Self-Inquiry with Eric Hassett, May 25, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Eric Hassett
May 25, 2025

On Sunday, May 25th, from 3pm to 4:30pm, a dialogue with four participants and myself took place on the lush green grass outside the Main House near the swimming pool. It was a beautiful day with plenty of sunshine.

A Krishnamurti quote from The Book of Life (Direct Observation, Feb. 15th) was read:

Why do ideas take root in our minds? Why do not facts become all-important—not ideas? Why do theories, ideas, become so significant rather than the fact? Is it that we cannot understand the fact, or have not the capacity, or are afraid of facing the fact? Therefore, ideas, speculations, theories are a means of escaping away from the fact…

You may run away, you may do all kinds of things; the facts are there—the fact that one is angry, the fact that one is ambitious, the fact that one is sexual, a dozen things. You may suppress them, you may transmute them, which is another form of suppression; you may control them, but they are all suppressed, controlled, disciplined with ideas… Do not ideas waste our energy? Do not ideas dull the mind? You may be clever in speculation, in quotations; but it is obviously a dull mind which quotes, that has read a lot and quotes.

… You remove the conflict of the opposite at one stroke if you live with the fact and therefore liberate the energy to face the fact. For most of us, contradiction is an extraordinary field in which the mind is caught. I want to do this, and I do something entirely different; but if I face the fact of wanting to do this, there is no contradiction; and therefore, at one stroke I abolish altogether all sense of the opposite, and my mind then is completely concerned with what is, and with
the understanding of what is.

The group proceeded to discuss awareness, the observer and the observed, psychological time, conditioning, and the ending of the ‘me’. There seemed to be genuine ‘looking’ taking place, along with self-observation.

Eric

Self-Inquiry with Eric Hassett, May 21, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Eric Hassett
May 21, 2025

On Wednesday, May 21st, from 4:30pm to 6pm, a dialogue with five participants and myself took place in a meeting room at Esquimalt Gorge Park, Victoria. Large windows offered views of the exquisite garden landscape outside.

A Krishnamurti quote from The Book of Life (A Timeless State, Oct. 2nd) was read:

When we are talking about time, we do not mean chronological time, time by the watch. That time exists, must exist. If you want to catch a bus, if you want to get to a train or meet an appointment tomorrow, you must have chronological time. But is there a tomorrow, psychologically, which is the time of the mind? Is there psychologically tomorrow, actually? Or is the tomorrow created by thought because thought sees the impossibility of change, directly, immediately, and invents this process of gradualness? I see for myself, as a human being, that it is terribly important to bring about a radical revolution in my way of life, thinking, feeling, and in my actions, and I say to myself, “I’ll take time over it; I’ll be different tomorrow, or in a month’s time.” That is the time we are talking about: the psychological structure of time, of tomorrow, or the future, and in that time we live. Time is the past, the present, and the future, not by the watch. I was, yesterday; yesterday operates through today and creates the future. That’s a fairly simple thing. I had an experience a year ago that left an imprint on my mind, and the present I translate according to that experience, knowledge, tradition, conditioning, and I create the tomorrow. I’m caught in this circle. This is what we call living; this is what we call time.

Thought, which is you, with all its memories, conditioning, ideas, hopes, despair, the utter loneliness of existence—all that is this time…And to understand a timeless state, when time has come to a stop, one must inquire whether the mind can be free totally of all experience, which is of time.

The group proceeded to discuss awareness, the observer and the observed, psychological time, conditioning, and the ending of the ‘me’. There seemed to be genuine ‘looking’ taking place, along with self-observation.

Eric

Self-Inquiry with Eric Hassett, May 18, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Eric Hassett
May 18, 2025

On Sunday, May 18th, from 3pm to 4:30pm, a dialogue with ten participants and myself took place on the lush green grass outside the Main House near the swimming pool. It was a beautiful day with plenty of sunshine.

