Cutting the Ligaments — Krishnamurti Pt 1 a False Flag Freedom Fighter
“I’m drowning here, and you’re describing the water!”*
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A Quotation Shared, A Question Asked And A Surprise Discovery
A friend of mine discovered a copy of Krishnamurti’s Notebook in the library of an AirBnB he was at. He shared a quotation from it and then asked me a difficult question. And I apologise here to him, now, because I’m sure that what I’m writing is not what he was expecting or hoping for. (And it isn’t what I was expecting either!) And the question is not directly answered, for sure.
I thought that the quotation was a brilliant comment on truth: ’Truth is a pathless land’. I quickly found that this came from Krishnamurti’s excellent speech in 1928 when he dissolved a kind of religion that had been created by the Theosophical Society. (More on them in Part 2.) He had been chosen and groomed by them from when he was a young man to lead their spiritual vision of assisting human ‘evolution’ into its next stage of spiritual development. This quotation came with synchronistic timing and I used it with a recent essay,
In his speech Krishnamurti criticised all churches and formal ‘spiritual’ practices and guides as creating a false path because the experience of truth is itself unique to the individual and therefore pathless. It can only be determined by one’s own individual experience. On the surface this appears to align with my expanding experience of yogic awareness and with what I’m learning that Gautama Buddha actually taught, which is somewhat distinct from much of what Buddhism currently teaches. Later I see that my thinking here is crude and I refine it.
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And before I felt able to adequately address my friend’s question I wanted to understand more deeply Krishnamurti’s ideas and thinking.
I had become intrigued by this person whom I had only faintly heard of across my years of seeking. I had not read anything, or remembered having read anything by him before. Nor had I been drawn to him in any way. And I thought my response would be a quick one. That turned out not to be the case. As I dug into Krishnamurti I became more and more surprised because it turns out that that speech was both an accurate representation of Krishnamurti’s stand at the time as well as a misrepresentation of a depth of wisdom it portrayed to me.
To a very large degree Krishnamurti’s entire life philosophy, if it can be called that, was encapsulated within that short speech he gave as a young twenty-eight year old man. And his wisdom did not, or did not significantly, evolve or expand as he aged. Because it was a good relatively short speech the lack of a real philosophical structure underpinning it was easily obscured or hidden.
In the last week or so of listening to Krishnamurti’s statements over the decades I discovered that he frequently (always?) castigates the ways humans acquire knowledge and/or wisdom. Anything learned from experience and/or from the conflict between the reality of that experience and any kind of ‘book’ or ‘guru’ or ‘religious’ learning is done only by misguided falsely conditioned people. People who have ‘acquired’ ignorance or, more accurately, misdirection or misunderstanding, will use this failure of understanding to address their ignorance by looking outside of their own truth to some kind of guru be it religious, political or scientific. And that action deepens their ignorance and enervation because it is a friendly trap that perpetuates their inability to really see what is true. Krishnamurti asserts that improper seeing drains away our energy.
Seeing True, Vidya as Key to Reducing Suffering and How I Am To See Krishnamurti’s Truth
With our three year entry into the over-the-top propagandising of an ineffectual and dangerous flu injection, seeing what is true has taken on a critically profound and immediate life-and-death importance. Well, maybe not profound, simply more in our faces and with more imminent consequences than we have been heretofore uneasily living with. I’ve known its importance and kept a printed reminder of that, expressed beautifully by the I Ching, on my office walls for decades.
When we are faced with an obstacle that is to be overcome, weakness and impatience can do nothing. Strong individuals can stand up to their fate, for their inner security enables them to endure to the end. This strength shows itself in uncompromising truthfulness with themselves. It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any sort of self deception or illusion, that the light will develop out of events by which the path to success may be recognised (I Ching 5 Hsu / Waiting (Nourishment) p.25 Baynes/Wilhelm translators.)
About nine years ago I learned from Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras that the first of the yogic kleshas, behaviours or practices that keep us trapped in dukha or suffering, is avidya, improper seeing, to not see things as they are. Even more recently I revisited with much greater understanding and appreciation that the first of Gautama Buddha’s eight practices to diminish or remove dukha, suffering, is ‘Right View (Seeing)’.
And a huge portion of Jungian psychology is all about seeing our various unconscious shadow projections, in dreams, synchronicities and in the events of our lives. I began a serious study and exercise practices of Jungian psychology beginning in 1987 to train to be an analyst which, in the end, didn’t actually happen. (For an example of a shadow work process, not a recommendation, visit “A Definitive Guide to Jungian Shadow Work: How to Get to Know and Integrate Your Dark Side”.)
