Q: "Can a dialogue group change/impact/affect “humanity“ with the dialogues that we engage in? If so, can we be more aware and intentional about “doing” that?"
**The question that comes up is, "What sort of change are we talking about?" What sort of impact or affect are we talking about?
And more importantly, are we talking about incremental change or transformation?
Krishnamurti: First of all, what do we mean by change? What do we mean by bringing about a transformation or mutation in our consciousness? You understand? That is what it means. What does it signify, what is the meaning of change, mutation? They are all the same words - transformation. What do we mean by that?
Is it change if you know what you are changing into? You understand my question? If one knows what you must become, is that change?
If one has an idea, a concept, a conclusion, an end to which you conform, to which you change to, or from this to that, is that change? Or is it a continuation of the same thing but modified. You have understood my question? One may project what one should be. The projection of that is from one's own desire, from one's own belief, one's own demands, and you project that. And when you want to become that, you are becoming what you are, perhaps slightly modified. Is that clear? So, when we have an object or an end in view, projected by our own experience, from our own knowledge, from our own belief and conclusions and opinions, such movement is not change at all.
Just... Go step by step, sir. First step is that one desires, one wants to change. That is a fairly intelligent demand, if one is at all aware. Then one asks what do we mean by change? Generally implied from the known, move in the direction of the unknown. I am using different words. I don't know what the unknown... but I try to move towards it. But it is the same direction. So, to discover change implies not having any movement towards any direction. Which doesn't mean you stay in the same place. I wonder if you get this.
**So here Krishnamurti is suggesting that any movement (attempt to change) that's determined by "the same level of thinking" (the known/the cultural conditioning) isn't change. He's suggesting "no movement in any direction determined by past memory," a.k.a. "Doing Nothing." He's suggesting that 'actual change' would need to come out of a "looking together, free of the old patterns."
“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” —Albert Einstein
**We're not suggesting that we need to "believe Krishnamurti," but if we each 'look' at what he's pointing to, it appears to be accurate.
Is a movement that comes out of the same level of thinking, really a change?
Steven Harrison: Any approach to ourselves is from ourselves (*the known) and is part of the conditioning. It is a hopeless dilemma, and there is nothing we can do about it.
So, can we do nothing?
As it turns out, nothing is a surprisingly active place, but it is here that we may discover what we are. In the resistance to doing nothing, the fear of doing nothing, of being nothing, we begin to discover the parameters of the self.
**So, is this what real change is? No longer moving in the directions determined by a divisive 'self-ego-structure'?
Would the society we live in "change" if our actions came out of 'observation together' rather than out of the patterns generated by a divisive self-image thought-structure? Observing together rather than continually clashing over abstract beliefs and opinions?
Would that be an impactful change?
Krishnamurti: Order in the world can only come about if there is order in ourselves, complete, total order in the whole structure of our being.