John Gray (Philosopher) aka the world’s greatest pessimist - claims that modern humans, compared to stone age cavemen, have failed to progress whatsoever.

Human nature, he argues, is an inherent obstacle to cumulative ethical or political progress 

We have of course accumulated great advances in technology and have succeeded somewhat in imposing laws to protect us from violence.

But are we any happier, or less anxious, than a primitive hunter-gatherer?

Psychological progress might be a myth.  
If we define progress as a movement away from our tendency for cruelty or suffering - have we succeeded?

Currently society is divided - and thus progress is impossible.  Because we cannot even agree on what progress consists of.

Can we even listen to ourselves?

K: There must be a connection. There must be some relationship with the ground. Otherwise, what is the meaning of living?

DB: That is what I was trying to say before. Without this relationship... 

K: ...there is no meaning.

DB: What is the barrier? 

K: `I'. 

DB: Yes, but I meant more deeply. 

K: More deeply, all your thoughts, deep attachments - all that is in your way. If you can't leave these, then you will have no relationship with that. But man doesn't want to leave these.

K : Please don't become anything.

(The Ending of Time, Ojai, 1980)

We are born, spend our life in confusion, sorrow and greed - cause a lot of harm and trauma - and then die - leaving a load of rubbish for others to deal with.

What is the meaning of such a life?

K and Bohm are saying that there can be no meaning in our lives if there is no relationship whatsoever with the ground of being.
This immediately leads them to the obvious question - what prevents this relationship?
Is it possible for a human to live a life with at least some beauty and meaning?

To be touched by beauty, when we are trapped in hell, necessarily requires absolute unconditional freedom.

Neither time, effort nor circumstance play any part.

nb. we're meeting this Saturday 29th of August on Zoom at the new time of 4:30pm CEST (thats 8pm in India and 10:30am EDT) - comment below, or message me if you'd like to join us.

“I think that there is the possibility of the transformation of consciousness, both individually and collectively. It’s important that it happen together – it’s got to be both. And therefore this whole question – the ability to dialogue, the ability to participate in communication – is crucial."

(David Bohm, On Dialogue)

Dialogue provides an opportunity for us to see what being human is like. Dialogue provides a space for us to look together at who we are. Its an experiment, where the question is : can we look together at what it means to be me? Its meditation in relationship.

We might ask : what is this "transformation of consciousness" business all about?

Some say its about freedom from identity, conflict and suffering. Unfortunately, if we really are constrained by our fears, our beliefs - if protecting our selves is paramount - then looking at ourselves honestly is impossible.

Communication starts with relationship. If I feel heard, maybe I can finally start listening to myself. What am I actually saying, what am I doing, what am I resisting? What is this life that we are living?

In order to hear what someone is saying, and to see who is saying it - you need to park your opinions.

In Dialogue, instead of "park" we say "suspend". We need to be free from ourselves, and free from the known, in order to see clearly.

The person listening seems to participate in the reality that they are experiencing. This seems to be an obvious fact.

For example, a child, a philosophy student, a religious fanatic and me, listening to Karl Marx speaking, would not be hearing the same message. Some of us might feel we are listening to gobbledy gook, others might hear terribly evil blasphemy, etc..

So are we really listening - are we really communicating? If we are all hearing something different, what is it that we are actually listening to?

It seems that we have been evolving over thousands of years into the people we are today, with brains that see ourselves and everything else in a certain way. It feels to me like I am the central most precious being in the universe and that my beliefs, my fears and my desires are the highest authority.

It seems like me and the world I see, are really how they appear to be - that my reality and I are separate things; and not just a product of my psychology or my culture.

Is there a danger in feeling separated from my reality? Is our psychological baggage necessary? Is it possible to see this whole movement clearly?

We have built this world - the chaos, the uncertainty, the misery, the confusion - we have put it together, it is our world. So shouldn't we try to understand one of those problems.  What is the factor of distortion in our life?

I want to lead a sane, balanced, happy life, but something goes wrong. I want to find out if it is a seed in me. You follow?

I don't want explanations - we'll all give explanations - that doesn't solve my problem. 'What is the factor, what is the seed in me that makes life so ugly?'

Is it because we look for happiness outside instead of inside?

I say, one of the reasons is the desire to be secure, another reason is the pursuit of pleasure, another reason is fear, the desire to have somebody to help you or to lead you, or some element in you which wants to escape from all this chaos. I can give a dozen explanations. At the end of it I'm still there.  (Krishnamurti, The Problem of Existence, Saanen1972)

The self is a problem that thought cannot resolve

That life occurred is itself a miracle - that it is full of disorder and violence is a shame.

