Cosmos Café [1/15] “The Roots of Psychological Conflict” from The Ending of Time, a series of dialogues between David Bohm and Jiddu Krishnamurti

Pardon the lengthy response; i have been doing a little thinking on this subject :nerd_face:

Coming off of our previous discussion based around John Durham Peters’ Speaking into the Air (whose book concludes that dissemination is the more natural form of communication, a more effective means of “broadcast” than dreaming about and working towards perfect communication), we will now move into a conversation between Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm, which utilizes a Bohmian-style dialogue, a method that, though outside of our typical day-to-day discussions and debates, provides a certain grounding for taking conversations into new directions. This type of discourse can be utilized as a special method for reaching beyond our human givenness, our miscommunications; And yes, it goes against Peters conclusion in Speaking into the Air. There is a deep listening, a lingering with the issue rather than letting it go; remaining with the thoughts that arise and searching all around it for a well-bodied response.

Peters noted frequently that we tend to focus upon this or that miscommunication, attempting to reconcile our differences. The dialogue “The Roots of Psychological Conflict” between Bohm and Krishnamurti attempts to identify a core miscommunication of humanity, that of our human nature and its miscommunication with our “true” nature. I would argue that they are really having a metalogue as described by Gregory Bateson:

A metalogue is a conversation about some problematic subject. This conversation should be such that not only do the participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject.

Bohm and Krishnamurti are discussing the roots of psychological conflict and the ending of (psychological) time. They identify that the conflict’s root is that our human nature exists within time, within our need to “become,” within our need to seek answers, within our need to have more experience…yet as they discuss this, they are in the midst of time, they often speak over one another, needing to speak their point before they forget what to say, or are not heard. Yet despite all of this, as they stick with their thoughts, they reach some perennial insights from asking a few perennial questions. Through this “metalogue” they reach a point in which they come to the core of religious thought, or for the non-religious, the core of our issues (often viewed as some level of conflict) as we exist as human beings. The core is something along the lines of humans/humanity has taken a wrong turn.

We have explored Gebser and Aurobindo in our Readers Underground conversations. Aurobindo and Gebser, along with many others over the course of human thought, have discovered this need or desire or aspiration for correcting our wrong turn. The wrong turn, boiled down, left on the eyelet til the water is but a drop in the kettle, is that we, as humans, have evolved without a say in the matter; or evolution (Darwinian), though a real evolution, does not (seem to) define our true (or truest) nature.

On page 48 in Seven Quartets of Becoming, Debashish Banerji quotes Aurobindo from Synthesis of Yoga (p. 645) to diagnose the two “roots” of our conflict (bold highlights mine):

We have not to doctor symptoms of impurity, or that only secondarily, as a minor help,— but to strike at its roots after a deeper diagnosis. We then find that there are two forms of impurity which are at the root of the whole confusion. One is a defect born of the nature of our past evolution, which has been a nature of separative ignorance; this defect is a radically wrong and ignorant form given to the proper action of each part of our instrumental being.

Debashish rephrases Aurobindo on page 48 of Seven Quartets:

In other words, as human beings, we are born with a psychological constitution which is marked by error. And its defect lies in the fact that there has been a past to it, an evolutionary past with its root in a sense of separation and a blind wish to survive and enlarge one’s separate reality. This evolutionary past has introduced distortions to the working of our instrumental parts, which we are unconscious of and take for granted. Sri Aurobindo sees this as the first root of impurity in human nature.

Banerji states This leads to the second form of impurity:

Moreover, evolution of consciousness among living things has been a progression through ad hoc steps, which have been added on to previous steps without sufficient integration.

Sri Aurobindo describes this second impurity or “defect” as:

… born of the successive process of an evolution, where life emerges in and depends on body, mind emerges in and depends on life in the body, supermind emerges in and lends itself to instead of governing mind, soul itself is apparent only as a circumstance of the bodily life of the mental being and veils up the spirit in the lower imperfections. This second defect of our nature is caused by this dependence of the higher on the lower parts; it is an immixture of functions by which the impure working of the lower instrument gets into the characteristic action of the higher function and gives to it an added imperfection of embarrassment, wrong direction and confusion.

If we tie this into Bohm and Krishnamurti, essentially humanity has taken a wrong turn because, at the root of psychological conflict lies this randomly selected biological evolution which has “produced” a brain, which some would say is also the campsite of the mind (a temporary residence), with all of this happening within time or stages.


I personally do not wish for us to attempt a Bohmian-style dialogue. As @johnnydavis54 notes, things can get a bit stale. And I too have noted my own desire, which all others nodded along with this too, to carry the conversation from the past into the present conversation. I believe we naturally do this no matter what the topic may be…so all are invited, even if the subject/reading selection is shit-in-your-mind. With our @ccafe crew…we wouldn’t be able to stay on topic for more than a few minutes anyways! We are living proof of John Durham Peters conclusion that dissemination is more true to life than dreams of a perfect discussion.

I do have dreams or hopes, personally, to take this in the direction of achronon, Gebser’s term for the timelessness which Bohm and Krishnamurti are (I believe) hinting at, of which I continually am attempting to grasp, or “agrasp”…perhaps the guy who goes by the name @achronon could provide insight into Gebserian concepts where I left off with Aurobindo above. I also expect that @Mark_Jabbour will have a thing or two to say about all this as a fella who prefers the Darwinian evolutionary thought. And I do wish to applaud @Michael_Stumpf for saying more than I can articulate with only the two images above (and now below)…perhaps we should just leave it at that!

And I am not forgetting about my proposal to tie this into Cosmic Time a la @madrush…but who has time to discuss such grand topics…?!

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