After listening to many of J. Krishnamurthy's talks, finally there is something we all can get a little help for ourselves - "self help". Literally so, which he emphasizes time and again, that we are truly the ones who can help ourselves by observation with undivided attention to our thoughts and feelings and importantly minimizing the usage of the most glorified part of our body- the brain/mind. Eliminating or keeping it at minimal usage, Jiddu talks about observing oneself and the surrounding , registering your feelings , subconscious actions while also dismissing the default action of our brain's inference engine, that creates the "image" of a certain thing or somebody and living with it for decades to pass.
At first, when I started listening to him, I quite did not get down to the profoundness of his talk. He spoke about undoing all the seasoning that has been done to us right from our birth into believing a lot of stuff which have now become an integral part of our being that one doesn't even question of its origin. The rules are built and a foundation has been laid by the demands of the religion, society, culture and everything into our thinking. His very first talk, I listened to, was to to be free from what is learnt already, with or without the facts of it. The brain has been trained with tremendous amount of information - the good, the bad and the ugly - of which, some are true , some false or some, based on a belief system. But he says if one must seek the truth of all of it, one has to undo the damage already done to our minds/brains which is now only an inference engine based on the past data fed.
So, what is all this supposed to mean? It means, we would stop to think and search for the truth of what is, the moment we look upto something or someone who has instant, readymade answers to our problems. It is easy , to learn, to accept , to adapt instead of trying to experience and doing it all on our own. In the process, everytime we are "trained" or "taught" , subtle vital information falls off the canvas little by little, generation to generation and finally presents itself with an over simplified set of rules. An analogy to this is making a movie of a book. One has to admit that the movies cannot do justice to the books written and miss out on one or the other aspect of the entire experience/ story/ descriptions and what not! Everyone seeks instant gratification. We are restless, we dont want to observe , think or act responsibly. All one cares about is to temporarily put forth the troubles, ignore it for time being, make "adjustments" or don't even want to think about the problem and let go of it altogether.
Talking about the problems - one cannot solve them with the mind or brain in action. For each of us are presented with different problems, different in nature, different in size and weight, different in texture, print and color. One size doesn't fit everyone. Yes, we do have some rules and ready made solutions but does that really solve the problem from the root? If it doesn't, it recurs. For really removing it with the roots, one has to observe the nature of the problem, just observe without any prejudice, without already working on a solution, just observe - yourself, the circumstance that landed you in this. Observe how your body reacts to each of the significant series of events that had occured in the past that ended up in this event. Through that observation will you know and understand yourself - what you liked in the process, what you hadn't approved of, then go back into each of those and try to see what you felt on each of the flashes. Once you are self aware to such an extent, you will exactly be able to identify the real root of the problem. If one creates an image of the entire episode like a trailer, you wouldnt ever be able to address it. Look back in every detail and note down your feelings. Understanding the problem correctly is 90% of the problem solved. All this keeping your mind and brain at complete rest without analysing and processing your experiences. One has to allow the mind to only let it register the events and your reaction to them and stop it there. Once it goes beyond that, the mind stores the result of the analysis in our brains rather than the actual actions. To put it simply, if a person keeps falling sick when he eats icecreams, the mind registers and concludes ice cream itself as sickness instead of trying to find out what is it in an icecream does my body doesnt approve of! Like a doze of steroid, it kills the bad cells at the cost of a million more good ones! And this is how one makes up pictures or images of something or someone. Mind is a two sided sword, that kills and gets killed. It harbors bias, prejudice not only within us, but also goes on to spread it to others like a virus. Because other minds are waiting to be served. Once the "images" get created, you are stuck in it for ages and sometimes indefinitely.
He also explains time. Time is the lapse of how we were from yesterday to today. Time is a change. We, part of nature are always changing. Time is the reflection of a change. When you let the images form in your mind stay, from past experience or from the sayings of others or reading about it somewhere, or being a follower of culture, religion, guru, etc etc, basically you have made up your mind that the image you have made up is a constant. To simply give an example, the west has had a strong opinion on "India" that it is poor, lacks infrastructure, prone to diseases, etc etc that whoever visits India are prejudiced with such lame information. Maybe it was so, once upon a time, but no longer so. So the "time" is constantly a non constant. Something or someone today will not be the same tomorrow. Change is inevitable, it's a law of nature. Of course it can be for better or worse. But there is a change. The mind performs wonderfully well only if it registers events and not let it analyze/infer/deduce its consequences taking it to the future. Instead, introspect, why you(based on the subconscious reaction) liked or didn't like a certain thing. Explore more about yourself. Observe what is the root of your response, root of the situation and possibly introspect and know yourself and your boundaries. This works , works to the fullest, an absolute, for, so many times we have been through and realized it all a little late. And that is why perhaps, for instance, if you put your mind to use in decisions based on past experience or someone else's perspective, and you come across it/ them again, you may feel differently as against your mind 's analysis. The feeling is what one should trust. Don't ignore your body language. The body language, the subconscious acts talk much louder than our minds. Use your brain only as a store to record events and your actions/reactions/ responses and cut it at that. Don't really attempt at making changes in your mind terms(conditioning it) to suit a certain need, because that never works, sooner or later, let's you down. Going down the root of the problem, eliminates it totally completely. It's not a mere adjustment at that instance, it's "the end" to it.