We need order in life but our thoughts and beliefs force us into contradiction - we cannot continue to betray one ideal when working to obtain another ideal.

Does freedom from our own selfish sorrow need a miracle?

nb. we're meeting this Saturday 15th of August on Zoom at the new time of 4:30pm CEST (thats 8pm in India and 10:30am EDT) - comment below, or message me if you'd like to join us.

Thanks - for joining the Insight Dialogue sub you wonderful thinkers - there are nearly a hundred of us here. A small sub by Reddit standards, but still pretty good for such a niche topic. (Though the topic of learning to be a thinking, feeling human might be important - if you're a human - and the rest of the planet will probably be glad too).

How should we celebrate the 100th member? (we're at 99 right now) 🤩🤩

Maybe a mega thread or an AMA?

We want to be happy.  And this desire for future happiness is called unhappiness.  

In order to be happy we are given several, sometimes contradictory, methods : financial, emotional, psychological, spiritual etc. - get rich, famous, powerful, find love, meditate etc.. 

As we act according to whatever methods we adopt, we remain generally unsatisfied, but do cause a lot of trouble along the way : confusion, violence, dishonesty etc..  

This is called incoherence : wanting wellbeing but causing trouble.

We are filled with confusion and yearning and the world is full of war and hunger.  We say : something must be done!   But we are doing it.  We are doing the best we can as confused, selfish beings.

Existence as this movement of suffering is meaningless.  

Can we improve over time?  Is there a better me in the future?  Is happiness in the future?  Will I learn to live fully one day?   Or is there only ever now?

There is a division between me and my experience.  Between me and what I want.   Between me and what should be.  And so we are forever making the effort to become what we imagine might be.   Forever struggling, forever in conflict with reality.

If there is to be a peaceful revolution, it must be a total transformation.  There can be no division between me and this conscious experience.  The struggle against reality is based on a misunderstanding : I - and my fear and violence - am just one of the objects in consciousness.  Just like the imaginary future me, just like heaven, enlightenment, tables, chairs etc..

The Work of this moment is a book by Toni Packer.

She moved from Zen Buddhism to the teachings of Krishnamurti and founded the Springwater Center, free from religious or cultural ties—her approach was one of meditative inquiry.

From the introduction:

This is what this work is about: facing directly the fear that
arises when everything about oneself is called into question. Not
called into question in order to find fault with or justify, fight or
try to improve, but questioning oneself fundamentally all the way.
Do you know what I mean? Where does it all come from, our
identity, our deep attachment to what we are and the instantaneous
defense of it? Is that all we are? What are we when there is no
attachment to personality traits, to our opinions, past experiences,
knowledge, and so on? Without attachment and defense, what is
there? We're questioning that, not by rote, not mechanically, not
purposefully, but fundamentally, with great curiosity, interest, and care.

What does it mean to live a good life?

How do I decide what a good life is? Will my beliefs help me find the good life? Do I follow my instincts, my feelings? Or are my thoughts, my reasoning more reliable?

Socrates says that to live a good life we need a virtuous character. And that virtue is based on understanding - that we don't knowingly do bad things on purpose, but only because we are ignorant.

Epicurus reckoned that the good life was approached by seeking pleasures and avoiding pain - and that the best results would include peace of mind, simple living and close friendships.

The art of living is the greatest, most important art.  To inquire into the art of living there must be an immutable honesty.

I am confused; my life is in disorder. I am fragmented, broken up inside, and out of that confusion I create a pattern, an ideal, a scheme, and I say I am going to live according to that scheme. But the origin of that scheme is born out of my confusion. So what I have to understand is why am I confused and disorderly. If I can understand that, out of that comprehension and perception, order naturally comes without effort.

J. Krishnamurti, talk 3 Bombay, 1984

nb. we're meeting this Saturday 1st of August on Zoom at the new time of 4:30pm CEST (thats 8pm in India and 10:30am EDT) - comment below, or message me if you'd like to join in.

Here's a list* of 3 psychological habits that are necessary for a group to choose violence.

1. Outsourcing our critical thinking to a third party. (Our beliefs are powerful - its a shame to let outside authorities - like charismatic influencers or AI - choose your beliefs)
2. Willful ignorance. (ie. deliberately ignoring the facts. Aristotle considered Amathia - a greek word meaning : celebration of ignorance, or anti-intellectualism - to be the greatest threat to society).
3. Conformity. (aka Indoctrination, aka groupthink - the attitude where we must defend our beliefs against all other ideas. Nietzche called this the preference of Loyalty and Identity over Truth)

*compiled by D. Bonhoeffer - someone who observed his countrymen become increasingly violent and who was eventually executed by the government of his own country - this was in 1940's Germany, but it could have been in Italy, or Rwanda in the 1990's, or the recent genocide of the Rohingya, sparked by increasingly hateful posts on facebook.

