Tag: Thinking

Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality

We are so tied to our minds, our self, our ego that we can only see what our mind is conditioned to see; and the expanse of mind is so vast, that we consider the inability to gauge its limit to its infinite-ness. But, in self-observation we will see that reality is far bigger than our mind. Mind cannot be bigger than reality although it can create a perfect illusion of it being bigger than reality. When we realise how reactive our mind is, how conditioned our mind is we see that it’s the reality in which we are existing and not the mind. Mind is just a facilitator to create a sense of security. The real creativity thus begins when one lets go of their minds, thoughts and observe reality for what it is.
The real intelligence is to be able to see how you are fooling yourselves and how it is twisting your world view. This is possible only when we let go of the self. Love is the fastest and the most direct way to let go of self. Love is the way to get rid of the ego. Loving something, loving someone is the first step towards rejecting the very ego which is responsible for self-deception.
Jiddu Krishnamurti thus encouraged everyone to let go of their egos through self-less love; this itself is enough to solve all the existential conflicts inside us and out there in the world.

Part 3 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s legacy of self-knowledge

“What do you do when you realize fundamentally or deeply that thought cannot end itself? What happens? Watch yourself. When you are fully aware if ‘this fact’, what happens?

(‘this fact’ here refers to an observation that ‘discipline’ doesn’t destroy the self, rather it strengthens it because ‘the self’ created that discipline in the first place)

You understand that any reaction is conditioned and that, through conditioning, there can be no freedom either at the beginning or at the end – and freedom is always at the beginning and not at the end.”

– J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

We, the humans are driven by curiosity. The curiosity to survive – to put in few words. One might say that people are driven by fear, greed, envy, anxiety, power, love, money, fame, glory, sacrifice, humility, honesty, trust, legacy, mania, chaos, terror, and what not. The list is never ending. If you start questioning the origin all such attributes, you will see that humans can be driven by anything, I mean any anything. There is no connecting link per say; the only common thing between all the things which drive people is the people themselves. So, in the last question (possibly the last one) we end up questioning ourselves. We see that along with physical survival we are highly conscious of our non-physical survival. Some may call it the mental survival, some may call it ideological survival, some may even call it spiritual survival. In the end, what we are trying to preserve is the eternal existence of our consciousness. How to preserve this? becomes the question then. That is why in final question we see that we are curious to preserve our own being. That is the ultimate survival. Whatever can facilitate that preservation is the driving force for our existence. If you are scared of something, the fear of that thing will create a curiosity to look out for the ways in which you can avoid it.

Now you will realise that the attributes which are many and driving people in different ways are highly related to the ways people think about themselves and about their surroundings. The identities, the consciousness which we are trying to preserve forever is highly the function of the society we grew up in, the religion we followed, the ideals we admired, the enemies we despised, the culture we cultivated and carried over to the newer generations.

I might be making an overstatement here-

Only those who have undergone unlearning, un-conditioning or at least appreciated the process of unlearning can clearly see how badly we are tied to our thoughts and ultimately our minds.

Death of thinking is death of mind. When they say that ideas live forever – it is also an attempt to ensure eternal survival of a certain type of mind, for mind is not a physical entity to us. Realizing the perishable nature of our body, the mind becomes the most potent entity to ensure the survival of our being.

Then, what’s wrong in ensuring the eternal survival our consciousness?

We will see how Jiddu Krishnamurti showed the reality of our existence. As I have already said, he is the perfect person at perfect time to ask the perfect question.

Short answer is – we are so tied to our minds that we can only see what our mind is conditioned to see; and the expanse of mind is so vast, that we consider the inability to gauge its limit to its infinite-ness. But, in self-observation we will see that reality is far bigger than our mind. Mind cannot be bigger than reality although it can create a perfect illusion of it being bigger than reality. When we realise how reactive our mind is, how conditioned our mind is we see that it’s the reality in which we are existing and not the mind. Mind is just a facilitator to create a sense of security. The real creativity thus begins when one lets go of their minds, thoughts and observe reality for what it is.     

In Part 1, I have explained J Krishnamurti’s views on our urge for safety thereby happiness, how we use our thoughts to conveniently justify anything and everything to create that sense of safety, the ways in which our thoughts are stealing the actual reality holding multitudes of possibilities.

In Part 2, I have explained how thoughts originate, how curiosity drives them. It contains Krishnamurti’s observations on how we try to separate thinking to glorify ‘our version’ of wishful reality. Krishnamurti shows us that the moment we reject the separation of our thoughts from ourselves, that is the moment we see that we were just reactive to everything around us. We become observer of the reality for what it is, once we let go the glorification of ‘our thoughts’ – the self.

Now, we will question the very originator of the self – our Mind. Krishnamurti’s observations were revolutionary about the mind. This Part 3 will focus on that and also tie up the previous 2 parts together with it.

Existence Of The Mind – What Is The Mind?

“When you observe your own thinking, you will see it is an isolated, fragmentary process. You are thinking according to your reactions, the reactions of your memory, of your experiences, of your knowledge, of your belief.”

–J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

When we are truly in the territory of observation without any preconception, prejudice, we see what thoughts actually do. Thoughts just try to hook on to something that we are familiar with – it could be good or bad. Thoughts literally create a chain. One link creates sense – logic – connection to another, one train of thought after another. Then we create the whole understanding. Thinking is always reactive. Keep this in mind – thinking is always reactive. If you let thoughts build on themselves, it is amazing to observe what world we create just by our thoughts. The moment you inject certain intent, desire to this world, it immediately deviates from the reality. But, as this world of thoughts has your intent, your desire, it creates that world of safety; we don’t want to lose that familiarity, that comfort. Now as this world contains our desires it becomes our second identity. As the thoughts keep building on, you start associating these set of your thoughts as who you are. This is your non-physical identity now. You now strive to make sure that this non-physical identity lives till eternity.

After seeing this you will see that the mind is the custodian of thoughts, desires, wishes. A wish to be safe to prolong survival, desire to make that prolonged existence happier one, thoughts to support those wishes – desires. Mind is thus picking desirable ideologies, disciplines which will keep feeding the train of thoughts, the chain of thoughts. Thoughts want to ensure their own survival because we have assumed survival of our thoughts as our survival. (Keep in mind we haven’t even started the discussion about reality.)

So, mind is a sieve which keeps on separating the desirable and undesirable parts of reality. There is nothing wrong in that. What happens here which is problematic is our tendency to lean towards the desirable reality only. When mind would see desirable reality, it will start using the power of compounding of thoughts to create a wishful reality which we call as our identity – our self. We want to preserve self to ensure that things that we desire survive. Whatever is not the self, it is the others – the undesirable. The moment mind makes this separation – ego intensifies.

“Our whole tendency is to be separated. Can the mind do anything else but that? Is it possible for the mind not to think separately in a self-enclosed manner, fragmentarily? That is impossible. So, we worship the mind; the mind is extraordinarily important.”   

–J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

Without separation, our mind fails to recognize itself. If it is not able to separate itself from rest of the things, it cannot feed the desires. If desires are not fed, we will be constantly looking cluelessly for a sense of belonging, a place of security.

Here, I see one tragedy of being human rather an animal. I will explain it:

See there is a possibility that we are free from all the desires. One can be free from all the desires of the world. So, it is a real possibility that man is free from the cage of thoughts, mind and desires and fully observant of the reality around him without any imposition or prejudice right from the birth.

What is the tragedy of every animal is that they are born with the tendency to live (otherwise how would they get in the world in first place, maybe the baby doesn’t even know what is required to survive, so possibly the sense of survival naturally gets transferred from parents to the baby). Have you seen a baby who wants to die the moment he is born? Rather the baby starts crying the moment it senses absence of parental presence or absence of security. By birth we have a survival urge. Evolution has pushed this urge in us from physical to non-physical one. As we have better chances to ensure physical survival we now care more about the survival of our non-physical version. Mind thus becomes very important, thereby consciousness becomes important. That is why if physical survival is not guaranteed, we wish that at least our consciousness lives forever. That is exactly why we praise the minds we have.

Over the time, our desires take over this mind and we then keep on conditioning it with culture, religion, society, community in a certain way. The familiarity of physical body gets further amplified in familiarity of certain way of thinking, certain religion, certain philosophy, certain profession, certain degree, certain community, certain country. The more we find ideas, thoughts familiar to ours the more we want to cling to them. The more we want to reinforce that version of self. We are always separating what reality shows in terms of whether it is favorable to us or not. That is why even if mind and consciousness seem infinite, you will observe that our thoughts have compounded in such an extreme way that we are unable to measure their limits. We have attributed this inability of those compounded thoughts to the infinite-ness of our mind.

If our mind truly is infinite then we should be able to predict the reality or at least handle the undesirability that reality may present in better ways. We all know how disappointed we are with the reality. This shows how strongly we have conditioned our minds towards certain way – that certain way we call our identity, our self, our ego.

“Until we understand how to transcend this separative thinking, this process of giving emphasis to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, whether in the collective form or in individual form, we shall not have peace; we shall have constant conflict and wars. Our problem is how to bring an end to the separative process of thought. Can the thought ever destroy the self, thought being the process of verbalization and of reaction? Thought is nothing else but reaction; thought is not creative.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

Now you will appreciate what un-learning can do to our life. It opens a completely different and real world in front of us. Un-learning is the rejection of what we assumed to be true to support our identity. Although it feels uncomfortable, sometimes completely hostile but there is no bigger freedom than the acceptance and implementation of unlearning. It is renewal, evolution of our very being.

The key point is to understand that we are not our mind, we can be bigger than our mind. That needs the rejection of the idea of self. Once we are observant of how dangerously conditioned, prejudices, favored our minds are we will see how we through the agency of our mind are twisting the reality to create the sense of security. The more we twist it, more deviated we are from reality.