Preachers Who Tell Their Audiences to Discard their Preachers are in an Hypocritical Catch-22
Even though it is obvious, it is important to state that the manner of Krishnamurti’s firm avowal of the importance of proper seeing is in fact a double hypocrisy because not only is he following the wisdom of the past masters even while decrying that practice as false; he is giving guidance to his audience, which is also, by his argument, false. Of course, he could easily dismiss the former point by arguing that that particular wisdom-truth is an ‘unchanging’ one so that it is available at all times to everyone without it needing to be taught by anyone. I’m not sure how he reconciles his lecture on right livelihood, however, if he is teaching that being a student to a teacher is to be a truly weak human failure. Which he does say.
And while the hypocrisy is oddly amusing, that thinking, which I infer from his other words, points to the greatest flaw and danger in Krishnamurti’s approach to ameliorating human suffering and creating the conditions for personal emancipation from that suffering. I believe that amelioration of our human condition is his intention. If what he is giving is a truth of some value to those people looking to him for guidance as a guru, then those are the people who will not be able to digest properly what he is saying. To a greater or lesser extent Krishnamurti’s words will likely exacerbate the weakness and confusion that brought those people to him for guidance in the first place. And I suspect that many of those who are influenced by him will be intimidated to not confess their confusion for fear of looking foolish. Furthermore, those people who are able to digest his ideas are not going to be the ones avidly seeking him out because they don’t require gurus as much if at all. And will most likely see the inherent ineffectiveness of his approach. I will elaborate on this going forward.
Guy’s Paraphrased Summary of Krishnamurti’s ‘Philosophy’
Paraphrasing, I might summarise Krishnamurti’s ‘philosophy’ to be as follows:
The only true knowledge derives from an instantaneous pathless process that the ‘proper’ intellect with a perfection of intelligence, completely devoid of ego and thought, can with some heart truly perceive the perfection of the awareness that the truth can be perceived with the clear seeing of what is existing in each moment of the physical realities we did and didn’t make and that is best understood as a gateway to take us out of being miserably alive in “the discord, the neurotic compulsions, the conflicts, the aching misery of life”.
Krishnamurti is Hobbesian in his expanded descriptions of life and human beings and their experiences as being nasty, brutal, boring, agonising, neurotic, difficult and short (paraphrased).
The Question Is A Difficult One Or At Least I Didn’t Understand It
The question that my friend brought to my attention I found confusing. Perhaps even inscrutable. I didn’t ask for clarification initially, thinking I would get to the bottom of it. It being:
One way to show this — [that ‘there is nothing and there must be nothing’] is by critiquing the imaginative metaphors which create dialogic awareness of imagination and nothingness.
The words all looked sound and yet I wasn’t able to understand the question. I still didn’t pursue it with my friend. Instead I asked for my sister’s opinion, to see if she would be able help clarify what might be meant by that query. Her response is interesting (slightly edited), below:
I recognised right away [that] it is a post-modern way of engaging with the world. Crazily noodled-up to incomprehensibility. It's a language prison. Two things about that. The first is that the post-modern influenced woke/queer activists use language strategically to empty charged and particular words of meaning. They did this with "Nazi", "racist" and "fascist" for example. They mean "anything the woke don't like" now, but still with the power to repel and agitate the normies.
The other thing is that [Herbert] Marcuse was a huge influence in that milieu — perhaps the #1 influence — and he was a crypto-gnostic. He embedded gnostic/religious precepts into his texts — like the world is a prison ie we are imprisoned by the world and so must liberate ourselves from all physical limitations in order to become our true selves.
That's a vicious combination and most are not aware of how they are being played.
I guess that [that] loosely fits with Krishnamurti's proposition that “truth is a pathless land”? It's only pathless if you ignore your body's guidance? (My emphasis. I suspect that Gautama Buddha would also agree.)
And so my sister confirmed my feeling about the question — I hope that sits well with my friend. And then she added a twist by questioning the validity of my initial appreciation of the ‘truth’ quotation! Yikes!
