John Ziman's View of Science and the Nascent Science of Jiddu Krishnamurti
John L. Waters
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John L. Waters
February 22, 2002
Copyright 2002 by John L. Waters. All Rights
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In his article "What is Science?" John Ziman makes the
point that science is a social enterprise. Ziman
writes that science "is knowledge, therefore
intellectual, conceptual, and abstract. It is
inevitably created by individual men and women, and
therefore has a strong psychological aspect. It is
public, and therefore molded and determined by the
social relations between individuals."(1)
Science isn't only social. Scientists are a very
exclusive and highly selective group of people. To
appreciate this, go to a university and find out what
a student has to do to obtain a Ph.D. in science. You
will find that only a small percentage of students can
jump through all of those hoops and attain
professional status as working scientists. In
particular, all of the Ph.D. theses are composed by
individuals who are very proficient in reading and in
thinking verbally. These men and women are very
specialized in their personal brain development.
Indeed, professional scientists are a subculture, not
so much of "intelligent" people but of exceedingly
literate and articulate people. And when a person is
"intelligent" but not literate enough to get a Ph.D.
the person is excluded from the scientific clique.
Hence the exclusiveness.
Even so, there can and should be a new science which
includes or at least works with and studies
individuals who are not so bookish and so articulate,
but who may be very intelligent but just aren't able
to use their brains in the superliterate way that a
Ph.D. person uses his or her brain. The new science
integrates the nonverbal-intuitive intelligence of
these comparative illiterates with the verbal-rational
intelligence of the professional scientists. Jiddu
Krishnamurti is an example of one such less literate
investigator and wise person. Furthermore, Jiddu
Krishnamurti shared his research with a great many
persons, some of whom were scientists. For example,
there is a video of Jonas Salk and Jiddu Krishnamurti
having a conversation.
A new science begins with new observations. The
observations are repeated again and again, carefully
described, and put in a data file. One of Jiddu
Krishnamurti's data files is a book entitled
"Krishnamurti's Notebook." Here is a sample entry:
"A curious thing is happening; there is a heightening
of sensitivity. Sensitivity, not only to beauty but
also to all other things. The blade of grass
contained the whole spectrum of colour; it was
intense, dazzling and such a small thing, so easy to
destroy."(2) page 38
Here is another entry:
"woke up with that feeling of impenetrable strength in
one's eyes and throat; it seemed to be a palpable
state, something that could never not be there. For
nearly an hour it was there and the brain remained
empty. It was not a thing to be caught by thought and
stored up in memory to be recalled. It was there and
all thought was dead."(3) page 36
In his youth Jiddu Krishnamurti was not a good
student. He was punished regularly by his school
master.(4) As an adult, Jiddu Krishnamurti didn't
read other philosophers, or other technical books.(5)
He sometimes read a mystery or a detective story.(6)
His brain simply developed in a way which made him
wise and perceptive in the way that many "holy" men
are. But exactly what way is that? To understand
this kind of brain activity, more science needs to be
done by working professionals who aren't smug and
conceited, and thereby insist that a person like
Krishnamurti is just deluded or even psychotic.
Krishnamurti sometimes had trouble with language, but
that doesn't mean he was stupid or crazy.
Other persons have sometimes experienced the
heightened sensitivity that Jiddu Krishnamurti often
talked about and wrote about. Alan Watts says,
"The sky was in some way transparent, its blue quiet
and clear, but more inwardly luminous than ever at
high noon. The leaves of the trees and shrubs assumed
qualities of green that were incandescent, and their
clusterings were no longer shapeless daubs, but
arabesques of marvellous complexity and clarity.. The
interlacing of branches against the sky suggested
filigree or tracery, not in the sense of
artificiality, but of distinctness and rhythm.
Flowers-- I remember especially the fuchsias-- were
suddenly the lightest carvings of ivory and coral."