And as I already explained that somehow this sense of separation and thereby self-preservation is in our genes by birth, we have to train ourselves to get rid of that sense. Keep in mind that this does not mean self-jeopardization. This plainly means that not imposing our ways on reality to create the sense of security thereby higher chances of preservation of self. That is why unlearning is extremely important.

Reactive Mind Vs Objective Reality

“Do not superimpose what it should do, how it should think or act and so on: that would amount to making mere statements.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

Once you think that you have full control of your mind, the mind will use this sense of its separation from you to build chains of thoughts to support itself. In the end, it all started from you. The moment you see that you and your mind are the same, you accept its conditioning. Now you have a baseline to see the reality. Now you know how your mind is bending the reality. This is the freedom, to see things as they are. 

Now that we are understanding that sense of safety was the goal of everything that we are doing all along, we see that our conditioning thereby our thinking and thus our mind in the end are the reason behind all the suffering we go through. Once we see that our mind was the main culprit, we realise that it will be difficult rather impossible to punish my mind, discipline my mind because the more I try to control my mind – more I try to discipline it, the more it reacts, the more it creates thoughts and evades away from the reality. It tries to preserve its identity.

Only when you observe that you are your mind conditioned in certain way to preserve the non-physical existence then you understand the reality you live in. You still have those conditioned thoughts but now you neither want to promote them or suppress them. You are now an observer of the reality. This is an interesting observation.  

“When I want to understand, look at something. I don’t’ have to think about it – I look at it. The moment I begin to think, to have ideas, opinions about it, I am already in a state of distraction, looking away from the thing which I must understand.”

–J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

There is one important confusion we must address here:

If I am rejecting the thoughts that I have, the mind that I have, the consciousness that I have – what remains of me? Wouldn’t I end up in an existential crisis? Won’t that shatter my compass? If I am not associated with certain things, how would I make sense of my actions? If I am not able to make sense of my actions or at least the things happening around me, how would I prepare myself to survive in this world? This will completely jeopardize my existence.

The answer is pretty simple if you have read till this sentence:

Rejection of mind as a separate entity is the answer. Unlearning the process of isolation to understand the reality is the answer. Wishful observation is the key problem in the ways we are trying to live the life. Thinking is the second name for wishful observation. You are expecting reality to become something in your ways so you attach certain justification to extract that desirable meaning from the reality you are observing. You are doing this to generate sense of safety, which further ensures eternal survival.

So, it’s not about rejecting mind or the thoughts. It’s observing how our mind, thoughts are already conditioned before we are trying to understand the reality. It’s like we are seeing the reality with certain tint of prejudices and expectations. We have to let go of that filter. We are so attached to this filter because world looks the way we want in this filter, that this tinted illusion has become our reality. The moment someone shatters that filter we end in existential crisis.

You must appreciate that it’s not about hating the prejudices, conditioning or sacrificing yourselves completely to a selfless act. It’s being aware that you have those prejudices when you are observing reality. This self-awareness is what Krishnamurti focused on.

The moment you will try to reject certain thing and accept the another i.e., your mind – you will create certain framework of justifications and you will deceive yourself.

The idea is to know how you are fooling yourselves which is preventing you from understanding the reality.

Delulu is not the solulu. Rather delulu is the best way to reject the very life you are living.

“To have blank mind is to be in a state of stupor, idiocy or what you will, and your instinctive reaction is to reject it. But surely a mind that is very quiet, a mind that is not distracted by its own thought, a mind that is open, can look a t the problem very directly and very simply. And it is this capacity to look without any distraction at our problems that Is the only solution. For that there must be a quiet, tranquil mind.”

–J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

Love – Cure To Self-Deception And Surrender To Reality

You know that moment in any pop culture media where the final answer is love? Let me spoil everything for you. The answer to everything is love.

(Be cautious while reading next part, it’s not just that type of love and I am definitely not conditioned to prefer love as the answer. Even for a skeptic, love being the final answer has worthy support. It also guarantees that we can understand the reality for what it is.)

I always had this cringe feeling when everything grand in the narrative ended up with a justification of love. Even the great authors, logical authors, great scientists, great atheists never feel shame to express the power of love and it being the answer to everything. Trust me, I have made every attempt to find the evidences where love might not be the final answer to everything. But turns out that I would never find any evidence against love being the final answer.

The core reason is that we ourselves are the final problem. Let us see how Krishnamurti came to the conclusion of love being the ultimate answer:

“When you realize that any reaction is a form of conditioning and therefore gives continuity to the self in different ways, what actually takes place? You must be very clear in this matter. Belief, knowledge, discipline, experience, the whole process of achieving a result, or an end ambition, becoming something in this life or in future life – all these area process of isolation, a process which brings destruction, misery, wars from which there is no escape through collective action, however much you may be threatened with concentration camp and all the rest of it.”

–J Krishnamurti, The Function of Mind

Now that you have come to the last part of the discussion, it is not a new understanding when I say that our sense of self is reinforced by the desire to support certain way of our conditioning. This steals from us the ability to perceive reality in the way it presents itself. We are always seeing the reality with certain conditioning and trying to change it so that it favors our ways. But as we have illusioned, conditioned understanding of reality, the reality rarely presents itself in the ways we desire it to be. Then we end up in sadness and sorrow and start questioning the futility of our existence. That is why ‘what is the purpose of my existence?’ is the common format of the existential questions for all of us.

What Krishnamurti tried to focus on is different question –

Why am I not experiencing life the way it is?

What is preventing me to live the life the way it is, living the life to its fullest?

The answer is pretty simple now. It’s our conditioning which urges us to prefer certain ways and reject the others. This brings the happiness and sadness. In the efforts to maximize happiness and minimize sadness we have created a system of mind and thoughts to alleviate the pains of suffering – thoughts justify everything. We deceive ourselves with justifications.   

“So long as we deceive ourselves in any form, there can be no love. So long as the mind is capable of creating and imposing upon itself a delusion, it obviously separates itself from collective or integrated understanding.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

What does the love do in all this confusion?

Love is the direct way to let go of self. Love is the way to get rid off the ego. Loving something, loving someone is the first steps towards rejecting the very ego which is responsible for self-deception. Even if you are delusional, your actions influenced by those delusions towards the things you love, the people you love will yield unwanted outcomes; and if you truly love them, you will be compelled to let go of the delusion for the benefit of your loved ones.  Thus, being selfless through love in true sense ensures real freedom.

Conclusion – Why Is Love Answer To Everything?

“We see the ways of the intellect but we do not see the way of love. The way of love is not to be found through the intellect.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

We saw in Part 1 how and why we crave for safety, familiarity. It ensures our physical and non-physical survival with better odds and most importantly with better satisfaction.

We saw in Part 2 how we dissociate ourselves from our mind and thoughts to create a false sense of safety if the reality does not turn out the way we want. We may delude ourselves if the reality is hurting us. We use thoughts to justify unfairness the reality presents. Our religions, politics, our ideals, everything that we have created now has an innate purpose of creating a safety net. We want to remain in this net because we don’t want the happiness to end. We have intellectualized our minds in such a way that we have justification for every ridiculous illusion and tragedy is that we call it the limitlessness of the mind, infinite nature of the mind.

I am not erasing the idea that the mind is limitless. If our minds – we – ourselves are truly limitless then we should immediately be able to see beyond the seemingly adverse revelations of the reality. Which is the holy gist of all these detailed inquiries of the self.

Then what was the problem with the mind?

The very limitless nature of reality would enable us to become limitless. But is it our delusional clinging to certain way of life for safety which is stealing the real understanding and appreciation of limitless reality. We are clinging to highly complicated and highly compounded thoughts, the way of thinking just because it reinforces the ego.

The real intelligence is to be able to see how you are fooling yourselves and how it is twisting your world view.   

After going through what Krishnamurti made us observe, you will realise that whatever must be said has been said already. We have just accepted our delusions because we are fully clung to the way have been living our lives, the way we have been conditioned.

When you are loving someone, there is very slim chance that they will be exactly the way you want them to be. There is plausible reason to say this because the infinite possibilities of reality mold people in different ways. There may be many things in common but the more you know the sooner you will realise that people are filled with different types of conditioning. This will first push you to reject their point of view naturally, then you will try to impose your way on them, your ideologies on them, your conditioning on them. In the final analysis, you will see your ways of worldview failing on them. This is the moment when you will reject your own world view, thereby your ego. Now you will neither reject or accept other people’s worldviews nor will you cling to your ego. Now for the sake of love, you will objectively observe the reality for what it is.

This is how love compels you to let go of your ego. That is why love is the answer to everything because you are the last question of all the investigations of the existence. You will let go of the concept of the self once you start to appreciate things other than you and accept the reality the way it is. What a beautiful way to live!    

“Only when you discard completely, through understanding, the whole structure of the self, can that which is eternal, timeless, immeasurable, come into being. You cannot go to it; it comes to you.”   

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

References and further reading:

  1. Truth is a pathless land – J Krishnamurti
  2. The First and Last Freedom – J Krishnamurti
  3. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 1 – The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts
  4. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge: Part 2 – Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life
  5. Featured Image of Phantom Galaxy M74 by James Web Space Telescope

Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life

In the constant pursuit of eternal happiness what man forgets is that nothing is everlasting, the sadness exactly like the happiness too shall pass. But, the urge to remain eternally happy and safe, steals the man from actual sense of reality. The illusions of thoughts filled with prejudices, conditioning and the escape from the reality by justifying the same thoughts becomes the endless cycle for such man. The moment man rejects the separation between him and his thoughts and sees that he himself is the originator of every thought is when he starts observing reality for what it truly is. Now there is no urge to seek happiness or the aversion to sadness. The man who is able to observe the reality for what it is and denies the wishfulness has understood what it really means to become free from ‘ego’ – ‘the self’. This is how the man becomes free and fearless.
It is really underrated how much we overvalue our thinking, thoughts, ideologies – for they always create an escape when reality is not how we want it. The man who is able to see through this can appreciate how life is always a continuous flow and not a starting point or destination.
Krishnamurti thus taught about the ability to observe the reality for what it is and without any preconditioning, thinking or prejudices.