More on the Meaninglessness and Irrelevant Distraction of Imagination
Then I went looking for something else Krishnamurti said about imagination, to perhaps eke out possible meanings. I came across this:
Everything [that] thought has put together is reality. Right? The tent has been put together by thought. It’s a reality. The tree has not been put together by thought. It’s a reality. You are one— The illusions are a reality. The illusion that one has, the imaginations, all that, is a reality. And the act from [those] illusions is neurotic. Which is a reality. So you must see, first, when you ask this question, what is right livelihood, you must understand what is reality. Right? Reality is not truth (“Saanen 1976 Public Talk 7 When You Are A Light To Yourself You Are A Light To The World” ~1:12:50, my emphasis.)
And then from The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader:
This state [of the cessation of conflict], without the word, without thought, is the expanse of mind that has no boundaries, no frontiers within which the I and the not-I can exist. Don't think this is imagination, or some flight of fancy, or some desired mystical experience; it is not. It is as actual as the bee on that flower or the little girl on her bicycle or the man going up the ladder to paint the house — the whole conflict of the mind in its separation has come to an end. You look, without the look of the observer, you look without the value of the word and the measurement of yesterday. The look of love is different from the look of thought. The one leads in a direction where thought cannot follow, and the other leads to separation, conflict and sorrow. From this sorrow you cannot go to the other. The distance between the two is made by thought, and thought cannot by any stride reach the other (p154 The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader J. Krishnamurti, Mary Lutyens (editor) my emphasis.)
“Imagination” is a little buried in this confusing and contradictory argument that the experience of peace is as tangible as a bee, or a girl or a painter. That the cessation of thought and imagination, perhaps into truth, is infinite yet we are clearly a finite structure. When the infinite and finite meet, there is friction, which we call dukha, suffering, especially if the finite is aiming to embrace the infinite. Krishnamurti adds that physical reality is something frightening, a nasty jungle in the worst ways, and to be escaped from without companionship or help, all alone. In a literal jungle.
Once you realise you are entirely responsible for yourself, that you are in a jungle, literally in a jungle, where you have to make your own way out, there is nobody to lead you. And you forget all this [about gurus and leaders]. The examples, the books, everything, because you’ve got vitality, strength, to go through. But the moment you depend on leaders, you become weak. If once you realise it in your heart, not just intellectually, then you are a man, a human being. Free to walk straight. But we don’t want all that. Sir, it’s so simple when you think of it all (“Does God exist? | J. Krishnamurti 1982 in Madras” ~17:30.)
As I was investigating Krishnamurti I experienced a really lovely synchronicity that succinctly contradicts just about everything Krishnamurti said. Meister Eckhart, courtesy of
Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we are to learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We are to learn to penetrate things and find God there. —Meister Eckhart (edited slightly, my emphasis).
As I Was Writing This I Unexpectedly Flashed Back To The Feeling Of The Family Cult
A key part of the danger of Krishnamurti’s approach is the hidden assumption that the people seeing him aren’t already weak. That these people have within themselves the ability and awareness, as well as the psychological and/or emotional access, to their vitality and strength. Some very few listening to Krishnamurti might have that instant ‘enlightenment’ and with that all the samskaras, or grooves of our habits of thought and behaviour that disempower and imprison us, will fall away immediately. Note: that still makes him a hypocrite as guru to them! More importantly, though, that it is to deny the ‘truth’ of human reality and experience. For example, it was for years that Gautama Buddha did various yogic practices with gurus. The last one was of extreme austerity and was leading to his death before he went and sat beneath the bodhi tree preceding his enlightenment. Yes, he sat alone, after many years of training and practice and it would be unreasonable that that had not played a significant role in his final enlightenment. And after that the Buddha then wrestled with Mara. By some accounts that was for weeks or, possibly, years.
And this is where the ‘truth’ of the phrase I like becomes viable. ‘Truth is a pathless land’ becomes true once the ‘truth’ has been realised because the path can now be discarded like an empty cocoon. It is an error to assume that once the path has been discarded, that it wasn’t an important, or even key part, of the intelligent and heartfelt awareness of realising the true by seeing with vidya, clear eyes.
The idea that we humans who have been disconnected by whatever circumstances from our own vitality, vigour and strength of mind, body or spirit are somehow going to be magically made strong after listening to a man exhorting us to be real humans is delusion, it is avidya. Yet this is Krishnamurti’s avidya, his delusion. He is telling people who are weak enough to seek his help that it is weak to be weak. And he simplistically tells them to be strong while directing them to sever their current ‘lifelines’. This is a proven recipe for personal disaster. Effectively the manner of Krishnamurti’s message has value only for people who don’t need his message.