A Krishnamurti quote from the KECC handout titled “Self-Inquiry Meetings” was read:

I think before we begin it should be made clear what we mean by discussion.
To me it is a process of discovery through exposing oneself to the fact. That is, in
discussion I discover myself, the habit of my thought, the way I proceed to think,
my reactions, the way I reason, not only intellectually but inwardly… I feel that if
we could be serious for an hour or so and really fathom, delve into ourselves as
much as we can, we should be able to release, not through any action of will, a
certain sense of energy that is awake all the time, which is beyond thought.”

It was suggested that the dialogue is an opportunity not just for intellectual discussion but also to ‘look’ at the actuality of our daily lives to which Krishnamurti pointed and to ‘do’ what he urged us to do when he said “Do it, sirs!” because such action, when taken, should, as the above quote says, “…release, not through any action of will, a certain energy that is awake all the time, which is beyond thought.”

In connection with this possibility, the group proceeded to discuss awareness, the observer and the observed, psychological time, conditioning, and the ending of the ‘me’. By and large, there seemed to be genuine ‘looking’ taking place, along with self-observation. As the saying goes, “people were truly listening to people truly speaking.”

Eric

Self-Inquiry with James Tousignant, May 7, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with James Tousignant
May 7, 2025

The meeting began with the Book of Life reading from May 7, 2025 titled, “One Must Have Great Feeling.” We quickly moved into an exploration of the Krishnamurti’s use of the word “feeling” as his statement:

because it is only the feelings that make the mind highly sensitive

This would have been interesting in and of itself, however the reading on the opposite page, described:

there is no feeling without thought

And feelings, thoughts, etc dissipate the energy needed to observe… to inquire. A seeming contradiction on the level of the ordinary meaning of the word is where we began. As we moved through our inquiry it became clear that an experience of ‘great feeling’, (brief moments where aliveness and clarity arise) and ‘observation without thought’ (where in the moment of observing our minds are stilled) provided the ground to embrace the apparent contradiction and move into a more expansive understanding of ‘feeling’.

James

Self-Inquiry with James Tousignant, May 4, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with James Tousignant
May 4, 2025

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, 8 participants met on the lawn by the outdoor pool to explore “Intellect vs. Intelligence” from Krishnamurti’s The Book of Life.

The participants explored Krishnamurti’s perspective through sharing their personal experiences, beliefs and understanding of the two concepts. Interesting avenues of exploration came about through a question on Emotional Intelligence, and another on how intelligence arises from both emotions and thoughts coming into balance and harmony. A deepening understanding became available when one participant described an image of thoughts and emotions as existing on one plane of experience, and the need for one to rise above that level to a place where both could be seen and held in a more spacious, harmonious wholeness.

James

Self-Inquiry with Henry Fischer, April 30, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Henry Fischer
April 30, 2025

On Wednesday six participants gathered for a KECC sponsored dialogue at the Esquimalt Gorge Park Pavilion in Victoria.

After a period of silence, it was suggested that dialogue may not be about our experience or our expertise but might require one to look at oneself as one has never looked before— not as an idea but as a fact (actuality).

It was suggested that absolutely everything we know or experience might not be love whatsoever. It may be only a memory already conditioned and judged by its utility to this self which is often describes as “me”. Is there a “me”? Why would one ask such a question like this? Does it have something to do with suffering and conflict? Surely in suffering and conflict me is always there. But the suffering is desired to end, and one doesn’t consider instead that perhaps the me could end. Is the “me” the root of this suffering? Does one need this “me” even though of course it continues to produce images and tell a story of what it thinks? Could this bring one to the precipice of being a true revolutionary…

The following Krishnamurti quote is a shortened excerpt from the August 6 entry in Book of Life by J. Krishnamurti:

The true revolutionary
Truth is not for those who are respectable, nor for those who desire self-extension, self- fulfillment. Truth is not for those who are seeking security, permanency; for the permanency they seek is merely the opposite of impermanency. Truth comes to him who is free of time, who is not using time as a means of self-extension. Time means memory of yesterday, memory of your family, of your race, of your particular

As the dialogue began to conclude the group asked questions about fear and attachment. There was a suggestion to bring this forward in May when the dialogues continues with a new facilitator.