Part 2- Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

Because I am free, unconditioned, whole – not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal – I desire those, who seek to understand me to be free; not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears – from the fear of religion, from fear of salvation from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, the fear of life itself.

– J Krishnamurti, Truth Is A Pathless Land

Jiddu Krishnamurti – one of the greatest philosophers, one of the greatest humans paved a pathway to the modern worldview of the real truth, the real freedom, the real meaning of life, real love and the real life itself. His life story talks for his legacy.

Krishnamurti for me is the perfect person at perfect time to ask the perfect question.

I will focus on how Krishnamurti’s teachings – how his ways to dissect our curiosity paves way to understand what it means to be a conscious human being. The further writing is an attempt to address what is thinking and why we think and if not thinking then what makes us real human beings.

In Part 1 on Krishnamurti’s teachings, we touched on following important aspects of what it means to be a human and how distracted we are from our human side:

Krishnamurti most importantly taught how we are trying to bring peace to our lives by associating it with some meaning or purpose. Those who have fair understanding of the gap between what is thought and what is real, they can understand that the world in which we live – the reality in which we exist is constantly changing. Whereas we as human animals are always in the search of stability, that is how we will be able to optimize our energy and efforts to maximize the chances of survival. We crave for longer and peaceful existence in the continuously changing world.

The very continuously changing nature of the reality goes against our wish to live a peaceful, safe and predictable thereby fully controllable, maneuverable life. This resistance between wish and reality splits our thinking, our thoughts from ourselves. This split of ‘we’ – ourselves and our thoughts is the root of all the existential confusion and false sense of happiness – the gratification.

First, we realize that reality will not bend to our wishes, then we give up on real happiness and create our own world of thoughts filled with our facts, our knowledge, personal point of views, prejudices to create certain worldview. This worldview then keeps on feeding itself to grant us gratification. But there comes a point when we see – confront the reality we were masking and running away from, it brings more pain than ever before. It is painful because we distracted ourselves from it, because it never guaranteed eternal happiness – our thoughts granted that eternal happiness while wearing the coat of wishful thinking – gratification. We have separated ourselves from our thoughts in such way that whenever something bad, wrong, unpleasant happens, the blame can be immediately thrown on these thoughts. Thought which we have assumed to be the result of our upbringing, our culture, the unfairness happened to us. We use our thoughts as a separate entity just because we can conveniently find an escape from reality to create a newer one. it has become a tool to find a justification for everything that is unfair to us.

Once we accept how effectively we are deceiving ourselves we come to know that we ourselves are the thoughts, then responsibility follows. We see however painful it may be, this too shall never be constant. We reject the convenience of self-deception, accept who we are and observe the reality for what it is and not how we want it to be.

The moment we become responsible for our thoughts is when we start to see the reality, we start to see the world for what it is, without prejudices. All deceptions are stripped off. We also realise that thinking was mere swaying between acceptance and rejection of two ends – happiness or sadness. We see how much we were bounded due to this swaying – due to this isolation.

The moment we let go the urge to become happy, we let go urge for gratification, then we let go the wishful thinking, then the self-deception dissolves. Once self-deception dissolves, we start to accept our thoughts are our own, then we start to improve ourselves just for the sake of the real truth not for happiness. The life is unshackled from two possibilities of happy or sad into the infinitely many possibilities the reality can offer.

Touching to these ideas we saw in Part 1, how we assign the purpose of our lives just for the sake of gratification, how we separate thinker and thought to reject responsibility, then how the self-deception keeps this cycle going.

Now moving on to the other teachings by J Krishnamurti, I felt a need to understand the quest for happiness. I mean there is nothing wrong in people wishing to feel happy, safe in their lives. 

Then I realized what the real problem is; it’s not the wish to become happy, it is the acceptance of certain illusions to become happy. I will throw light on how that happens unknowingly and then we will again come back to Krishnamurti’s ideas on those areas.

The Curious Animal

I think what separates humans from animals is the incessant curiosity for anything and everything that is there to experience; sometimes we are curious about non-existent things too. The extent of curiosity might be different in everyone but it is safe to say that we are way more curious than animals. This curiosity always needs the food of thoughts and reality checks to arrive at a conclusion – that is how we are always reinforcing our consciousness. I think one cannot maintain their conscience or consciousness (call it what you want) if you cannot maintain at least small amount of curiosity in life. Animals have natural routines for survival exactly like we do but I think we are more aware of our own being than the animals do. (might be an overstatement, but you get the point)

Curiosity is not just about some sophisticated questioning to certain sophisticated, complicated part of philosophy, it can be rather very simple. A person thinking about what should be done to get the next meal? – is also one type of curiosity – let us call it the curiosity of ways to get the next meal. This curiosity to get next meal is common for both human and rest of the animals but over the time we have found totally innovative ways, the ways in which animals have not found how to address the same curiosity. So much that now we don’t even consider the curiosity of getting the next meal as a curious problem. Being human thus means that our curiosities also keep on evolving faster than the animals. What was peak curiosity for a primitive man is now a low-level curiosity, we now have much high level and more complicated – sophisticated curiosities.  

Starting right from birth till death we carry many curiosities – some of them get answered some remain mysterious, unanswered. The key attribute which remains common in all of us is how satisfied are we when it comes to our curiosities, our personal curiosities? The more curiosities you have found answers to, the more satisfied you will feel. You will have sense of fulfilment; your wishes, ambitions, wants all are connected to your own curiosities. Take one simple example – why do you want that specific job? For some people their curiosity was why some people are happier than others? They see that doing this job gives more money, for some people they see that doing this job will give them happiness, for others this job will wipe away their sorrows. In every possible sense, you can link the curiosity to the very reason of our being.     

The Conscious Thinker

If you look closely to the curiosity, you will immediately accept that thoughts are the most important aspect of who we are. We keep on thinking to address our curiosities until they are addressed satisfactorily. That is exactly why thinking is crucial for humans; it shapes our character, our lives and then the lives of everyone around. Now that I have brought in the point of “thinking” you will feel that thoughts play bigger role than curiosity in our lives. And it is right to feel so. But I have reason to weigh curiosity heavier than thoughts or thinking. You will see that smartness can be found in good spirited people and evil people too. When we can develop technologies to save lives, we have developed technologies to bring about mass destruction too. Looking at the current situations the later look more sophisticated. So, if the good person has better curiosities, he will have his curiosities answered in better ways than the lower curiosities of the evil person. See, both sides can have same curiosities as the purpose of their lives but the ways in which their individual thoughts answer that common curiosity gives us either godly men or evil men. So, curiosity supersedes thinking. How you will address that curiosity is how you will be. That is exactly why thoughts are so important. How consciously you think is how you will have your curiosity answered.

Thinking Is Useless

(Just now that we said that thoughts are important.)

The self is a problem that thought cannot solve.

– J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

When you will appreciate different ways of thinking; the process to create thoughts to answer same type of curiosity and the ways that can create totally different human beings you will see that curiosity is mostly the innocent aspect of who we are but the thoughts take shape, color, aspect of who we are, what our experiences are, how we are treated by the people around us, how we treat others. It is not an understatement when I say that thoughts rarely create the true understanding of the reality. And the farther our thoughts are from the reality the more we experience failure and unfulfillment of expectations, sadder we are. Thoughts can create an excellent sense of reality but if not built properly can make people despise the very reality they live in. The closer you are to reality realer will be your curiosities, the realer will be your thoughts and faster will be your satisfaction to the curiosities. Otherwise, we will keep on playing the games of thinking in certain ways and would never be able to satisfactorily answer the greater curiosities of our lives. Every illusion will create next illusion.

Krishnamurti advises to let go of this game of thinking where every illusion reaps newer and more potent illusion, dragging us away from reality.

Thought has not solved our problems and I don’t think it ever will. We have relied on the intellect to show us the way out of our complexity. The more cunning, the more hideous, the more subtle the intellect is, the greater the variety of systems, of theories, of ideas. And ideas do not solve any of our human problems; they never have and they never will.

– J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

The main intent is to understand how self-protecting our thoughts and thinking are. You must appreciate this. The essence is to understand the fact that if thinking would have really solved our problems, we would have immediately stopped the process of thinking. We would have stopped it because it gave us the final solution to the real problem.

You may in thinking out certain facets of the problem, see more clearly another person’s point of view, but thought cannot see the completeness and fullness of the problem – it can only see partially and a partial answer is not a complete answer, therefore it is not a solution

-J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

Thinking can create false sense of solution but to certain extent, the reality holds more possibilities than that.

We would see that the more we think about something even fundamental the more complicated it becomes. Thinking may help us to understand perspectives but it never serves us the truth of reality as a whole rather it always gives certain dimensional information. Now this certain dimensional information can be easily poisoned with prejudices and not the facts. Thinking actually steals us from the multiple possibilities of the reality. As the problems from thinking multiply themselves, we are now entangled in the problems which are not even there in reality. We are just multiplying thoughts and problems because we know they give instant happiness for reality doesn’t guarantee eternal happiness. We are running away from truth by treating thoughts in superior ways.

Does that mean that thinking steals away the creativity? It seems counterintuitive! Thinking is the reason why we are creative. So, what exactly is going wrong?

The thing that is going wrong is our habit of separating things and comparing them with our previous knowledge; it’s our habit of grouping things in our old understandings. We try to understand newer things with our older understandings. We keep on filling our knowledge bank. We rarely unlearn anything with completely new perspective.