Wow! It just hit me like a ton of bricks! Krishnamurti is a lot like Terry, my mother. Sometime after I managed to escape from the family cult I realised that some of what had been inculcated into me was the jumbled and malformed idea that I was to walk tall and strong like a man and to take control of my world the world. And that was a manifest simulacrum, a total fraud that there was no possible way I would be able to do it. How could I walk tall after having my spirit smashed and totally disconnected from the ‘true’ reality of having a body that breathes, and to also have had my spiritual legs cut off at the hips by a sociopathic narcissist?
It is possible that had I stumbled into Krishnamurti while still in this legless morass, his seemingly clever language — I can fall into a clever language samskara very easily — could have trapped me for a few years, as I was for about seven years with the New Age’s cleverly worded vacuity. My sister shared with me, while I was researching this, that our mother’s ‘bible’ was a book called Thinking and Destiny by Harold W. Percival. I don’t remember it at all! My sister said she tried to read and couldn’t and that an uncle, also a big fan of it, unsuccessfully began to explain it to her one time. She found it to have “a shocking level of complex, detailed, ungrounded, conceptual gobbledegook.” Wow. That does sound like the family cult. See
And a ‘Real’ Flash Back Back To My Present Back
As a physical manifestation of those psycho-spiritual early childhood conditions I was hunched over pre-teen. I had a badly bent back that Terry forcibly and with shaming practices tried to straighten by having me walk with a broom stick handle crosswise against my back held there within the crook of my elbows. It is interesting that this came to mind at this time because in the last few months I have been on a pretty intense practice of healing my kyphotic back using directed yogic and physiological practices that are beginning to pay off. (For that I am happy to give a big shout out to Jacobo Marroquin, a magical multidisciplinary holistic therapist here in Mexico. And to my friend Mark who introduced me to Matt Hsu of Upright Health.)
And for many years after leaving home I suffered from severe chronic cold feet. Nothing metaphorical in that physical manifestation of my psychological and spiritual state, I’m sure. Having cold feet had nothing to do with being terrified of being alive! For example, I was so afraid of being shamed that I was unable to urinate in busy public toilets. With time I cleared that issue. And as to my feet, it took a year or two of a dedicated daily visualisation practice of bringing my feet into my heart that resulted in those dead freezing bricks that hung off the end of my legs to became feet, warm and connected.
“I’m Drowning Here, And You Are Describing the Water!”
My mother did to us what Krishnamurti is unconsciously advocating. What came strongly to my mind about how wrong this is and why it will fail most of the time, is that if the people who hit their addiction of choice bottom — food, shopping, alcohol, drugs, sex, whatever — were given Krishnamurti’s instruction, it would fail those recovering addicts virtually 100% of the time. The statistics are in on that: without support recovering addicts relapse close to 100% of the time. The addict coming out of addiction is filled with confusion, shame, and often addled brains and/or cuts and bruises. Their recovery requires structure, community and leadership of some kind. All three of these if the recovery is going to be successful. And the fourth element is time.
Jung describes this in great psychological language:
The character thus revealed fits a personality who can only convince himself that he exists through his relation to an object. Such dependence on the object is absolute when the subject is totally lacking in self-reflection and therefore has no insight into himself. It is as if he existed only by reason of the fact that he has an object which assures him that he is really there. Answer to Job CG Jung - Para 574.
Krishnamurti is literally describing the water to the drowning person. He is removing the object that is allowing the disconnected and codependent person “to really know they are there”, even if it is, for the time, vicariously. As Tommy Rosen, the addiction expert of Recovery 2.0 puts it, in the beginning the object of addiction helps the person survive.
What Was in the Air? Krishnamurti as Post-Modern Marxist-Leninist Abetting Obedience To Authority
Living in the time of covid has clearly shown the effectiveness of a concentrated blitzkrieg propaganda of fear campaign to get people to do things that under ’normal’ circumstances they (think) that they would not do. In his Maps of Meaning class, Jordan Peterson points out that pretty much everyone in the classroom imagines that they will be the person protecting Anne Frank, not the one who is hunting her or ready to rat her out. The reality is that most likely no one in the class would have protected her. And, as it turns, Peterson, the ‘poster boy’ for spotting tyranny in the woke world didn’t see the medical tyranny happening and bowed to mandate pressures. He was, as he had accurately cautioned in his class, one of those who sold out Anne Frank. Fascinating.
