“Mini” Abstract

Start­ing off essen­tially where David Bohm left off in ‘Thought as a Sys­tem’, this book con­tin­ues to explore and develop a new way of look­ing at thought and consciousness.

The book will argue that the single most import­ant devel­op­ment of the 21st cen­tury will be the emer­gence of a new model of indi­vidu­al­ity, based on a new under­stand­ing of the actual nature and con­sequent lim­it­a­tions of the activ­ity of thought.

If indeed the crises con­front­ing human­ity ori­gin­ate in our inco­her­ent age-old “intel­lec­tual” maps of the world and ourselves, examin­ing the map-maker — i.e. thought — must be an essen­tial step towards end­ing our con­fu­sion, suf­fer­ing and sor­row, both indi­vidu­ally and collectively.

“Faraday & K”

When Michel Faraday first demon­strated the phe­nomenon of elec­tri­city to the pub­lic, a mem­ber of his audi­ence is said to have respon­ded: “It’s all very inter­est­ing Mr. Faraday, but what’s the use of it?”. Faraday’s reply was witty, yet ambigu­ous : “Madam, what is the use of a baby?”

One pos­sible moral of this story is that Faraday could not have fore­seen the exact way his dis­cov­ery would even­tu­ally revo­lu­tion­ize human lives — he was not neces­sar­ily think­ing about TVs, mobile phones, com­puters, and things yet to come. The dis­cov­ery of elec­tri­city had to come first, before its real and rad­ical power would be unleashed.

The above story helps to make a simple point: we might have a very sim­ilar situ­ation with regards to J.Krishnamurti’s insights of his­toric ori­gin­al­ity into thought and the human con­di­tion. More to the point, Krishnamurti’s leg­acy might in part also incor­por­ate a com­plete revolu­tion in the map­ping of the human mind.

The new map-made-possible is dif­fer­ent not just in terms of qual­ity and detail, it is not simply the dif­fer­ence between a 5000-year-old map and a mod­ern inter­net map incor­por­at­ing satel­lite pho­tos. This time the map also incor­por­ates vital inform­a­tion about itself — “the word is not the thing” — and about its rel­ev­ance and place in the very much emphas­ized undi­vided total­ity of life. There­fore a new sig­ni­fic­ance emerges: Hav­ing mis­taken our com­plex maps of real­ity for actu­al­ity, we seem to have got stuck, lost, power­less to develop, to learn, to end psy­cho­lo­gical con­flict, and so on. Now that the grip of that illu­sion is loosened, the pos­sib­il­ity of dis­en­tan­gle­ment from the stale­mate beckons.

In the light of the above we may regard David Bohm’s later work con­cern­ing thought — sim­il­arly to the inten­tion behind this book — as some logical con­tinu­ation of Krishnamurti’s dis­cov­er­ies. It is now that the nature and pos­sible implic­a­tions of the ori­ginal insight can be enquired into and unrav­elled, so that its trans­form­at­ive power may unfold. The above, of course, evokes an import­ant mat­ter that needs cla­ri­fic­a­tion, and maybe all the more so for those inter­ested in Krishnamurti.

Any present or fur­ther invest­ig­a­tions into thought, which may include or refer to what Krish­namurti had to say about it and the human con­di­tion, is neither neces­sar­ily an attempt to add to Krishnamurti’s work, nor an attempt to try to inter­pret it. All that would betray — in par­tic­u­lar in view of his own state­ments on the mat­ter — lack of under­stand­ing and logical incon­sist­ency. Instead we could, and maybe need to approach this mat­ter as follows.

Faraday dis­covered elec­tri­city, but that it was him that dis­covered it doesn’t really mat­ter, it is likely that someone else would have made the dis­cov­ery oth­er­wise. Fur­ther­more, no amount of con­sequent invest­ig­a­tions of the phe­nomenon of elec­tri­city, nor any past, present, or future applic­a­tion of it, have changed, or can change the actu­al­ity behind elec­tri­city itself. Not to men­tion — and this is a little known fact — that des­pite all the com­mon uses of it, to this day we don’t know exactly what elec­tri­city is.

But the point is this. If we were to put it that Krish­namurti may have dis­covered a new pos­sible source of energy, or ground, or basis for the order of the human mind, then in as much as that energy, or ground, or basis, is an actu­al­ity, then essen­tially “it” — in itself, or in its fun­da­mental nature — may in any case be incorruptible.

Uploaded Con­tent

	Out­lines	Excerpts
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7