We fail to unlearn, because of our urge to happen things in certain ways. If you want the reality to happen in certain way, you will always be blinded to the reality which could have had better possibilities, better and beyond the limits of your thoughts.

This is why Krishnamurti focused on self-knowledge. Your pivot becomes you rather that the ways in which you want things to be. Once you understand who you are, you see how cunning your mind is, it always tries to create justifications to escape through a never-ending chain of illusive thoughts.

Once you accept who you are, you will see how the reactive thought got generated from you, that thought is you yourself. Now you see who you are. Once you see who you are, you don’t rely on thoughts to understand the reality. This is what builds the bridge between thinker and thought. This is where thinking is no longer required. You see reality for what it is. You become fearless, free from expectations and free from thoughts. Your actions now have intent instead of a wish.

Now, let us see how to maintain the awareness of self and be free from the illusion of never-ending chain of thoughts.

The Real Baseline – Non-Isolation

It seems to me that before we set out on a journey to find reality, to find God, before we can act, before we can have any relationship with another, which is society, it is essential that we begin to understand ourselves first.

… And it does not mean obviously, that self-knowledge is opposed to, or isolated from relationship. It does not mean, obviously, emphasis on the individual, the me, as opposed to the mass, as opposed to another.

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking?

Krishnamurti paved the way to break out of the vicious cycle of self-deception. When ending up in self-referential paradox the basic question one can ask is how the reference is getting created. We see that we do not actually have an eternal, unchanging baseline. The baseline keeps evolving as our beliefs, experiences keep on changing. To understand ourselves is thus one difficult task. It’s like aiming a moving target, a target which keeps on changing all of its attributes. We realize that what we were calling our baseline – our core was just our thought conditioned by our urge for safety, peace and happiness.

Many think that in order to understand self, one has to isolate themselves from others. The rejection of isolation itself is the purpose of understanding self. Rather the more isolated you will be from others more your thoughts and mind would dominate you. The real purpose of self-knowledge is understanding of ourselves as the whole not as the isolated one.

Self-knowledge thus means the rejection of selfishness and the sense of ego. Then the person starts to understand what it means to think about the events and what it means to see the event. Former is limited because we are wishing for it to happen in certain way, latter hold any possibilities because we are not expecting or imposing what should happen.

Because we are craving for certain anticipation, trying to have certain expectation – we try to isolate our experiences to only those expectation. We blind ourselves by isolation. We see that our experiences create a reaction in us which we try to connect with certain memories, feelings. Then they lead to acceptance or rejection based on the sad or happy feeling generated. Then if that feeling is happy, we crave for more of it; if that feeling is bad, we try to suppress it. And the cycle keeps on going. We get tangled in our own thoughts.

Until and unless I don’t accept that ‘I’ am the originator of my thought I can’t really find that which lies beyond that thought. My thought will create another thought based on my urge to find the sense of security. The thinker has to just observe the thought and not expect it to be desirable or undesirable. This is one difficult task. But it guarantees eternal truth.    

So long as effort is divided into the experiencer and the experience, there must be deterioration. Integration is only possible when the thinker is no longer the observer. That is, we know at present there are the thinker and the thought. The observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experienced; there are two different states. Our effort is to bridge the two.

– J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

Krishnamurti explained why our thoughts do so and why we refuse to let go of our thoughts (even though deep down we use our thoughts as a way to justify anything to our convenience, security and peace.) In the pursuit to bring “peace of mind”, the mind created two ends of every thought. The thinker who has already considered himself different from the thought now assumes one side of that thought and then measures his/her worth, goodness/badness by the extent of deterioration from that assumed baseline.

In reality, the very assumptions of either one of the ends of the thought prevents the person to have exposure to the real possibilities lying on the other end rather beyond the whole horizon.

The answer to come out of such bias is to observe that the originator of the thought is the thought itself. There are no two entities – thinker and thought are exactly same. This is where the observer and observed stare into each other’s eyes. Now the observer is not expecting the observed to become a certain way. Observer is now just observing that what it is. There is no need to move to next thought. Only thing that remains is to observe things for what they are. 

We now think the thought is separate from the thinker, but is that so? We would like to think it is, because then the thinker can explain matters through his thought. The effort of the thinker is to become more or become less; and therefore, in that struggle, in that action of the will, in ‘becoming’, there is always the deteriorating factor; we are pursuing a false process and not a true process.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

When one starts truly observing there is no need to select one side of a thought, so there is no urge to favor one outcome, rather there is no wish to have certain expectation. As there is no wish to a certain way the mind does not work towards cultivation of one side and deterioration of the another one. Now mind just sees that which is there.

I divide myself into the high and the low in order to continue.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

Earlier there were only two possibilities – either cultivation of that which is desired and suppression/ deterioration of that which was undesirable. But now that when thinker and thought are bridged there are no side, no prejudices, no expectations. This opens totally new possibilities, and these possibilities are as real as the reality we are observing, the reality we are trying to understand.

You will realize how limited we were by our thoughts.

You will see how illusive the thinking loop seems, even though you “thought” your imagination was infinite. Your imagination now feels limited because of your prejudices, biases, memories, culture, knowledge.

Our imagination is way more limited than we think. That is exactly why observing without any prejudice becomes more important. We just refuse to do it because we don’t want to get overwhelmed by the infinite seemingly life-threatening possibilities. We are fearful. We think we are not ready.

 Be Watchful Of The Isolation – The division

If I am aware that I am greedy, what happens? I make an effort not to be greedy, either for sociological reasons or for religious reasons; that effort will always be in a small limited circle; I may extend the circle but it is always limited. Therefore, the deteriorating factor is there. But when I look a little more deeply ad closely, I see that the maker of the effort is the cause of greed and he is greed itself; and I also see that there is no ‘me’ and greed, existing separately, but that there is only greed. If I realize that I am greedy, that there is not the observer who is greedy but I am myself greed, then our whole question is entirely different; our response to it is entirely different; then our effort is not destructive.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

This is revolutionary in many senses. As we are dependent on thoughts to understand reality. This dependence is filled with preconditioning right from the moment we are born. Therefore, we always try to mold our observation in the shapes of what we wish to become. If I wish to become a world known robber, I will see the act of stealing as a good one – a stepping stone in my “career”, if I wish to become a world known cop/detective I will see the act of stealing as a wrong one.

But if I have no wish to either become a robber or a cop, I now will have totally new concept of what stealing is. If I am observing a robbery right now with no prejudices, I am seeing the desperation, fear of getting caught in the eyes of the robber. I am seeing the mental stress that cop is going through to solve the case; if the cop is a smart one, I am seeing how he feels sorry for the robbers and how happy he feels that he can easily catch them.

Without prejudices you see that the reality morphs according to the wishes of its observers – the observers having certain expectations from it, certain prejudices.

It is that problem which is creative, in which there is no sense of ‘I’ dominating, becoming, positively or negatively. We must come to that state if we would be creative.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

You have to thus let go of the what is expected and observe what is happening without any preconditions. Then you will see that the negativity or positivity of the same reality became in that certain way because you had already picked either one of the sides. If you wanted to behave like a cop – a successful robbery is nightmare for you; if you wanted to behave life a thief same is the happiest moment of your life.

But if you just want to observe what is there in reality, you will see the desperation in the eyes of the robber and the ways cop chooses to hunt the thief down – even if it would steal his ideals.

You see people degrading themselves to have an illusion of the life they desire. You will feel like helping both of them. You will not feel of favoring either one of them.

This may seem like a person who has let go of life or like a sage, but trust me once you have this real worldview, you will see that you are more than yourself. You will see yourself extending to others, you will have this innate urge to reach out to others, to help them to come out of the illusion of happiness and sadness. You will help people in surprisingly different ways – not just right or wrong ways.  

What is important is to see that the maker of effort and the object towards which he is making effort are the same. That requires enormously great understanding, watchfulness, to see how the mind divides itself into the high and the low – the high being the security, the permanent entity – but still remaining a process of thought and therefore of time.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

Once you accept yourself in such way you no longer have craving for happiness and aversion towards sadness. You will see that this current happiness is short lived and so will be the sadness arriving after it. You will see that reality is just a tide of happiness and sadness, we are just swaying in between.

Rather you will start seeing that reality is not just a wave between sadness and happiness – it has other attributes for which words like happiness or sadness would fall short to describe them. You are existing between the superposition of many such waves. This is the real journey towards a creative and realest real life.

You will see that you are not affected by these waves. Not affected does not mean that you are insensitive or numb to these aspects of life, rather now you are more sensitive and open to infinite possibilities of life. You don’t get tangled in thoughts, you now act to pass through the life, instead of attempting to control it. You become fearless. You don’t start any journey to achieve freedom in the end. You become free in the first place before you start the journey to experience the life lying ahead. You truly become free in reality.

We will see in detail why Krishnamurti said that freedom is at the beginning in next part.

“Until we understand how to transcend this separative thinking, this process of giving emphasis to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, whether in the collective form or in individual form, we shall not have peace”

J Krishnamurti

References and further reading:

  1. Truth is a pathless land – J Krishnamurti
  2. The First and Last Freedom – J Krishnamurti
  3. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 1 – The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts
  4. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 3 – Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality

The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts

Remembering J Krishnamurti on his birthday.
The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways.
The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal – has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the reality in which he was born just for the sake of false sense of short-lived peace. The silver lining of this tragedy is that we ourselves hold the key to our peace. Self-knowledge holds the key to the peace.
We can only understand and appreciate reality and come out of the self-deception once we let go of the separation between the thinker and thought. The rejection of the convenience of self-deceptions paves the way to the real freedom. J Krishnamurti’s teaching thus shows us the path to experience the life in our own truest ways.