(7)
Others have witnessed the same effect. For example,
Orson Bean states:
"The sky over the East River... was a deeper blue than
any I had seen in my life, and there seemed to be
little flickering pinpoints of light in it. I looked
at the trees. They were a richer green than any I had
ever seen. It seemed as though all my senses were
heightened. I was perceiving with greater clarity. I
walked home feeling exhilarated and bursting with
energy."(8)
About his mystical experience Jean-Joseph Surin says:
"on a number of occasions my soul was invested with
these states of glory, and the sunlight seemed to grow
incomparably brighter than usual, and yet was so soft
and bearable that it seemed to be of another kind than
natural sunlight. Once when I was in this state, I
went out into the garden of our college at Bordeaux;
and so great was this light that I seemed to myself to
be walking in paradise. Every color was more intense
and natural, every form more exquisitely distinct than
at ordinary times."(Huxley's paraphrasing.)(9)
Each of the preceding quotations suggests that there
is a sense of enhanced color and illumination which is
accompanied by a sense of wellness and fitness.
Everything seems right. One doesn't have to assume
that this sense comes from God or is associated with
God. One can just study this as a physiological
state, a state of altered activity in the brain. Is
this good or bad? Well, in the past, scientists were
not worried about whether quartz is good or bad.
Quartz is just quartz. Somehow when it comes to human
beings, though, the issue of good and bad creeps in
and that undermines science. Modern psychology and
psychiatry therefore, are not really sciences.
Psychology and psychiatry are more like police actions
supported by society to keep individuals in conformity
with socially-sanctioned right thinking and right
behavior.
Modern thinkers need to separate the descriptions of
this truly extraordinary sense with all the
philosophizing and the religion that so often goes
along with it. The sense is so extraordinary at
first, when it comes on a person, the person has no
way of understanding it except as a miracle or a
manifestation of God. Often the person isn't seeking
this experience or expecting it. The altered
physiology just comes and effects the person whose
physiology it is. If the person can't adjust to the
new physiology and integrate the new sense in with his
or her old senses and consciousness, then the sense is
soon lost and it becomes a mystery. The person is
likely to speculate about the extraordinary sense and
ruminate about it, and perhaps devise yet another
theological system. What is missing is the new
science of what this sense is really about.
Jiddu Krishnamurti holds a prominent position among
the pioneers of this sense because (1) he was very
social and shared his perceptions and ideas with many
thousands of people each year. (2) He described his
extraordinary sense many times over many years. In
addition, (3) he advised people to be wary of teachers
who want you to just follow their ideas for no good
reason. Krishnamurti went so far as to say, "Truth is
a pathless land," and you have to find the truth for
yourself. But that is very close to the
independent-mindedness of a born scientist.
Krishnamurti wasn't raised to be a scientist, though,
and he wasn't well educated in science. Indeed he
never was a very good student in the sense of being
well-read and a master of all the fine technical
points of argument.
Despite his lack of literacy and sophistication in
philosophy and science, Jiddu Krishnamurti showed an
independent mindedness and a talent for description
which makes him a pioneer in the nascent science of
intuitive perception and thinking. Unlike Orson Bean,
Jakob Boehme, and Alan Watts, Krishnamurti cultivated
this extraordinary sense so that he experienced it
many times each week. By reading "Krishnamurti's
Notebook," you will verify this is the case. Watts,
Bean, Boehme, and others experienced this sense only
once or twice in their whole lives.
Another man who experienced this sense over a long
period is Gopi Krishna. Gopi Krishna sensed that
everything was illuminated by a light which he felt
emanated from his own body. Sometimes other people
sense this light coming out of the "holy" person.
Richard Maurice Bucke called this the "subjective"
light. But what makes it subjective may just be (1)
scarcely anyone is as developed as Gopi Krishna was or
Jiddu Krishnamurti was, and (2) training boys and
girls to use their eyes to read books and remember
names, words, and what they read may affect the
development of the brain so that the mature person is
blind to the light of a "holy" person unless the
mature person "loses his or her mind" and begins to
sense this illumination. But then people say that the
person is crazy because they never learned anything
about this kind of illumination.
There's a problem here, because the professional
scientists have all become highly trained and highly
skilled in using their eyes and their brains in the
way highly literate people do. Furthermore, if the
brain activity in a "holy" person is very different, a
highly literate person is likely to become deranged as
his or her brain activity changes. An example of this
very thing happening is Gustav Theodor Fechner.