And of course, he wasn’t the only one of his ‘calibre’ to fail to see that. For example Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams has actually admitted to being fooled while denigrating the disobedient as having been lucky, this time.
What do Marx, Lenin, and the post-modernists have in common with Krishnamurti? They all have carefully argued against the value of organised religion. It turns out that, at least in North America — I don’t know about other continents — among the people who were least likely to succumb to the health tyranny were those who had strong religious roots or connections. Peterson has argued this vociferously and repetitively as it applied to woke and gender chaos. See, for example “Jordan Peterson - Foucault The Reprehensible & Derrida The Trickster.” (Note: I have seen some people who argue that Peterson has misrepresented them. I haven’t researched that, yet, so for now I’ll present Peterson’s argument as is because many ‘respectable’ people support his argument.)
Intellectual leaders like Peterson and Naomi Wolff and others have been making strong arguments that the success of woke and covidiana would have been far less with the proper respect for the personal psychological structures that Christianity and similar religions provide people. This will be for another topic, because I’m not sure that would have been the case. The successful psyop-campaigns called WWI and WWII argue against that, given how extensive Christianity in its various guises was extant in those times with the participating countries. On WWII as unnecessary psyop see “10 Lessons From 'Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War” by Keith Knight featuring James Corbett. And about WWI see Falsehood in War-time: Propaganda Lies of the First World War by Arthur Ponsonby.
The arguments made by Peterson and Wolff are, basically, to build-wayback-better, to return to the socio-religious structure that got us in this mess in the first place. They argue that the way that the Christian religion, in particular, has been undermined by neo-modernist ideas married to Marxist-Leninist ideas in the last fifty or so years, is what has allowed for the organised removal of common sense and gave woke ideology the space to grow and effectively weaponise language that enabled our society to take the great step forward into the sexual mutilation of children. How did that language do it? With widely accepted and/or tolerated gobbledegook arguments such as because gender sex doesn’t actually exist we need to change the sex of children. And that arm of the weaponisation of language has been turned against the family as well, in order to undermine it with the result that the family, and thereby the civilisation, will implode.
In my last essay I came to the realisation that God and Satan are the same in how their energy is used to keep us trapped. Gautama Buddha had that insight 2500 years ago. See
And this is where Krishnamurti and Gautama do align in a curious and important way. Perhaps it is in part the reason for Krishnamurti’s longevity despite his hypocritical messaging and inadequate instruction. And that is Krishnamurti’s discussion about the loss of energy, which is effectively a false-flag truth. Gautama said the same thing with different language. Gautama didn’t use vitality, for example. He argued that God (and by my argument Satan equally) are distractions that impede our ability to reduce suffering. Krishnamurti says that seeking refuge in religion or gurus keeps us weak and ineffective human beings.
The big big BIG difference between their ‘philosophies’ is that Gautama taught and demonstrated that suffering at the personal and social level is reduced by following the precepts of the 4-fold truth and the 8-fold path. Krishnamurti, on the other hand, offers nothing beyond, ‘just do it, you’ll like it.’
And with another nice synchronicity, here is a lovely quotation on ‘god or not god’, sort of, by Nagarjuna, the founder of Mahayana Buddhism:
Toward the end of his Verses from the Center, Nagarjuna reflects on the relationship between gods and men:
If the gods were us, We would be eternal; For the gods are unborn in eternity. Were we other than them, We would be ephemeral. Were we different, We would never connect.
Although Buddhism traditionally regards the gods as mortal celestials inhabiting a separate, non-human realm of existence, Nagarjuna treats them as the dimension of eternity within the ephemeral human condition. Yet the enduring and fleeting elements of our being are utterly contingent on each other. Neither makes sense without the other. "What," asks Nagarjuna, "can be ephemeral / Without eternity?" (Pg6 Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime by Nāgārjuna, translated with commentary by Stephen Batchelor).
Close Part 1 of “Cutting the Ligaments — Krishnamurti as False Flag Freedom Fighter”
I had another lovely synchronicity happen with Krishnamurti this afternoon. I talked with Christelle from her store Petricor. She told me that she does meditation every day. I asked her what kind. She didn’t have the English for it and described it as returning to the atomic/molecular foundation of existence. To know and see the molecules that she is made of and that she is a part of. And then to see them re-connect back into her life with the best outcome, to manifest what is moving her forward, and at the same time to not restore those things that no longer serve. An amazing aperigraha process, of letting go what no longer serves, that I had not heard of. (Not that I’ve heard everything!) So I asked her where she got this practice from. “I created it myself,’ she answered. It began as a kind of game with her parents when she was young. Her parents were and are strong meditators and taught her when she was young. And taught her how to heal herself with meditation.