Part 1 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

Jiddu Krishnamurti – one of the greatest philosophers, one of the greatest humans paved a pathway to the modern worldview of the real truth, the real freedom, the real meaning of life, real love and the real life itself. His life story talks for his ideology. Right from his childhood he was nurtured to be the chosen one – the spiritual guide for the world – “the World Teacher”. Certain influential people were already anticipating the coming of the world teacher who will show the way of life to people and bring light into their lives. This society was called the “Theosophical Society”. The Order of the Star in the East (OSE) was the theosophical society which was responsible to let the world know that the world teacher – Maitreya has arrived on earth to show the real path of our very being.

What has created a deep impact on me is the way Krishnamurti handled this matter. That is exactly why his place in my heart is immovable. When the time was right Krishnamurti dissolved the order (keep in mind he was the leader of the OSE). He was groomed to be the chosen one. He had every chance to utilize that for the benefit of the mankind. Krishnamurti dissolved the order and asked every member of the order to not follow him and create their own path to the truth. His talk “Truth is a pathless land” given on the occasion of dissolution of the order of the star in the east is a testimony on what greatness the humanity awaits at the end of their individual journey of their very being. It strengthens the belief that we were really made for something simple yet great.

“I do not want you to agree with me, I do not want you to follow me, I want you to understand what I am saying. This understanding is necessary because your belief has not transformed you but only complicated you, and because you are not willing to face things as they are.”

– J Krishnamurti, Truth Is A Pathless Land

This is me remembering Krishnamurti on his birthday. Krishnamurti for me it the perfect person at perfect time to ask the perfect question. My explanation for the train of concepts and ideas is really long (I apologize for that) so the discussion is split into few parts. Lucky that we had J Krishnamurti who simplified life for us but I think it’s an interesting exercise to connect the dots on how Krishnamurti can remain relevant for the eternity of humanity.

I will focus on how Krishnamurti’s teachings – how the ways to dissect our curiosity paves way to understand what it means to be a conscious human being. The further writing is an attempt to address what is thinking and why we think and if not thinking then what makes us real human beings. Trust me, thinking feels the most unnecessary part when you understand what Krishnamurti taught throughout his life.

Purpose of Life – The Safety And Peace In My Existence

“What is it that most of us are seeking? What is it that each one of us wants? Especially in this restless world, where everybody is trying to find some kind of peace, some kind of happiness, a refuge, surely it is important to find out, isn’t it? what it is that we are trying to discover?”

– J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

Krishnamurti tried to answer the curiosity of all curiosities. When we are trying to address curiosities, we find our very own existence at the focal point of the discussion. Then we ask if I am here why am I here? What should I be doing now that I exist?

It is fairly simple yet fundamental question. Krishnamurti was the expert of creating a chain of questions and everyone seeking the reality could create a path of their own to the truth when they honestly started answering these questions. Instead of bringing horse to the water and forcing it to drink the water even if it is not thirsty Krishnamurti’s talks have this way that the horse first becomes aware what it means to be thirsty, then it sees that it is really thirsty, it sees what it is thirsty for and then Krishnamurti’s questions send that horse on its own path to the waters. In the end whether horse finds water or not that is the matter of what the reality is. Horse is fine with that.

Krishnamurti called out that we all want our suffering to end eventually and be happy. But he pointed out that the moment we sense that happiness – every type of happiness is not permanent then we seek for the gratification. Because happiness being a byproduct of process cannot be artificially created whereas gratification can be easily and artificially created. We can create gratification immediately by fooling ourselves. Trust me everyone is ready to fool themselves if it guarantees peace, comfort, safety and thereby gratification – a false sense of happiness.    

“I am afraid most of us are seeking gratification. We want to be gratified; we want to find a sense of fullness at the end of our search.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

We create this gratification by isolating ourselves from certain parts of truth which are painful to accept. That is why we have this notion that our thoughts are what we are, if you are happy inside then everything around you will seem happy. So, our thoughts start creating their own reality. This is done by isolation and division. Deep down we know that the uncomfortable truth is the realest reality but we choose to ignore it for the gratification.

“Mere isolation in an enclosing idea is not a release from conflict.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

The moment we start building new understandings based on the thoughts responsible for our current gratification we again find those sidelined uncomfortable truths to be the part of the bigger problem, bigger curiosity – now a bigger conflict.

Unless we are not embracing the reality however uncomfortable it may seem we will never find the real peace. It feels really counterintuitive and paradoxical. How can I be happy, peaceful when I recognize that uncomfortable thing? I mean this is the exact uncomfortable thing that steals my peace.

The answer is the inherent nature of our thoughts to divide, split, segregate things/values/attributes to understand the reality.

Thinker Is The Thought

“We do not know ourselves. We know a lot about facts, what the books have said; but we do not know for ourselves, we do not have a direct experience.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

Krishnamurti always tried to put a special emphasis on how our own thinking is designed to fool ourselves – the thinker. As we have already appreciated that when the truth – the reality is painful we try to find peace not by the pursuit of truth but by grouping, focusing on thoughts, biases which create gratification and then happiness. We fool ourselves through our own structured thought process however deviating it might be from reality. We create such belief system and accept, follow only those thoughts which keep on feeding those belief systems.

There always comes a time in life when this belief system gets challenged by the very reality we ignored just for the peace of our mind.

So, it is clear that however painful it may seem the truth will always be there. If not eternal peace the next best thing we can have, is the eternal awareness of how that truth, that reality will create pain, how we would react to it (or don’t even react to it) and the way to pass through that pain. This is not possible when we are seeking gratification. In gratification, we just want our wishes to somehow align with our thinking, so we start bluffing ourselves through certain set of thoughts.

“Truth may be something entirely different; and I think it is utterly different from what you can see, conceive, formulate.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

The real peace is knowing that peace is not eternal. Best we can do is to at least be aware what it is instead of what it should be. This is possible when we question the origin of thoughts.

And as I have said before, Krishnamurti was master of questioning the very question! Now he questions the questioner – the thinker. The one from whom thought gets created.

“When you say, ‘I am seeking happiness’, is the seeker different from the thought? Are they not a joint phenomenon, rather than separate processes? Therefore, it is essential, is it not? To understand the seeker, before you try to find out what it is he seeking.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

You can say that whole purpose of Krishnamurti’s teaching, the purpose of his whole life was to make people understand themselves first, to make the thinkers aware of themselves. Then only it is possible to see how the thought gets created from thinker. One has to do this themselves, there is no external agency to understand this.

Krishnamurti understood the impact of truth being conveyed through direct experience. You can read many truths, hear many truths, believe many truths but the truth that you experience yourselves will have bigger impact on how you understand everything.

(That is also why empathy is very important. That could be topic for another day.)

“Does self-knowledge come through search, through following someone else, through belonging to any particular organization, through reading books, and so on? After all, that is the main issue, is it not? that so long as I do not understand myself, I have no basis for thought, and all my search will be in vain. I can escape into illusions, I can run away from contention, strife, struggle; I can worship another; I can look for my salvation through somebody else. But so long as I am ignorant of myself, I have no basis for thought, for affection, for action.

But that is the last thing we want: to know ourselves. Surely that is the only foundation on which we can build. But, before we can build, before we can transform, before we can condemn or destroy, we must know that which we are.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

Here Krishnamurti solved the self-referential paradox of truth. When we are using our thoughts to create an understanding of reality which could give us happiness in the mid journey, we realize that reality is actually painful, so we condition our thoughts to certain aspects so that we would at least mask the portion of reality that creates uncomfortable situation. Then for the next quest. the ‘so-called’ suppressed truth brings its head up, so we further keep on masking it. Now we are far away from what is real and what we believe.

That is why Krishnamurti talks about a baseline. A baseline which is not created from external agency. A baseline created from within, created by direct experiences. This baseline can only be created when we see how we ourselves are the generator, originator of our thoughts.

The Convenience Of Self-Deception

“We now think the thought is separate from the thinker; but is that so? We would lie to think it is, because then the thinker can explain matters through his thought. The effort of the thinker is to become more or become less; and therefore, in that struggle, in that action of the will, in ‘becoming’, there is always the deteriorating factor; we are pursuing a false process and not a true process.”

-J Krishnamurti, The Thinker And The Thought

What Krishnamurti spotted and beautifully explained is that we separate our thoughts from ourselves because it becomes easy to disown their consequences when we see that those thoughts may not give us the happiness, peace we wanted. That is why the separation of thoughts from their thinker is one convenient trick we keep on playing to feed gratification. This process leads to self-deception. Then we end up in a thought process where we are so desperate for gratification (because happiness is not eternal so we try to create some convenient form of happiness i.e., gratification) that we are always in a hurry to achieve that which we wished, that which we desired. This self-deception for false security keeps on building until the reality hits hard. Then that pain brings grave hopelessness.

“The seeker is always imposing this deception upon himself; no one can impose it upon him; he himself does it. We create deception and then we become slaves to it.”

-J Krishnamurti, Self-deception

There is a reason why the ultimate face-off with reality hits hard. It’s because our process of separation of thought from ourselves is so potent and self-feeding that it leaves no responsibility on thinker and also gives ways to the thinker to run away from the painful reality through asserting any convenient justification. The cycle of self-deception keeps on feeding itself.  Then this same person starts deceiving others who are also desperately in the search of gratification. (These are the false leaders, messiahs who claim to have found the ultimate eternal truth.)

“…the more we deceive ourselves the greater is the strength in the deception; for it gives us a certain vitality, a certain energy, a certain capacity which entails the imposing of our deception on others.”

-J Krishnamurti, Self-deception

(And that is how religions work.)

That is exactly why Krishnamurti was against the formalization of any religious, spiritual society. Even one self-deceiving person can create a complete cage for the people around him and once people sense the security and peace even if it is not the reality people start worshiping that false truth because somehow it easily provides gratification.

Conclusion to Part-1

The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways. The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal – has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the reality in which he was born just for the sake of false sense of short-lived peace. The silver lining of this tragedy is that we ourselves hold the key to our peace. Self-knowledge holds the key to the peace.

