Theos-Talk Archives (May 2000 Message tt00104)

Dear friends,

Next segement starts with two quotes from Aryel's book in which he used the term
phenomenology, which will be follwed by a little trial to explain some the
concepts and procedures involved in phenomenology. As I'm still a beginning
student of this philosophy I can not guarantee to present it without errors
nor unclarities. It's a try. On Alpheus I will in the future post a page with
comments and links concerning phenomenology.

>From "The Inner Life of Krishnamurti: Private Passion and Perennial Wisdom" by
Aryel Sanat, page 144:

K did use theosophical language throughout his life to describe or attempt to
understand the "technical" aspects of the process. it was the best available
terminology to date to convey in words what was happening to him. However, K
never used this terminology in a purely theoretical way, as is often done in New
Age and Theosophical circles. For him, the language was merely a tool.

This is a critical distinction. It clarifies that he was not engaged in
promoting a metaphysical system. K's approach was never conceptual or
metaphysical. Without intending to associate him with particular schools of
thought, one can say 'metaphorically' that his approach was akin to to those of
existentialism and phenomenology. That is, rather than except a certain
background of knowledge or speculation as "given," K would explore all issues
without presuppositions. For instance, in connection with the process, he found
himself engaging with certain individuals. To convey something about this to
others, he would sometimes use the theosophical terminology most suited for the
purpose--'Masters.' That is, he would have the experience 'first' and only later
try to speak of it. This phenomenological use of language is profoundly
different from someone reading books about the Masters, developing a belief
system, and assuming it stands for "the truth."

And on page 246:

If one says that the observer is none other than the observed, one seems to be
making the remarkable statement that there is no seam between what are
considered "me" and "not me." This implies the provisional suspension, or
"bracketing off," of some of the presuppositions of subject-predicate grammar,
and is in keeping with the phenomenological approach.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

In these two quotes Aryel his highlighting two aspects of phenomenology which
are akin to how K proceeds in his communications. First there is the
"phenomenological use of language" by K when he  "would have the experience
'first' and only later try to speak of it." On first sight it would seem odd to
qualify the procedure of experiencing first and than expressing what one
experiences by giving it a fancy name. One could as well say that it is quite
common sense or, if one wants to give it a philosophical label, it is quite
emperical, meaning that language only has meaning in so far it refers to
experienced data. So what is then particularly phenomenological about K's way of
using language? As far as I can tell, and Aryel can correct me here if I make an
erroneous presentation, the phenomenological aspect is the fact that K only
wants to describe his experiences without importing any metaphysical meanings,
which can not be verified, and without wanting to explain his experiences from a
theoretical framework. He deliberately refrains from that. This intention is
very much in line with phenomenology, which Husserl in his early days also
called 'descriptive psychology.' Husserl
intended to give a very rigourous non-theoretical description of the essential
structures of consciousness. But before executing that intiricate description he
felt that certain aspects of consciousness had to be suspended, or "bracketed,"
a term he imported from mathematics.

And this brings us to the second quote in
which Aryel qualifies K's statement that "the observer is none other than the
observed," is "the provisional suspension, or "bracketing off," of some of the
presuppositions of subject-predicate grammar," which is "in keeping with the
phenomenological approach." This procedure or appoach of 'suspension' or
'bracketing' is also called the 'epoche' and is a part of the 'phenomenological
reduction.' Many discussions are going on in P about it's how and why and there
is no agreement. Even Husserl had a hard time describing the procedure, though
many P-ists will recognize it when applied. In this way there were some people,
knowledgable about P, who recognized that what K was doing was something
similar.

One of Husserl's main finds about consciousness was its intentional
structure: consciousness is always consciousness OF something (a tree, a
thought, a person, an event, a feeling, a mathematical formula) and always
THROUHG a particular mode (seeing, remembring, judging, imagining, calculating).
This is not dissimilar to K's statement that we're always in relation with
either nature, persons or thoughts, and that the two main modes of consciousness
are either direct choiceless awareness or through an image. On a deeper level,
one which most P-ists did not reach, one can come to the understanding that the
basic structure of consciousness is wholistic or monist, or as K says "the
observer is none other than the observed" and "you are the world and the world
is you." At this level P can be complemented by K, theosophy,  Buddhism and
Vedanta.

I'd like to finish with my own example of a phenomenological procedure
K applies, which Husserl called 'eidetic analysis.' This is also a way to clean
up a phenomenon of non-essential contingent aspects and in doing so come to an
intuition of its essential necessary structure. For example when K talks about
fear he would make it clear that he is not talking about a specific fear, like
fear for fire or speaking in public etc., but that he speaks about that part of
fear, which makes fear to be fear, freed from all its changable aspects. Some
might argue that he would be talking about an abstraction, the abstraction
'fear,' abstracted from all the different fears imaginable. Or that he is
talking about fear in general, meaning the class of all fears in existence. P
would recognize that that's not the case, that K is not abstracting nor
generalizing, but that he is talking about the essence of fear, which is a
phenomenon quite by itself, which can be 'intuited' or have an insight about.
According to Husserl one of the first steps in eidetic analysis is taking the
phenomenon under consideration and by the play of
'free variation,' meaning changing the phenomenon in imagination, one can find
out and remove all unnecessary features. An often used example is the
investigation of the phenomenon color. By free imagination one can see that a
color does not depend on shape, so shape is eliminated from the phenomenon color
as not necessary, but that color stil needs space or extension to exist, so
extension is a necessary component of the essence color, or, in other words, an
essential internal structure or relation. In a similar way one can see that
essentially fear is always fear of something, but it does not matter what one is
afraid of. So the intentional structure of fear is an essential component, but
not the object of which one is afraid. As a next step, or several steps further,
K will show that an essential part of fear is the movement away from 'what is,'
that one can never be afraid of reality, but only of images of 'what could be.'
This again goes parallel with Sartre's investigation of emotions as a magical
flight away from reality. Also a part of eidetic analysis is the way
certain essences are related amongst each other, their external relations. So
one could after
establishing an understanding of the essence of fear, move on to an
investigation of desire, after which one can see how they are connected. From
here it might not be too much to state that what K is doing is an eidetic
analysis of all the factors involved in keeping us from transformation and of
transformation itself. He is showing us the esences of desire, fear, ego,
thought, religion, meditation, love etc. and how they are interconnected, and
will also sometimes give a glimpse of what will happen when one really sees
these phenomena in absolute clarity.

Unfortunately K did not sufficiently investigate the essences of teacher, path
and theosophy, for he was too prejudiced against these concepts. What he did in
my opinion was suppressing their significance by eliminating them from his
central concept of transformation as unnessecary, even counter-productive. His
motivation for doing so was in my opinion his disappointment in, even anger at,
the Masters and certain theosophists. The Masters for not saving his brother and
certain theosophists for making the whole world teacher project into a circus.
Soon I'll be publishing on Alpheus some more texts, one from David Anrias, the
other from an old friend of Geoffrey Hodson, in which some psychological aspects
of K will be highlighted.

Govert





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