The Skeptic John Powell Meets the Mystic Jiddu Krishnamurti
John L. Waters
February 26, 2002
(c) Copyright 2001 by John L. Waters. All Rights
Reserved
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Professor John Powell,
http://www.humboldt
Jiddu Krishnamurti claimed to sense what he called
"the benediction" and many others felt a mystical
presence in Jiddu Krishnamurti. Practicing trance
mediums report seeing an intense golden aura around
the physical body of a spiritual master or saint.
Many people sensed a healing presence fill the room as
Jiddu Krishnamurti entered. This article examines
this subject in detail.
Mystics or psychics who see a light or aura that many
persons cannot ever see are sometimes attacked by
skeptics who deny that any such light could possibly
exist. How can this be? What is going on?
Consider the problem of demonstrating that a talent
and a sense exists to those who don't have the sense
or the talent.
The problem is demonstrating the sense or the talent
to persons who simply don't have it.
Consider the difficulty in proving to a deaf person
that sounds truly exist. The person who has the
ability to hear will have trouble proving to deaf
people that there is a talent called hearing. How can
the proof be carried out?
Consider this. You can show a deaf person what
vibration is by gently pressing an electric vibrator
upon their skin. Say their hand or their chest. As
they are feeling the vibration you can explain that
sound is a vibration that the ears can feel something
like your body feels the electric vibrator. The deaf
person won't hear the buzzing of the vibrator but they
will feel the vibration and they will see the vibrator
moving back and forth.
Assume the deaf person is able to see and also has
muscle sense and can feel the vibrator through their
muscles and bones.
Now what about explaining to a blind person what light
is? Again, we can use the vibrator. The blind person
won't be able to see the vibrator but they will feel
the vibration of it on their flesh and they will hear
the buzzing of the vibrator in their ears.
The blind person's ears and muscles sense the
vibration. Furthermore, the blind person can hear the
vibrator buzzing and sense the vibration in his body.
The teacher can tell the blind person, "Your eyes
sense vibration. A nervous connection is missing,
though, so you can't see the vibrator. Neither can
you see the vibrations of light."
The problem of credibility enters. Why should the
handicapped person believe the nonhandicapped teacher?
By what process do congenitally blind people come to
believe that light exists? By what process do
congenitally deaf persons come to believe that sounds
exist? Well, a little handicapped child trusts in
what the adults say. The little child isn't such a
doubter and skeptic.
Another question: Do all blind people believe that
light exists?
Do all deaf people believe that sounds exist?
Consider a skeptical blind person. Why would a blind
person be skeptical? Well, the skeptical blind man
would trust only what he himself senses. (Before he
could believe light exists he would need to see the
light repeatedly. He would never trust what another
person told him about vision and visible energies.)
This is why a skeptic would never accept the mystical
sense of Jiddu Krishnamurti. When Krishnamurti
describes what he calls "the other," "the immensity,"
and "the benediction,
because they just can't sense what he senses. They
have lost all the trust that a little child has.
Even so, a mystic can say to you that the mystical
vibration is warm, bright, and soothing. It helps one
relax and turn off the thought-engine. The mind stops
plotting, planning, and thinking. If you are
trusting, you can believe. If you aren't trusting,
there are still ways of helping you to understand the
mystical sense. Hear what Jiddu Krishnamurti himself
has to say. This is a quote from page 82 of the book
entitled "Krishnamurti to Himself:"
"Meditation is a movement without any motive, without
words and the activity of thought. It must be
something that is not deliberately set about. Only
then is meditation a movement in the infinite,
measureless to man, without a goal, without an end and
without a beginning."
As Krishnamurti goes into deep meditation, he senses
"the other" and he moves his body in different ways,
serenely, without any ulterior motive, without a plan
or an idea in his head. A sensitive person feels the
mystical energy emanating from Jiddu Krishnamurti and
senses that he is holy. But most people don't have
enough sensitivity to feel this aspect of
Krishnamurti. They just can't sense his aura or see
the light coming from him. These people are rather
like deaf people or blind people, yet they don't have
the trust most deaf or blind people have. The deaf
people trust other people when they say sounds are
real. The blind people trust other people when they
say colors and light are real. But the skeptics who
can't sense the aura of a holy person refuse to trust
other people who do sense in this way. One really
wonders why the skeptics are so skeptical.
By collecting many reports of the mystical sense of
Krishnamurti together, the open-minded person amasses
evidence that the mystical sense is real. For
example, in his book entitled "Cosmic Consciousness"
Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke presents reports of or by
forty-nine adults whom he believed attained the
mystical state of cosmic consciousness. Furthermore,
the modern scientist Sir Alister Hardy F.R.S. created
a book entitled "The Spiritual Nature of Man" in which
he presented over four hundred anecdotal reports by
persons who had a mystical experience or an uncanny
experience of some rather similar kind.