Krishnamurti’s teachings help us to come out of the cycle of suffering and fear.

Once we start walking on the chain of ideas presented by J Krishnamurti, we realize that we conveniently created a barrier between our sense of being – the thinker and the thoughts because the moment we sense that things won’t go our way we can disown our current thought and bend it into something else through self-deception. This creates an easiest way to gratification – a false sense of happiness but that is not the reality. We can only understand and appreciate reality and come out of the self-deception once we let go of the separation between the thinker and thought. The rejection of the convenience of self-deceptions paves the way to the real freedom. 

We will see how isolation creates bias in our thinking, what is the role of mind, how can we unlock the infinite possibilities in reality and the real meaning of being a conscious human being in the next part as taught by J Krishnamurti.

Remembering J Krishnamurti on his birthday. The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways. The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal - has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the reality in which he was born just for the sake of false sense of short-lived peace. The silver lining of this tragedy is that we ourselves hold the key to our peace. Self-knowledge holds the key to the peace. We can only understand and appreciate reality and come out of the self-deception once we let go of the separation between the thinker and thought. The rejection of the convenience of self-deceptions paves the way to the real freedom. J Krishnamurti's teaching thus shows us the path to experience the life in our own truest ways.

References:

  1. Truth is a pathless land – J Krishnamurti
  2. The First and Last Freedom – J Krishnamurti
  3. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge: Part 2 – Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life
  4. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 3 – Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality

Philosophical fate of AI and Humans

Alan Turing was the very first person in the world to formally ask- “Can machines think?” The ideas he presented in his famous paper has laid the pathways leading to the creation of modern computer science and today and tomorrow of artificial intelligence. There is no doubt that there will be a time when machines would be able to think just like humans do, but that should not be a negative aspect. There will be practical limitations to a human-like thinking machine too. So, the game would never be single sided. This should push humanity on a completely new path of evolution. That is also how we have become the humans we are today from the primitive apes.

Alan Turing’s world famous paper on future of human-like thinking ability in machines

The holy doubt – “Can machines think?”

We all know how modern machines/ computers have great abilities to make systematic thinking and take decisions accordingly; this is obviously attributed to the very programming embedded into them by us human beings. Many breakthroughs in storage capacities of computers, size of computers, efficiency of these machines, computation capabilities, evolution of programing languages, intersection of neuroscience and computer science, accessibility of these highly powerful machines to masses have shown world that such machines can do amazing marvels.

You know where I am going with this. Not mentioning Artificial Intelligence in these breakthroughs would be a straight crime. AI has unlocked a totally different capability in computing for which some are optimistic and some are fearful. In a crude sense, how AI stands out from other concepts of computing is its ability to change it programming to achieve given goal. This concept is very normal even for today’s child.

But, would you be open to such self-programming machine 75 years ago? A time when there were only mechanical calculators, electronic computers were in their infancy and were created only for certain restricted problem solving and number crunching. Even the experts of those times found this idea foolish because of the practical limitations of those times. How could a machine think like a human being when for doing some mechanical number crunching it takes such many resources, doesn’t have its own consciousness, its own soul, has no emotions to react to given stimuli? In simple words “thinking” is somehow associated as a special ability humans got because of the soul they have, the conscience they have (granted by nature, the Creator, the Almighty, the God or whatever but some higher power)

It is our tendency as human beings to have this notion of being superior species amongst all which brings in the confidence that machines cannot think. That is why this idea seemed foolish, but now we are comfortable (to some extent but not completely) with the idea of thinking machines.     

Alan Turing – a British mathematician, the code breaker of Enigma, the man who made Britain remain strategically resilient in World War 2, the Father of theoretical computer science wrote a paper which laid down the blueprint of what the future with AI would look like. For the times when this paper was published all the ideas were seemingly imaginary, impractical, and totally impossible to bring into the reality. But as the times changed, Alan’s ideas have become more and more important for the times in which we are living in and the coming future of Artificial Intelligence.

Weirdly enough, this paper which laid the foundations of artificial intelligence – thinking machines was published in journal of psychology and philosophy called “Mind”.

The world-famous concept of ‘Turing Test’ is explained by Alan in this very paper. He called this test as a game – an “Imitation Game”.

The paper reflects the genius of Alan Turing and how he had the foresight of the future – the future with thinking machine. After reading this paper you will appreciate why and how Alan was able to exactly point out every problem that would rise in future and their solutions. He was only limited by the advancements not happened in his time.

The Imitation Game   

Alan posed a simple question in this paper –

Can machines think?

The answer today (even after 75 years) is of course a straight “NO”. (Deep down we are realizing that even though machines can’t think they are way closer to copying the actions involved in thinking or “imitating” a thinking living thing)

The genius of Alan Turing was to pose practicality to find the answers to this question. He created very logical arguments in this paper where he used the technique of proof by contradiction to prove the feasibility of creating such ‘thinking machine’. The AI which has evolved today is the very result of following Alan’s blueprint for making thinking machines.

The famous Turing Test – the Imitation game is a game where an interrogator has to tell the difference between a machine and a human being by the responses they give to his/her questions.

The machine is not expected to think like humans but at least imitate them. The responses may feel completely human but it is not a condition or compulsion that machine should exactly think like a person. This practicality introduced by Alan and his arguments built upon this idea shows what are our limitations when we are actually thinking or making any decisions. This paper will change and also challenge the way we think or do anything. This paper might humble you if you think that we are superior beings because we can think and have/ express emotions. (Trust me you would also question ‘What is love?’ if love was your next answer to justify our superiority after reading this paper but that is not what Alan was focusing when he wrote this paper.)

The idea is not about creating an artificial replica of human, it is to create a machine which would respond just like humans do, the goal is to make their responses indistinguishable from ‘real’ human beings.

There are hundreds of simplified explanations on Turing test (ask Chat GPT if you want) which Alan has discussed in this paper but that is not my interest of discussion hereon.

I will be focusing only on the arguments made by Alan to prove why it is completely practical to create human-like thinking machines. My intent in doing so is that to show how we as humans can also be challenged by our practical limitations. These arguments also show a way to humans where they will get overpowered/ surpassed by AI. This does not mean that AI will eradicate humanity, rather it shows new pathways in which humanity would evolve. So, for me the arguments end on an optimistic note. Surely AI will take over the things which make us who we are but it will also push us into some completely unconventional pathways of rediscovery as the smart species.

The way in which Alan intended the Imitation game was the mode of question-answers – an interview. You would question why didn’t he think of a challenge where exact human like machine need to be created – that would be more challenging for the machines. I think, the idea behind rejecting the necessity for a machine to be in human form is like this-

The creation of human body is very similar to cloning a human body or augmenting the human parts to a mechanical skeleton. What is more difficult is to impart the consciousness and the awareness which is (supposedly) responsible to impart thinking in humans. So, even if a fully developed machine exactly looking like human being is in front of you and you are unable to tell that it is a machine, the moment that human-like machine would start expressing its thoughts everything would be easily given away.

In simple words, Alan was confident that the biological marvels, genetic engineering, cell engineering would easily take us to the physical replication of human form. What would be difficult is to create a set of logics (or self-thinking mechanism) which would demonstrate human like (thinking) capabilities. And such abilities can easily be checked by mere one on one conversation. Such was the genius of Alan Turing to bring such complexities using this simple experiment of Imitation Game.

We as human beings have certain insights, intuitions (I don’t want to use this word but don’t have any alternative word) which gives away if it is a machine or a human.

What Alan did masterfully and why he deserves full credit is that he pointed out the factors which can make machines respond and ‘think’ more like humans. While creating the confusions about the nature of human mind, consciousness, awareness, thoughts and their limitations and ambiguity, Alan also gave the possible arguments to solve these confusions.

Alan proves that human-like thinking machines can be created and he proves this by contradiction of the objections raised against this idea. I am diving deep into these objections hereon:

  1. The theological objection

The rigor that Alan used to prove his point deserves appreciation. Despite being a logical thinker and mathematician, he cared to answer the religious point of view, he wanted no stone left unturned while making an argument.

Alan aggressively (verbally) hammered the idea of God’s exclusivity to grant the immortal soul to only humans, the soul responsible to make humans think. Alan says that if soul is the reason, then animals have souls too. The true comparison then should be between living and nonliving things to support the point that machines cannot think. It is because they are nonliving things they have no soul so they cannot think.

But if the great almighty can give soul to an animal, then why this omnipotent God decided to not give same souls to the machines? Alan knew that any blind theologian would find a contrived argument to prove this idea but he clarifies his point by presenting the historical mistakes religious institutes committed because the truth was hard to swallow. Alan gives the examples of Galileo who presented that earth was not the center of the universe, against the ideas of Church. Later church was proved wrong.

So, even if the religious arguments may seem easy to understand, easy to ‘swallow’ but if they are not fitting in the logic, it makes no sense to take them forward. The theological inconsistency ‘As machines have no soul granted by the God, they cannot think like humans’ which Alan pointed out  was totally false. He justifies this point using the logic of God remaining the ultimate creator.

Alan explained that if we are stealing the powers of God to create a human-like thinking ‘thing’ its not a crime or a blasphemy. Does procreating and making children “to whom also God grants the soul for thinking” mean crime? In similar spirit ‘machines’ – thinking machines are our children whom to God should bless with his powers.    

“In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”

No doubt he would also have been a great priest if he had thought of changing his career to theology.

  1. The ‘Heads in the Sand’ objection

Alan gives worst case scenarios on the superiority of human species out of all species. What if we are “the superior” species? If that is true then there is no reason to worry about thinking machines, they won’t surpass us.

But what if what we know is wrong? We have been proven wrong many times in history. What if we are not the superior species? Then there is no sense in blindly believing that we are superior. Rather this illusion of superiority steels us from the chances to fight the battle of superiority.