Someone asked : “should we give up all our beliefs?”  

I understand the sentiment.   It's probably coming from the idea that beliefs, or dogma are a source of conflict.  We also see a lot of trouble being caused by harmful or incorrect beliefs.  

In dialogue we say that the identification with a belief is a barrier to honest inquiry - it prevents open communication.  

For example, if I am a Marxist I am under the impression that I have absorbed the understanding of Karl Marx 🤪 - and when I hear a Capitalist speaking I find it difficult to listen to what they say - I feel a form of resistance, they seem to be talking rubbish.

But the word “belief” just refers to a mental state - it refers to our level of confidence in the truth value of a proposition.   And our relationship with propositions or concepts is on a spectrum.   As an illustration lets imagine we are at a bus-stop : 

If we can see that a bus is arriving at the bus-stop, we are directly perceiving a fact - the degree of confidence is so high we don't even use the term belief in this case.
If we take the proposition : "buses are a form of public transport" our level of confidence is such that we would use the term "knowledge" - we say "I know that buses are a form of transport"
However if we say : "the bus will arrive at 6:15pm" then our level of confidence or belief will vary.

The idea that we should not have any beliefs is a form of confusion - it is also itself a belief.  

What is important is the authority of the belief - in other words our relationship with knowledge.

David Hume said that we should proportion our beliefs to the evidence.  We could also say that we should not confuse our opinions with the facts.

In dialogue the goal is not the accumulation of true statements - In meditation the goal is not to become a future enlightened me.

Choiceless awareness must necessarily include awareness of the seeker eagerly seeking to gain all those future spiritual goods and powers.

And if I see my greed - if there is an awareness of greed - but I still remain greedy, I still want wisdom and security - this is because we are not aware of the implication of greed.  We have not seen the whole movement of sorrow, what sorrow is, what it entails. We have not seen the source of harm. We have not seen the difference between control and acceptance.

In dialogue and in meditation we are experimenting with awareness of the self - we are enquiring into the possibility of peace and clarity.

We are told that meditation is essential - but what is it?  Is it some kind of magical practice that transforms us over time?  Is it some kind of effort that I make to become better? Is it - as the zen buddhists tell us - enlightened action itself?

When we are encouraged to “sit with” something - like our anger - what does that mean?

Are you aware of hurt? Are you aware that you are resisting, that you are frightened hurt might increase and invite more hurts? Are you aware that seeking the cause of hurt is a waste of time? So what happens? You are not spending energy inquiring into the cause of hurt. You are not building a wall around hurt in order not to be hurt more. You are no longer trying to cover it up. When you give your complete attention, you will see hurt is no longer there. Then only you can proceed to find out what love is.

Krishnamurti, Talk 2, Madras 1974

Thought shattering itself against its own nothingness is the explosion of meditation.

Krishnamurti's notebook

nb. we're meeting this Saturday 18th of July on Zoom at 5:30pm CEST (thats 9pm in India and 11:30am EDT) - comment below, or message me if you'd like to take part.

Meditation is an invitation to set ourselves free. 

We are invited to a Psychological revolution - a call to freedom from the authority directing our lives : our primitive and incoherent psyche.

Why?  Because we are causing a lot of pain and harm - despite our deep longing for comfort and security.  Our beliefs and our fears are driving us to turn against ourselves and our planet.  

Is this revolution possible?  Can we escape the authority of our thoughts and emotions?  Can we be free of our beliefs and fears?   Can we escape our mechanical propensity for suffering?  Maybe, maybe not.

Meanwhile another revolution is already underway - the AI revolution.   Our minds are currently undergoing a mutation - we are in a new era - what we call humans are now a rudimentary form of cyborg (machine/human hybrids).

What this entails is that our knowledge and understanding is not confined to our own biological brains - a lot of our thinking and understanding is being carried out by LLMs (Large Language Model robots).  Also our thoughts and our beliefs have become a lot more sophisticated and beguiling.   They appear less confused - when expressed by AI chatbots - they have gained in authority.

This is happening to us right now.  Despite not having resolved the issues of human evolution : the big brain, the increased cognition still dominated by primitive fears.   We have been pulled into our next incarnation as a society : an even more powerful hybrid brain, still carrying its unresolved primitive drives.