In fact we may all have done it, without conscious observation but gave up for one reason or the other mid way. The reason could be a mere distraction, no time(biggest illusion we have created for ourselves), other duties, responsibilities or priorities, or just not able to concentrate enough to figure it out, the image we gave of ourselves and the blind confidence of our seasoning throughout our lives.
But I think there is one thing that is common which we know universally and the workings of our body language and our inner self. It's called "values". Not the values a particular religion preaches, not that of a custom, tradition, not that the gurus talk about, but it is our own body alert mechanism which cautions, v v briefly, on our actions, keeps a check, impromptu, without absolute involvement of the mind or brain, not that it's caused out of fear (the tit for tat theory, that if I do something wrong, it comes back to me), but in its simplest form, just a glitch of your sub conscious that pops out for a v brief time , cautioning you, warning you, of the action you are about to perform. PAY ATTENTION TO THAT! IT'S AN ACTION IN MAJOR PROBABILITY YOU'LL REGRET doing and the guilt would haunt you!
A wrong action from us, our body alerts us (observe we are absolutely not giving any work to our brain) . And as our generations in the past whoever did pay attention, used their brain to probably termed it as "values". The moral science we are taught at school, more or less signifies this, but the only difference is that it is "taught". Taught with stories, taught with talking about feelings and emotions, taught with thinking to put oneself in others' shoes and all that. This teaching is moderately good but to know what it means to ethically , morally be good is to understand it deeply which comes through experiencing it oneself through the situations presented in the stories. The emotions and feeling it takes us through will be the most effective than a mere story listening, isn't that correct? Also these moral stories that are "taught" are not all surely practical. One cannot tell the murderer the truth of where the victim is hiding. If your brain gets seasoning to believe the absolutes of a mere teaching from someone else, it is bound to go wrong. So it's important to introspect oneself.
In our lives, we may not experience the same set of turbulence, emotions , the problem and the nature of it are all varied and guage differently. Hence it is important to experience and observe the emotions the body goes through, without any prejudice, keeping aside the mind and brain totally out of that experience and know oneself.
In essence, observation is the key, and the only key to get past our problems. And equally important is also the images that get formed in the brain of a person place it a thing.
Jiddu says, essentially, in this ever changing world, stop -
1. creating images, opinions in the mind of something someone or a certain situation
2. analyzing to derive futuristic conclusions,
Instead observe, fully, completely, giving your 100%, without bias, without looking for solutions till you get to the root of the problem. Once you are at the root, problem is understood as is. There are no deviations. Its unilateral, no strings attached. Pay high attention to your subtle communication of the body and sub conscious responses and register the feelings, emotions. Don't let mind to deviate from there, let it flow, experience it fully, consciously, not looking for solutions till you get to the root of it. Once you get there, you will know what to do, without putting the mind into action. That will be the end of that misery. All of the rest are only temporary arrangements and never will one be free of it as it recurs again and again. Acceptance after observation of what is, is the ultimate truth. Your non thinking responses are crucial. Your feelings when you are with someone or how you behave subconsciously in a situation are all very active communication to yourself.
Another best example of this is the kids' behavior. Kids cry, get angry, show tantrums - do they hate you? Absolutely no. They are the non verbal communication of something that they disliked, something of their needs or wants. Anger especially is a reflection of hopelessness of trying to get the other person understand your point of view. When there is no reception of your feelings, will the anger surface. The unheard feelings are translated into anger by mind - its yet another way a mind tries to tactically reinforce your point. If the anger is not being acknowledge the last the mind retorts to is crying. If the communication of a person if not understood or misunderstood, the mind tries various ways to put it across - repetition, anger, cry and finally give up, resulting in agony , despair, resentment and depression. Anger is a very strong non verbal communication to show your non compliance or disagreement or not being heard or of discomfort. Most often than not, it is usually misunderstood for the lack of patience. The children are the best educators for understanding and observing , for they genuinely communicate their behaviors as their minds are not totally "trained" or "seasoned" to supress their feelings. A child having exaggerated behaviors is in fact a sign of good emotional and mental health, the one that of "unseasoned" being! They can observe and accept only for what is. Such children are found to be tough to be handled by the "seasoned" parents.
Our body and conscious are the masters of our life! Embrace it, give it total attention, listen to what it has to say, act without prejudice. Getting to the root of the problems and identifying it correctly as is, is half problem solved.
"Mind cannot understand, it may only translate an understanding unto an action, but by itself cannot understand. To understand there must be the warmth of recognition and reception, which only the heart can give when the mind is silent." - JK.