So, in either case, we cannot run out of the fate of thinking machines Vs humans. We may fake it, run from it, hide it from rest of the population but it is not in our favor if we do so.

“We like to believe that Man is in some subtle way superior to the rest of creation. It is best if he can be shown to be necessarily superior, for then there is no danger of him losing his commanding position.”
  1. The Mathematical Objection

Very beautifully Alan brought the Gödel’s incompleteness theorem to prove his mathematical argument. According to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, if we start to prove every mathematical argument there exists in the universe, we end up into some arguments for which there exists no proof. In order to ensure that the whole mathematical system remains stable, consistent on logic one has to accept those arguments true. So, once such logically unprovable but true in existent reality statements are found in nature they create a new system of mathematical understanding.

In simple words, every mathematically logical system is inconsistent in the end, in order to remove that inconsistency a new rule must be accepted which create a new system of mathematics. (Which again would be inconsistent)

Further oversimplification goes like this,

A farmer wouldn’t know how to make a shoe. So, he would need knowledge of a cobbler. A cobbler wouldn’t know how to make metal tools, so he would need help of blacksmiths. Even if they have each other’s knowledge, skills they must accept certain thumb rules passed down from their ancestors (which are always true but unprovable) to master each other’s skills.  

So, even if you are creating a thinking machine based on purely mathematical system the mere limitation of mathematics will stop it from overpowering, surpassing humans.

This also does not mean that thinking machines are defeat-able. A machine with one mathematical system in totally different domain could support this logically inconsistent system just like the villagers with different professions.

Alan Turing’s doctoral thesis contains the ideas of Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem so it is a joy to read these arguments in this paper. They are well formed and super-intelligent.

(If you are really interested what this argument means, you can research the efforts that went into proving Fermat’s last theorem. A new field of mathematics had to be created to prove this simple to explain but difficult to prove mathematical theorem.)

There will always be something cleverer than the existing one – for humans and for thinking machines too.

“There would be no question of triumphing simultaneously over all machines. In, short, then, there might be men cleverer than any given machine, but then again there might be other machines cleverer again, and so on.”
  1. The argument from Consciousness

Even if the machine is feeling and thinking exactly like a human being, how could the “real humans” know that it does so? – Alan’s new argument.

“The only way to know that a man thinks, is to be that particular man. It is in fact the solipsistic point of view. It may be the most logical view to hold but it makes communication of ideas difficult.”

Communication between machines and the humans and its quality would be key proof to understand whether the machine thinks like human beings or not. Even if the machine is really thinking exactly like humans, it is futile if it cannot communicate so to humans.

(That is exactly why The Turing test with mere typed communication is more than enough to check the thinking ability of machines.)

It is the great philosophical mind of Alan to use the limitations of Solipsism to justify his point. According to solipsism all the world exists in the mind of the person because if the person dies then it doesn’t matter if world is there or not.

The key limitation of solipsism is that your survival is not directly connected to your mere thinking. If I think ‘I am dead’ that does not immediately kill me. If I think that I have eaten a lot without actually eating anything, that doesn’t end my hunger in ‘reality’. So, reality is not only your mind.

Also, solipsism fails to answer the common experiences we have in a group. If my mind is my world, I can create any rules for my world and things would always go as I desire. But that doesn’t happen in reality. There are certain ways, truths which are common to all of us that is why our world is not just our mind, rather it may be a shared world. You alone are not the representation of whole reality.

So, even if we accept that the machine ‘inwardly’ thinks like human being, it has to share some common truths to the interrogator to prove its humanly ways of thinking.

“I do not wish to give the impression that I think there is no mystery about consciousness. There is for instance, something of a paradox connected with any attempt to localize it. But I do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question…. (the question – can machines think? Can they at least imitate humans? – the Imitation Game)”
  1. Argument from various disabilities

Alan is challenging the idea that even if machines are successful in thinking exactly like humans, they won’t be able to do certain things which humans can do better.

It’s like a human saying to a thinking machine –

“You machines can think like us but can you enjoy literature and poetry like we humans do, can you have sex just like humans do, enjoy it and procreate just like we (human) do? This is exactly why your thinking is not a human thinking.”

The key point Alan is trying to prove is that people always need a justification of given machine’s ability (through its ways of working, maybe its architecture, its technology, its components, its sensors) to prove that certain capability of the machine. When we are showing these justifications, we are also telling people indirectly what it cannot do thereby its disabilities. One ability would point to other disability.

People do not accept black box models in order to justify ability of the machine.

“Possibly a machine might be made to enjoy this delicious dish, but any attempt to make one do so would be idiotic. What is important about this disability is that it contributes to some of the other disabilities.”

In same fashion one argument is that even if machine could think like humans, it is difficult to have its own opinion. Alan strikes that too.

“The claim that a machine cannot be the subject if its own thought can of course only be answered if it can be shown that the machine has some thought with some subject matter.”

The key disability which was preventing Alan from creating a working thinking machine was the enormous storage space. You will appreciate this point today because you know how drastically storage capabilities have improved over the time. These improvements in storage created the AI we see today, although processing power is also on factor and there are other factors too but it boils down to the ability to simultaneously handle lot and lots of data.

Alan had this mathematical insight that once the storage ability is expanded enough the thinking machines is a practical reality. (Now researchers are not only working on to further improve storage capability but special efforts are also taken to effectively compress data. Ask Chat GPT about the Hutter Prize)

So, Alan makes a point that having variety of opinions in order to ‘think for itself’ machines don’t need logic, they need enough storage space just to process them simultaneously to create a new thought. In terms of humans, the more information and logic you can handle the crisper your understanding are. Same would be the case for thinking machines.

“The criticism that a machine cannot have much diversity of behavior is just a way of saying that it cannot have much storage capacity. “
  1. Lady Lovelace’s Objection

Charles Babbage was the first person to technically create calculator with memory – a programmable computer which they called Analytical Engine. Even though he knew how the Analytical Engine works Ada Lovelace created programs and published them to the masses to prove the effectiveness of the Analytical Engine. She was the first programmer of computer.   

Lady Lovelace’s key argument is based on the idea that the computer thereby a thinking machine cannot think for itself because it can only use what we have provided it. As we have provided whatever we know and have it cannot think outside of that information and generate new understandings, The machines cannot think “originally”.

Alan strikes down this argument easily using the idea of enough storage space. If the machine can store large enough data and instructions then it can create new inferences, original inference.

“Who can be certain that ‘original work’ that he has done was not simply growth of the seed planted in him by teaching, or the effect of following well-known general principles.”

Alan questioned the very nature of originality. Only a genius can do this in my opinion. Alan showed the world that the things which we call original are inspired, copied from something already existent. It is just matter of how unknown we are to this new thing.

He builds further upon that saying that if machines can think originally then they should surprise us. That is reality. Machines do surprise us by using unconventional approaches to our daily tasks. 

Alan links new argument for further justification, if machines can think originally then they can surprise us. In order for us to not get surprised we must get immediate understanding of what machine presents which never happens when such events happen. So, machines can think originally and can surprise us.

“The view that machines cannot give rise to surprises is due, I believe, to a fallacy to which philosophers and mathematicians are particularly subject, This is the assumption that as soon as a fact is presented to a mind all consequences of that fact spring into the mind simultaneously with it.”

What a brilliant argument!

  1. Argument from Continuity

“The nervous system is certainly not a discrete-state machine. A small error in the information about the size of a nervous impulse impinging on a neuron, may make a large difference to the size of the outgoing impulse. It may be argued that, this being so, one cannot expect to be able to mimic the behavior of the nervous system with a discrete-state system.”

Alan talks about an attempt to create thinking machines by mimicking nervous system which is a continuous system. A system which works in wave, signals (analog) and not in ones and zeros (discrete).

Alan says that even if we use such analog system in Turing test, the outputs it would give would be probabilistic instead of definite. This will actually make the interrogator difficult to distinguish human response from the machine one. Humans would be more frequently unsure and will give such probabilistic answers more frequently.  

  1. The argument from Informality of Behavior
“If each man had a definite set of rules of conduct by which be regulated his life, he would be no better than a machine. But there are not such rules, so men cannot be machines.”

The idea that machines work on certain defined rule even if they can alter their own program by themselves in order to think like humans, it feels obvious that they will be more formal and stuck to their rules while responding. This formality would give away their non-human nature.

Alan questions the very nature of what is means to have laws in a logical setup. Taking support from the Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem, not even single system – single logical system can confidently remain purely on its laws. It would assume some arbitrary point to make some sense out of given data even if it is using some mathematical frameworks. (Remember the simulations where you put garbage in and the simulations runs perfectly giving garbage out. But you know its garbage because you have certain test to judge the output with reality which are objective.)

There is no such objectivity to judge informality of a system – the word and logic itself says it all. Our search for formal laws would never end and this will always keep on creating new laws and new inconsistencies and informalities. There is no end.    

“We cannot so easily convince ourselves of the absence of complete laws of behavior as of complete rules of conduct. The only way we know of for finding such laws is scientific observation, and we certainly know of no circumstances under which we could say, ‘We have searched enough. There are no such laws.’”
  1. The Argument from Extra-sensory Perception
“The idea that our bodies move simply according to the known laws of physics, together with some others not yet discovered but somewhat similar, would be one of the first to go. This argument is to my mind quite a strong one. One can say in reply that many scientific theories seem to remain in practice, in spite of clashing with ESP; that in fact once can get along very nicely if one forgets about it.”

Again, Alan left no stone unturned. He made sure that even the pseudo-science fails to support the idea that machines cannot think like humans.

He explains that even if the human competing against the machine mimicking humans has telepathic abilities to know states of the machine or even the interrogator, it would actually confuse the interrogator. The only thing such telepathic person can do differently is to under-perform intentionally which again would confuse the interrogator.