And so I imagine that Christelle is someone who will not be seeking out Krishnamurti for help: she is already a true human, standing straight and tall with eccentric appropriate action, with excellent vitality and strength.
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Song of the Essay
Lyrics
Can you tell us the place Where the elders chew the sky soft? The place where love is like a perfectly quilled arrow Flown from bows of pure willow And under the thundering roll of ghost buffalo Can't you hear the world's heart breaking? For it's a test of courage to kiss the snake-tongued people The fork-tongued people Yes, it's a test of courage to kiss the snake-tongued people The fork-tongued people 'Cause it's like two tongues at one time Like two tongues at one time It's like two tongues at one time Like two tongues at one time It's like two tongues at one time Like bitter spirits and sweet wine Like two tongues at one time, at one time Pour all of your souls like magma into the caverns Pour all of your souls like magma into the caverns Pour them all for the hauntings the hauntings the hauntings Pour them all for the hauntings the hauntings the hauntings Pour them all for the hauntings And cool down for the hauntings And harden for the hauntings And now granite soul, you're a haunter A haunter hunting the children of the wild plains And now granite soul, you're a haunter A haunter hunting the children of the wild plains And if my great-great-great-great-great-great Grandma could find them She would put all of their poisoned All of their poisoned, poisoned teeth In her medicine bag, in her medicine bag She'd make a graph of our death beat Pulse, murmur, quiet Pulse, murmur, quiet Like hiding pheasants in tall grass Now there's faces in the rocks And they're coming on strong Faces in the rocks with medicine tongues Faces in the rocks, feels like a million to one Woman and man in the moon with a cradleboard son Braided 'round close 'til all warmth is gone, gone So here take these blankets Here take these blankets Here take these blankets They're woven from the hair of the dead With the hair from your sisters Hair from your brothers Hair from your lovers Hair from the beavers Hair from the otters The hair from your mothers Hair from your fathers Hair from your lovers Hair from the beavers Hair from the otters And we, we saw through you Like a candle through a buffalo's eye And we, we stood by you Like a mama bear shot with her cubs at her side And we, we saw through you Like a candle through a buffalo's eye
Wow! This really resonated with me Guy. I so enjoyed reading someone articulate so much better than I could something I also feel so instinctively.
Someone gave me a collection of Krishnamurti booklets two years ago and I realised quickly they were not for me and listed them on eBay! I could not have put it into the words you have, but I am one who is not looking for a guru and after reading some of the essays I could see that the approach was not for me either. I had to work more from ‘my body’ and understand that childhood years of brainwashing had led to so called ‘auto immune’ disorders. My body was attacking itself to try and wake me up. I was started on this journey by The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate as I had read a couple of his books before.
What I find interesting is to speak to some people about their journey that have not been weakened and damaged in childhood, and I have a friend in this category, who I have known for nearly 50 years, and she has no concept of what this damage might look like and no tolerance of it either, despite working on herself deeply and being on her own path of understanding. Which I find fascinating to be honest.
This is a great sentence, “It is an error to assume that once the path has been discarded, that it wasn’t an important, or even key part, of the intelligent and heartfelt awareness of realising the true by seeing with vidya, clear eyes.”
There is much to unpack in this essay and I will read it again.
“Jordan Peterson points out that pretty much everyone in the classroom imagines that they will be the person protecting Anne Frank, not the one who is hunting her or ready to rat her out. The reality is that most likely no one in the class would have protected her. And, as it turns, Peterson, the ‘poster boy’ for spotting tyranny in the woke world didn’t see the medical tyranny happening and bowed to mandate pressures. He was, as he had accurately cautioned in his class, one of those who sold out Anne Frank.”
I wonder how your friend Tereza would reconcile that? She’s been debating with me on her Substack to the point of mildly attacking my character when I’ve pointed out that everyone is selfish. None are above malfeasance. I guess she thinks laws were written for those miscreants “over there” but not in her righteous circle.
Covid malfeasance couldn’t have happened if it handn’t triggered the greatest example of human mass selfishness in our lifetimes. Examples are everywhere. Yet, if we keep ignoring that and insisting it was those bad people over there that did it to us, it’ll happen again, and again, and again. We need to reconcile our culpability.