Henry Fischer

 

Self-Inquiry with Henry Fischer, April 27, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Henry Fischer
April 27, 2025

On Sunday fourteen participants gathered for a KECC dialogue at Swanwick.

After a period of silence, newcomers were introduced to dialogue as an all inclusive unfolding process that includes thoughts, emotions, feelings, perception, the senses and the subject which is being explored. The invitation is to see if observation naturally connects us and engages us in a passionate exploration of the unknown rather than an affirmation of what we already know.

The following Krishnamurti quote was read from the Book of Life (May 22). This is only an excerpt however the entire entry was read at the dialogue:

All thought is partial
You and I realize that we are conditioned… The fact is that we are conditioned, and that all thought to understand this conditioning will always be partial; therefore there is never a total comprehension, and only in total comprehension of the whole process of thinking is there freedom…

The facilitator asked if it was possible to see anything afresh without the past interfering. The group quickly challenged this pointing out that it may be an ideal but the actuality is that thought is limited and conditioned. Perhaps there was something fresh in considering what is normally taken as real to instead be the unfolding of thought. In this way, the past is new in that it is freshly occurring.

There were also questions about whether we are actually seeing or if instead we are living inside a kind of projection of memory which we take to be ourselves.

Is freedom possible as an actuality or is it just a projected ideal? What does it mean to see the truth of conditioning and yet not to be defined or limited by it? Is there a freedom from the known which is not idealized or imagined?

The group also looked at fear and whether fear was also a description, a movement away from what is.

Henry Fischer

Self-Inquiry with Henry Fischer, April 23, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Henry Fischer
April 23, 2025

On Wednesday seven participants gathered for a KECC sponsored dialogue at the Esquimalt Gorge Park Pavilion in Victoria.

After a period of silence, the group was asked to bring forth any “burning” questions, life experiences or readings from Krishnamurti which the group could examine together. It was asked to further define “what is burning” but the definition was left with the group to determine this meaning. It began with a question about innocence and images (“the idea of ourselves or each other”) to see if innocence and images are mutually exclusive.

Quite appropriately, the group described that they do, in fact, have images of themselves and one another, and that these images sometimes seem to come from a kind of fear or defensiveness, but other times seem to offer value and insight into the nature of another.

Although these images seem to offer insight into the nature of another person, the actuality seems quite the opposite, as these images come from the one who is seeing and not from what is seen? Therefore if these images don’t have an accuracy about what is out there what does that say about the image-maker? Does the image-maker use these images to avoid something? If so what is being avoided? It was suggested that there might be something which doesn’t have a label at all but is somewhat exciting and unsettling, a kind of unknown and unresolved energetic state which is avoided. In lieu of closing comments and because a reading wasn’t offered to begin the inquiry, instead, a reading was brought in to address the kind of unresolved nature beneath images which may not have an object or “known” experience or even permanent state to it.

The following is an excerpt from The Book of Life, J. Krishnamurti (July 5):

We seek happiness through things, through relationship, through thoughts, ideas. So things, relationship, and ideas become all-important and not happiness… Things are impermanent, they wear out and are lost; relationship is constant friction and death awaits; ideas and beliefs have no stability, no permanency. We seek happiness in them and yet do not realize their impermanency… To find out the true meaning of happiness, we must explore the river of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is not an end in itself. Is there a source to a stream? Every drop of water from the beginning to the end makes the river. To imagine that we will find happiness at the source is to be mistaken. It is to be found where you are on the river of self- knowledge.

Henry Fischer

Self-Inquiry with Henry Fischer, April 20, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Henry Fischer
April 20, 2025

On Sunday six participants gathered for a KECC dialogue at Swanwick.