The idea is that even when we are not sure of how such supernatural things works our current understanding of things and their workings are just fine. The supernatural things are not interfering in our formal understanding of nature and reality.

The implications of Alan Turing’s Paper on Computing Machinery and Intelligence

All the ideas explained by Alan in this paper are responsible for the modern technologies like efficient data storage, data compression, artificial neural networks, self-programming machines, black box models, machine learning algorithms, iterative learning, data storage, manipulation thereby data science, analog computing, self-learning, supervised learning algorithms, Generative Pre-Trained Transformers (GPTs) and what not.

This paper is holy grail for not only modern computer science but also for the literature and popular culture. Once you appreciate the ideas in this paper you will be able to see the traces of these ideas across all the modern science fiction we are consuming all the time.

Alan created practical ideas which were possible to implement in future based on the coming technological revolutions he foresaw. He logically knew that it is possible but the genius of him was to lay the practical foundation of what and how it needs to be done which is guiding our and will guide future generations.

Conclusion

What is there for humans if machines start thinking like humans?

For this, I will address each argument posed by Alan

  1.  The theological objection

God will actually bless us because we extended his (or her I don’t know) powers to create something like his own creation through thinking machines.

  1. The ‘Heads in the Sand’ objection

Even if thinking machines surpass us, we have to live with it and create our new ecosystem to ensure our survival. Even though for given times we are superior species, other species are existing with us in the same time with their special abilities. There is no running away from any possible outcome of this scenario.

  1. The Mathematical Objection

The mathematics itself restricts a single machine from knowing everything. So even if multiple machines come together to create superior understandings same would happen for humans. There will always be this race of superiority, sometimes machines will lead sometimes humans will lead. There is no conclusion to this race as far as the inherent flaw of mathematics goes.

  1. The argument from Consciousness

A machine has to be the communicator of its human thinking, it cannot remain in the dark abyss of self-cognizance and remain away from humans. If a machine starts thinking like humans, we all would definitely know about it. A machine has to communicate its ability of awareness to, it will a surprise but a very short lived one.

  1. Argument from various disabilities

If we don’t know how machines think like human that would not prevent them from thinking like humans. We have to accept the black boxes through which machines would think like humans. That is the only sane way out. We humans too are filled with disabilities but they are not directly linked to the ways we are able to think.

  1.  Lady Lovelace’s Objection

Machines will surprise us, they can also create original ideas, because what we call original is something that lies out of the limits of our current thinking. Rather it is an optimistic idea that if machines could think like humans do then they may give us totally new ideas for new discoveries, breakthroughs.

  1. Argument from Continuity

Continuous thinking machine or discrete thinking machine both can confuse humans if they achieve their thinking potentials. So, there is no point in creating an analogue thinker to beat digital thinker. We ourselves are an analogue thinker.

  1. The argument from Informality of Behavior

No system will have all laws already established, the system has to keep on creating new laws to justify new events, outliers. The process is never-ending. So even if machines surpass in human thinking we too have the advantage of informality to make the next move.

  1. The Argument from Extra-sensory Perception

Even if the supernatural abilities are proven be existent, they will have less to no contribution in the thinking abilities of machines. So, if you are a telepathic reader a human like thinking machine can fool you without exposing its real machine identity.

Going through all this you will appreciate how limited our human thinking is. There is no doubt that there will be a time when machines would be able to think just like humans do but that should not be a negative aspect. There will be practical limitations to a human-like thinking machine too. So, the game would never be single sided. This should push humanity on a completely new path of evolution. That is also how we have become the humans we are today.

Further references for reading:

  1. A. M. TURING, I.—COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE, Mind, Volume LIX, Issue 236, October 1950, Pages 433–460, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433
  2. Understanding the true nature of Mathematics- Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem
  3. Questioning Our Consciousness – Solipsism

About the thought of ‘Reading for thinking’

Arthur Schopenhauer

A truth that has merely been learnt adheres to us only as an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose does, or at most like a transplanted skin; but a truth won by thinking for ourself is like a natural limb: it alone really belongs to us. This is what determines the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar

Arthur Schopenhauer

New year represents new beginnings, a fresh start. Though recent years were filled with great challenges, we have adjusted ourselves to the new conditions, many things have changed. One of the things that are not changed are ‘the new year resolutions’. New year resolutions are one inseparable part from the new year celebrations. Whether one declares it publicly or keep it to themselves, everybody has thought of doing something new (consistently!) for upcoming year. Developing the habit of reading or reading ‘these’ many books is one of the famous new year resolutions (please note that joining the gym is still ranks the number one).

Being a bookworm, being bookish person (with spectacles for extra effects) has always been an indicator of studious, genius, mastermind, scholar personalities in popular culture. Having read lots of book is status symbol in the scholastic circles for years. But here is one thought – What if you are given all the resources, time, superpowers to read all the books in the world, will you be the wisest person in the world? Everybody knows the answer- the answer is ‘No’.

I came across this essay by the great German philosopher (and the most underrated one) called ‘Arthur Schopenhauer’. The title is ‘On Thinking for Oneself’. The essay is made up of mere 75-100 sentences but it has all the juice that will last forever if you really think over it. And this man has more essays like this.

‘On Thinking for Oneself’

Schopenhauer starts the essay with an example of two libraries- first where it has lots of books and you have read them all and second one has far lesser number of books, you have read them and have thought thoroughly over them. The second case will be of far more value- Schopenhauer says. The answer lies in the process of rearrangement of your experiences, their alignment with the truths/beliefs you have established, questioning your current beliefs, changing them if they are proven wrong after reading. That is how you not just gain the knowledge but this is how you acquire authority-mastery over it.

In simple words, reading a book is just feeding your brain with some words and collecting such sets of word again and again to call yourself a scholar. This is more of an artificial approach of gaining knowledge and will not last forever. Like, do you even remember what you read for that exam in the school where you scored the highest marks? In Schopenhauer’s words ‘It is like forcing a spring under continuous pressure so that it loses its elasticity’. I think this is what’s wrong with the current education system. Development of a train of thought for everything you read, is more organic. One can force people to read as much as possible but one cannot force anyone to think about them or anything forcefully. The thinking needs to be originated from inside only and once it starts flowing it will go on building itself. This is possible only when one has innate ‘Will’ to understand/ question what she/he has read. The act of reading must start with a purpose born from inside. Read whatever you wish not what others recommend.

Schopenhauer explains this ‘plain’ reading with the analogy of mouth and digestion/assimilation necessary for functioning of body. According to him reading is like chewing the food, splitting it into the pieces. But the real transfer of the nutrients from the food to the organs is only possible through the digestion and assimilation which is of far more importance. Thinking is like digestion and assimilation. People value mouth and eating more for remaining healthy, we consider reading in the same way; Staying healthy is also about digestion and metabolism.

Schopenhauer wants to focus on the importance of thinking over the things rather than just registering them, recalling them whenever demanded. He writes-

“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; It means letting someone else direct your thoughts”

Means it is very important to understand the intentions, background of the writer. When you are reading any book, your boat of imagination, thought is sailing by the winds of writer’s intentions. These intentions can be subjective, personal hence are of immense value to the writer but same might not be the case for the reader. There are many examples human history can provide, where people have stuck to the sayings, declarations, predictions from the books without even questioning, debating over them, accepting them as the ultimate truths and later they lead to disasters.

So, does that mean that you should stop reading?    

Schopenhauer has explanation for this too.

“You should read only when your own thought dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; But to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost; it is like deserting untrammelled nature to look at herbarium or engravings of landscapes”

Books are very important when your thoughts are stuck in a place, when you are completely directionless. Even starting with wrong directions which the case most of the times can at least make you aware of where you are (provided that you are thinking on your own).

The roots of this all ‘thought process’ lies deep down into the Schopenhauer’s philosophy of Will. Schopenhauer’s famous book called ‘The World as Will and Representation’ elaborates this idea in far more detail (this deserves one separate discussion).  

It is not just about reading lots of books. It is about developing the habit of thinking over what you have read; it may be a small paragraph or even a quote. Questioning, debating, challenging and erasing the old beliefs thereby establishing newer ones and most importantly aligning them with your ‘personal’ experiences is what is of the highest value- that what being the smartest species on the earth means. I think this is what ‘critical thinking’ is and the gift of being a human.

In simple words, a ‘book smart’ person is the one who has gained the knowledge just by agreeing to the writings of the books, it may be in his/her imagination. On the other hand, a ‘street smart’ person is the person who has gained the knowledge by dealing with the things in real life, real experiences, by developing muscle memory. You will be a lethal combination of ‘book smart’ and ‘street smart’ if you could really connect your real-life experiences and the thoughts developed after questioning the readings from the books. But for all this, you really have to start think on your own without any external influence. Because, it is always easy to make people think based on the external influences. That is what advertisements do, one commercial and ‘poof’ you have already bought that unnecessary thing.

How can we start to really think over anything we have read? How can we make reading more effective? How can we extract value from reading a paragraph or mere sentence?

Actually, we already question many things, readings in daily activities- but these questions are not pronounced to the noticeable scale and get faded with the time. So, whenever you come across some readings and that makes you think over them, try to write it down and revisit it someday, you will get a new perspective to that thought. Maybe you will think for yourself and that will be the most natural, organic way of thinking- nobody has forced you to do it. So, I would say read once and small but think over it twice and big, maybe think again later (Overthinkers know that better :D) Whenever you are reading anything, just keep this small thought in the back of your mind. I know you have read all this to the last line, it will be great if you have thought over this for yourself too.

Image of Arthur Schopenhauer by Johann Schäfer

Further reading:

  1. On thinking for Oneself by Arthur Schopenhauer
  2. Arthur Schopenhauer– Wikipedia
  3. Arthur Schopenhauer– Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy