Krishnamurti - post follow up, carry over effect, and some key insights into Krishamurti's approach and teaching style.

 Just some notes following on from another month or so immersing oneself in J.Krishnamurti's teachings via talks, book readings etc.

Some key insights:

* Krishnamurti's teachings and 'approach' is like an aquired taste.. you get used to it after a while and it 'grows' on you. It's not an immediate transfer. You may notice some carry over effect or influence days, weeks, months later, and then realise 'ah, that was Krishnamurti's enquiries having an effect, or the contemplations and 'hard work' done in the talks and videos that had a post-effect

* Krishnamurti can get intense at times. He starts with suffering, and does a deep dive into the problems of the world. This is intentional, and is a similar approach that perhaps the Buddha performed with he also started with suffering, our daily struggle and the first noble truth. This can be intense. It can also be revealing and a shock to face the fact of how often we escape from our suffering, the problems of the world and our life, and into distractions, entertainment, projects, spiritual fantasies and other pursuits. Anything except being with and observing the situation as it is right now.

* Work done on 'oneself' has to be through and via oneself only. There's no other authority or help or assistance other than mere observation, insight, and realisations that occur through one's own work. Even Krishnamurti himself referred to 'this speaker' as a mirror, and one that could be used as a reflection or prompt to allow us to observe, enquire and meet ourselves as we are with 'what is'.

* Take as many breaks as needed with this work. It's not meant to be an effort, a time consuming task to be started and finished, or some huge thought experiment. If it becomes a chore, or a project, or a future event, a method or way, then it's time to stop, relax, and come back later one when one's inner motivation and passion return. There's nothing wrong with doing this.

That's about all to say at this point about J. Krishnamurti's teachings and approach, apart from the fact that they do 'work' organically in unseen and unexpected ways.

D.

ACIM- The flow of peace and blessings. What are the Great Rays? (Lesson 360).

(Lesson 360)

Peace be to me, the holy Son of God.
Peace to my brother, who is one with me.
Let all the world be blessed with peace through us.

Father, it is Your peace that I would give, receiving it of You. I am Your Son, forever just as You created me, for the Great Rays remain forever still and undisturbed within me. I would reach to them in silence and in certainty, for nowhere else can certainty be found. Peace be to me, and peace to all the world. In holiness were we created, and in holiness do we remain. Your Son is like to You in perfect sinlessness. And with this thought we gladly say "Amen."





Keywords:

• Peace
• Silence
• Stillness
• Great Rays
• Sinlessness

This lesson is a form of prayer and forgiveness. It is also an invitation to self-inquiry suggesting that the Self can be found within, in silence and in certainty. This may be in the formal resting practice that one performs daily morning and night, or on the hourly pauses that one performs during the day.


The lesson uses the image of the "Great Rays" which have been spoken of in the Text. Some students have taken to visualising or imagining 'light' type rays, auras etc. While this may be helpful initially, it will be a hinderance later when direct experience is required.


The reference to "Great Rays" is actually symbolic of pure awareness, which has often been likened to light in spiritual literature. Like light, awareness itself, is the source of illumination of all phenomena, including one's apparent self. Having no form, it is still and undisturbed by seemingly separate phenomena.


In becoming more and more familiar with silence, certainty, stillness, and the 'Great Rays', we come to know our sinlessness. We come to know our true Identity. We also naturally feel the peace and blessings that flow from such experiential knowledge (or gnosis) out into the projected world.

The ego has no being. (ACIM)

I had been listening to and reading A Course in Miracles (Text), when I came across this quote:


"The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. When I said that the ego does not know anything, I said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But there is a corollary; if only knowledge has being and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego as no being." (Text 8-VIII.7)


This reminded me of the use (in some circles) whereby the word 'knowledge' is interpreted as 'knowing' or the act of knowing (i.e. being aware) only, rather than in the usual sense of amassing intellectual data/facts/thoughts etc.


In this sense, 'knowledge' or 'knowing only' equates exactly with being, since both as also synonyms for just awareness or consciousness.


Hence, a thought construct, including the primal thought-construct-tendency which is the 'ego' ('I-thought'), cannot actually know anything, in the sense that it is not self-aware or endowed with any form of awareness itself-- but rather lives only as a construct existing in our awareness. The ego doesn't assert itself in deep sleep (or death) for instance, and at times when our waking consciousness seems to be in abeyance.


Being without awareness (knowledge) and being just a thought-construct, the ego thus has no being itself, and is rather just like a computer program- playing out its programming as it was created to do, relying on power beyond itself, and mostly for the sake of the body and its own survival.


This leads to the inquiry of what one really is, if the ego ("I-construct) and the body have no inherent being in themselves.. and taking into account that we normally regard ourselves as a body-mind entity.


Without jumping into further concepts, such as 'we are soul, spirit, Otherness' etc.. it is possible to stop and enquire directly into the nature of what we are in this moment, with the understanding that we are prior to the awareness of ourselves as a body, and prior to the awareness of ourselves as an ego. One means for doing this is via the practiced habit of self-attentiveness and patient observation directed squarely at one's "self" (or the feeling of one's "self").