Despite all these anecdotal preports, a skeptic can
say, "There is just belief on the basis of desire"
because the pioneer psychologist Sigmund Freud said
this and it seems to be true enough, in many cases.
There's a problem though, for how does just belief on
the basis of desire enable an insomniac to turn off
his or her thinking mind and go to sleep? Belief on
the basis of desire doesn't make a person into a
meditator. There's more to meditation than just
wanting to be free of the demons that keep one on
edge, tossing and turning under the blankets and
totally unable to go to sleep. There's a lot more to
becoming a saint tham wishful thinking and vain
belief.
Skeptics doubt that the empty mind of the meditator
and the special sense of Krishnamurti and other
mystics is a valid sense. Indeed, the skeptics call
this perception of strange lights and other eerie
sensations a delusion, or an hallucination. Why? On
what basis? Well, they say that it's just not a
normal perception. Moreover, they say it's associated
with atypical behavior, sometimes even dangerous
insanity. The skeptics insist that the person who
sees lights that other people don't see is a
psychotic. That's like deaf people giving sighted
people a nasty name, and it suggests that the skeptics
are jealous. Maybe they are just believing on the
basis of their own desire. How do the skeptics prove
this is not the case?
1. The skeptics have never sensed what Krishnamurti
calls "the other" or if they sensed it once they were
like Scrooge and they snorted "Bah. Humbug!" and they
called it a distortion and they blamed it on a trick
of sense or on an "underdone potato" or some kind of
poisoning. They said it must be an illness. They
treated it as evidence of insanity. Where is the
skeptics' proof that they are right? Why should we,
the naive ang gullible innocents, believe what the
skeptics say?
2. Most people are skeptical of this extra sense.
They just don't have the talent and the sense or they
never developed it, and so they doubt that it is real.
In fact some skeptics really get upset at the idea
that what a mystic senses is real.
3. Scientists dressed in their white coats like holy
men dressed in white robes have sanctioned ways of
removing this sense from insane people. In fact, if
Jiddu Krishnamurti hadn't been venerated as a holy
man, he would have been feared as a psychotic. Maybe
he just compensated very well for his handicap and was
wise despite his illness? Well, let's examine each of
these ideas.
A. Like Ebeneezer Scrooge suggested he was seeing the
ghost of Jacob Marley because the rich miser ate a
piece of underdone potato, the skeptics will say that
the mystic is just being poisoned... maybe poisoned by
the body itself, or by physiological changes inside
the brain. The doctors give the mystic some medicine
that drastically alters brain activity. This
medication is called a cure for insanity.
The assumption is that what meditators sense is bad.
The doctors assume that it's good to always be using
the rational retentive cognitive style (RRCS) and
planning every move and thinking ahead. The doctors
say that intuition is bad, or at least inferior to
conscious calculation and cogitation The doctors
and the skeptics would never trust their intuitions.
They would insist on having clearly defined reasons to
do something. Maybe it's because the doctors and the
skeptics just never had the sense and the talent of a
very intuitive person, or they suppressed their own
intuition to do well in school and get ahead in the
stiff, competive academic world.
B. If most people are skeptical, it's because they
don't sense this "other" and they are social. They
focus upon thinking and talking, reading and
listening. They don't want to withdraw for hours and
go into deep meditation. They have the social
instinct. They tend to believe a person is mentally
ill if he or she spends a lot of time alone. Their
socially conditioned bias is showing. In a different
culture, however, meditators could be respected
persons. Our culture just favors reasoned arguments
and conversation.
C. Examine the assumptions of the psychologists and
psychiatrists. They were raised on Freud and the
teachings of other determined skeptics. They were
trained in the university where RRCS is the ONE WAY to
excel...and prove yourself competent. As advisors to
educators they sanction the partial mind-blinding of
schoolchildren. I say. Does this remind you of
William Blake, and his poem, "Holy Thursday?"
Okay. The main issue here is that unlike the deaf
children and the blind children who trust in their
teacher and caregiver, the hard skeptics who don't
sense the subjective light and just don't believe in
the subjective light of Jiddu Krishnamurti and other
mystics are determined not to trust in what Jiddu
Krishnamurti says, and in what other mystics say.
Like John Powell, whom in this article we shall
consider the consummate skeptical philosopher, they,
like John Powell, are all from the state of Missouri,
the "show me" state. And so I am prepared to show
John Powell and the other skeptics what Krishnamurti
was talking about.
If you go to my website Prophets
and Prophecies and read my article on AUM art,
you will see a different way of expressing what
Krishnamurti said in his preceding quote on
meditation. Here is part of that quote again:
"Meditation is a movement without any motive, without
words and the activity of thought. It must be
something that is not deliberately set about...without
an end and without a beginning."
Now consider this. While he is in meditation a man
produces drawings which don't suggest any name or
word. Furthermore, after the drawing is done you
can't tell where the man first set the pen to paper
and where he lifted it off the paper. The process of
meditation so filled his body and brain that as he
continues drawing you can see a picture of that very
movement that Krishnamurti is talking about. The
artist himself is demonstrating this state of activity
for you, right before your eyes.
As you urge the artist-meditator to argue with you and
prove to you that he is a good debater and arguer, you
are urging him to forsake the sense of blessedness and
benediction he feels which comes by means of his
special sense and his special talent, and adjust to
your special sense and talent. You admit you worry a
lot about philosophical issues. You want the blessed
meditator to come down to your own level and worry
along with you. Is this fair? If the meditator is
going to struggle and reform his brain activity to
suit your needs, your training, and your
expectations, can you admit that this will take the
man a bit of time and effort, and during that time he
won't be able to work his brain as much in the other
way, which Jiddu Krishnamurti was encouraged to work
his brain? After all, Krishnamurti was revered as a
holy man. But you don't want to believe there is any
such thing as a holy man. Is this correct or is there
something I don't yet understand about your
skepticism? You talk about Freud and William James,
but the blessed person sees that each one of these
persons is like a deaf child who refuses to believe
that sound exists. Each one of them is like a blind
child who has no trust in the parent or educator who
is explaining what light is and what seeing is like.
But the vibrations from a holy person are felt as
vibrations by the person who has the sense and the
talent to feel these vibrations. If you don't have
this sense and this talent, well, why must you insist
that there is no such thing as a holy light or a
subjective light? Could that just be a sour grapes
attitude? How do you prove the skeptical person isn't
just demonstrating a sour grapes attitude?
What you want, of course, is some hard evidence, or
some clear argument that is convincing. Jiddu
Krishnamurti has given us a clear definition of what
meditation IS, and the AUM artist gives you a
demonstration of the movements about which
Krishnamurti speaks in his quote. If you can't sense
the holy light that comes through the AUM artist as he
is meditating and drawing figures right in front of
your eyes, well, that doesn't mean the holy light
doesn't exist. It just suggests that you never
developed the sense and the talent in yourself.
Now if you are weak in intuition, you don't know what
to believe. You don't sense the holy light, and you
know that young children trust in their parents and
their teachers, so a blind child and a deaf child will
trust and believe that there is light and sound. So,
too, a young child will trust the parent or the
educator who tells them about the holy light.
Moreover, some of the children will sense the holy
light in certain eerie places and in certain eerie
persons. But what does it mean to be feeling eerie?
That's just a funny word that doesn't get used a lot
nowadays.
We know that a little child will believe things which
aren't really true. Like Santa Claus doesn't really
come down the chimney with lots of toys in a large
sack. If one child says he or she sees an eerie light
in a certain person, why doesn't that child see the
same light in other persons? Moreover, if out of two
hundred children five children see an eerie light in a
given person but not in other persons, is that just
chance? And if the AUM artist can take ten persons
and give them a method for seeing lights they didn't
see before, and they all report seeing these lights
even though they didn't know what to expect, is that
just due to chance? The AUM artist has done these
things. This isn't made-up fantasy.
The idea of Freud that "We believe on the basis of
desire rather than on the basis of argument or
evidence," can help us understand why some skeptics
are so adamant in their insistence that there is no
such thing as a "holy" light or a "subjective" light
as Dr. R.M. Bucke called it. The skeptics are failing
to sense a part of reality, but they don't want to
admit this. Of course there are lots of deaf people
and there are lots of blind people. But in our
culture, a man doesn't want to think of himself as
handicapped or disabled. If there is an "extra" sense
that many children don't have or they just outgrow it
at a rather young age, if this sense isn't essential
for being a good hunter and warrior, then natural
selection isn't going to eliminate those who don't
have the sense. Millennia will come and go, and some
people will have the sense of the holy presence and
many will not. Furthermore, one can see that the
sense of a light that isn't physical can be a
distraction to man who needs to focus on the physical
reality to succeed on the hunt and in battle. So
there is a certain amount of selection pressure
against this talent and this sense. Even so, the
sensitivity is still present in the human race. Some
persons will be unusually sensitive to this
environmental input.
11:05PM Saturday, February 23, 2002
8:40PM Monday, February 25, 2002
John L. Waters
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