After a period of silence, newcomers were introduced to dialogue as an exploration into what we don’t know rather than an intellectual conversation between individuals.

The following Krishnamurti quote was read from the Book of Life (April 20) with the most essential excerpts being included here to highlight what the group considered:

…The thing called passion has to be understood and not suppressed or sublimated, and it is no good finding a substitute for it.

Truth is not to be conquered; you cannot storm it; it will slip through your hands if you try to grasp it. Truth comes silently, without your knowing. What you know is not truth, it is only an idea, a symbol. The shadow is not the real.

The group began by looking at what Krishnamurti meant by “the shadow is not the real” by considering the sentence before it which pointed to “the known” as this shadow. But what qualities could then be unknown which might relate to some sense of this word passion? The group picked up on several qualities perhaps playfulness, being surprised, having some sense of freedom, going beyond the self or identity. There seemed to be an energy that was hard to put into the words but the group became alive with enthusiasm as if it were encountering something new that didn’t fit into the known but which seemed very active in life itself. Perhaps as life itself.

The group continued to explore this energy as passion and whether Krishnamurti was pointing to a kind of potential energy which is cut off once knowledge is believed to be its source. The group also considered the way images themselves might limit this potential by wrongfully fixing a kind of openness to all possibility into a limited frame and then living from that image.

Henry Fischer

Self-Inquiry with Henry Fischer, April 16, 2025

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Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Henry Fischer
April 16, 2025

On Wednesday nine participants gathered for a KECC sponsored dialogue at the Esquimalt Gorge Park Pavilion in Victoria.

After a period of silence, it was suggested that dialogue might be a journey in the unknown as a field of shared listening instead of a conversation between separate identities governed by what we already know. The group listened to this comment. From this the group explored interest and passion questioning whether interests were particular and whether passion might be something different. Perhaps some kind of energy that doesn’t have an object.

The following Krishnamurti quote was read from the Book of Life (April 27):

A passionate mind is inquiring

Obviously there must be passion, and the question is how to revive that passion. Do not let us misunderstand each other. I mean passion in every sense, not merely sexual passion which is a very small thing. And most of us are satisfied with that because every other passion has been destroyed—in the office, in the factory, through following a certain job, routine, learning techniques—so there is no passion left; there is no creative sense of urgency and release. Therefore sex becomes important to us, and there we get lost in petty passion which becomes an enormous problem to the narrow, virtuous mind, or else it soon becomes a habit and dies. I am using the word passion as a total thing. A passionate man who feels strongly is not satisfied merely with some little job—whether it be the job of a prime minister, or of a cook, or what you will. A mind that is passionate is inquiring, searching, looking, asking, demanding, not merely trying to find for its discontent some object in which it can fulfill itself and go to sleep. A passionate mind is groping, seeking, breaking through, not accepting any tradition; it is not a decided mind, not a mind that has arrived, but it is a young mind that is ever arriving.

The group explored passion as energy and looked for what might limit this passion. Was the self ( what “I know” about “myself”) a kind of lack of energy and enthusiasm for life.

The following excerpt from the Book of Life was read to continue exploration of this topic (April 28):

Now, how is such a mind to come into being? It must happen. Obviously, a petty mind cannot work at it. A petty mind trying to become passionate will merely reduce everything to its own pettiness. It must happen, and it can only happen when the mind sees its own pettiness and yet does not try to do anything about it.

The group explored what kind of action Krishnamurti was getting at here. What does it mean to do nothing about a reaction? What is faced by not going along with the current of what the brain says is the right image to produce to manage a situation.

Could passion be something beyond our comprehension?

At the end of the dialogue it was suggested that perhaps this was all in the field of self-consciousness or limitation and was it possible for the group to explore love or presence or something which was not this limited offering from thought? Could this be another trap of thought? It was suggested that the group might consider this next time.

Henry Fischer