Do give an answer.  But it must be a credible one.  
Otherwise, we're playing games.
The only more or less credible answer I have encountered is the one that K 
himself gave, that he was a telephone for other dimensions of being.  (In his 
later years, he did not personalize these dimensions by referring to 
"Masters," for reasons I discuss amply in my book, & which strike me as being 
excellent reasons.)
I do not know whether K was "a telephone" for these other dimensions.  But no 
other explanation I have seen, so far, seems to explain this extraordinary 
phenomenon.  In the end, it truly does not matter, whether he was a telephone 
or an ice cream stick.  What matters is whether there is transformation going 
on in one's daily life.  But if we are momentarily discussing what could 
possibly be the source for this phenomenon, & we want to discuss it 
seriously, we MUST give a serious answer, coming from the depths of our 
being, not on some knee-jerk reaction coming from personal experiences or 
from our background.  What, then, IS the source for this extraordinary 
collection of insights & observations?
Your comments, Govert, seem to imply -- rather strongly, at that -- that you 
accepted K as a very high AUTHORITY.  If so, that was, of course, your 
prerogative.  But it also implies not having listened at all to K's constant 
harping on the dangers of following authorities, at any level.  So this only 
could have been AN IMAGE of your own personal fantasy.  Following an 
authority -- ANY authority -- implies that the process of transformation is 
not going on in one's daily life.
That was, of course, presumably "then."
But, in a strange way, you seem to be still following that authority.  That 
is, why the depths of disappointment at K for not fulfilling the expectations 
generated by your self-created image of what you thought he should have been? 
 If the guy was wrong, drop him like a hot potato, & move on, by all means.  
But why continue holding on, with both hands, at that, to those IMAGES?  Why 
bother?
Since 1963, when I first encountered K, I, too, felt "compelled to submit K's 
teachings to a variety of investigations to sort out truth from error, both 
in K's teachings itself and also in the various criticisms leveled against 
him."  You see, I had been an investigator into these issues since I was a 
boy, & before encountering K, had never found anyone who had the kind of 
passion about discovering that which is, which I saw in him.  He was the 
first "kindred spirit" I had ever encountered.  THAT is what attracted me to 
him.
But as an investigator, this meant I had to be extremely careful, not to 
merely "follow the bouncing ball" of whatever K said.  I could see very 
easily, from the beginning, that this could be very mesmerizing, that I might 
be led by my own instincts the wrong way.
So I proceeded to put it to the test.  I did that in many ways.  I became a 
Buddhist, practicing at first Vipassana, as in the Theravada school, then 
Zen, & finally Tibetan (primarily Nyingmapa).  I participated in Gurdjieff 
work, dabbled in sufism, got minor orders in the LCC, got involved in 
Co-Masonry, got degrees in philosophy (in an attempt to see, as you are now 
trying to do, where he might be leading me astray).  I found myself being 
thrown back upon myself, over, & over, & over again.
Now, it is not so much a question of "having come home, at last," or of (a la 
Martin Luther King, Jr.), "been to the mountaintop."  It's not like that, at 
all.  It's just that the very many ways in which the analytical mind can lure 
one into blind alleys have turned so transparent, their dangers seen clearly 
as being so tremendous, & their inefficacy so obvious, it is simply not 
possible to go that way, ever again.
There's NOTHING there, my friend.  When you hear the excited call of some 
"new" form of the analytical mind, telling you invitingly:  "Gold!  Gold!  
Thar's gold up in them thar' mount'ns!" -- don't you believe it.  It's 
pyrite, fool's gold.  That's ALL you'll find, because that's ALL the 
analytical mind has to offer.  But you have to see this for yourself.  No 
amount of talking or writing by anybody will help.  I know.
But it IS useful to hear this.  If there is any truth in it, it WILL stay 
with you, & it will be your teacher, when you're ready to hear it -- whether 
now, ten years from now, or in some future incarnation.  Please, don't think 
I'm speaking condescendingly.  That is most emphatically not where I'm coming 
from.  I'm talking to you like a brother.  Who knows?  Perhaps I'm all wrong 
about this.  I live daily with the understanding that being fallible is 
intrinsic to all of us ("even" K!) , & so I'm very sensitive to that failing 
in myself.  If it is I who is mistaken about this, then perhaps something in 
what you're saying will stay with me, & enlighten me at some point.  Such is 
the nature of our predicament.  The inquiry is a constant journey, with no 
"Holy Grail" at the "end" of it.

With all my love,

Aryel

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