Gustav Fechner was a prominent scientist before the
age of forty, when he suffered from a mysterious
illness described in the book "Religion of a
Scientist" compiled and edited by Walter Lowrie. In
this book is a description of the enhanced colors
Fechner saw in flowers after his vision and his brain
activity had been affected. Fechner actually suffered
a psychotic breakdown which lasted two years. This
happened after Fechner did some experiments on himself
which involved his looking at tiny black objects
illuminated by intense sunlight. This suggests the
reaction Jakob Boehme experienced as he gazed into
sunlight reflected off a pewter vessel. Quoting
directly from Andrew Weeks:
"Abraham von Franckenberg gave an account that has
become legendary. Surprised by a gleam, presumably of
sunlight, in a tin or pewter vessel, the shoemaker
began to imagine that he was seeing into the secret
heart of nature, into a concealed divine world.
Intent upon clearing his mind of this "phantasy," th
perhaps so that he could resume his shoemaking labors,
the young man went out-of-doors. Since the city was
small, he could easily pass through a nearby gate and
into the green countryside. There, according to
Franckenberg, the rapt cobbler continued to see all
the more powerfully into the secret "center of
nature." Forms, lines, and colors now bore some new
meaning for him. In his own account, the strongest
emotional effect associated with the experience was
his sense of having been embraced by divine love: as
if life had been resurrected from death, he recalled
twelve years afterward."(10)
Often a new field of science has been started by one
or more persons who decide to investigate some
anomalous event. By anomalous event is meant some
event which occurs but it can't be readily fit into
existing conventional science. Conventional
scientists often ignore anomalous events. For
example, for decades, astronomers refused to study
meteors and meteorites. Meteorites are stones, and
astronomers don't study stones. Geologists study
stones. So astronomers avoided the subject of
meteorites. Finally, astronomical science had to
"bite the bullet" as it were and today astronomy books
talk about meteors and meteorites.
Today Western science, and specifically Western
medical science refuses to study "holy" persons. One
reason is that there aren't many "holy" persons.
Jiddu Krishnamurti and Gopi Krishna both were "holy"
persons. Western science seems determined to "debunk"
all the claims made about "holy" persons. If some
persons regarded as "holy" have used magic tricks to
fool people, that's compatible with the idea that the
"Messiah" will be a little child, ie, child-like and
even childish. Children often lie and play tricks.
This can have unfortunate consequences, though. One
of these is that crtical thinkers will just dismiss
the whole phenomenon of "holiness" without thinking
deeply.
Western medicine lumps all anomalous perceptions into
the category of "psychotic" perceptions. This is
comparable to identifying falling stones as "falling
stars." Meteorites aren't stars at all, but to the
superficial eye, they look like stars as they flash as
points of light making a bright streak across the sky.
So, too, the perceptions of illumination described by
Gopi Krishna, Jiddu Krishnamurti and other
"illuminated" persons can be called "psychotic"
perceptions, but just naming a phenomenon andgiving
this name a bad social connotation doesn't really help
us understand it. In fact, many insane persons might
become "holy" persons if the experts knew best how to
treat psychotics. Nevertheless, the psychologists and
the psychiatrists continue to think in the
conventional way and avoid this new science of the
nonrational nonretentive cognitive style (NNCS).
This is a new field of science because (1) Jiddu
Krishnamurti has created a book of records or data,
(2) other individuals including Gopi Krishna have
given their own descriptions of an illuminating event
and the descriptions are similar to the descriptions
Krishnamurti gave, (3) the recognized biologist Sir
Alister Hardy has publihsed a small book entitled "The
Spiritual Nature of Man" in which many hundreds of
anomalous experiences are described by hundreds of
different persons. Hardy didn't engage in this
pioneer research until he was an old man and his
eminent reputation was firmly established. Even so,
for reasons already given, many of today's working
scientists can't personally investigate the altered
brain activity without losing their very specialized
scientific acumen and their professional status, their
careers, and their relatively high income. The best
compromise is for a number of qualified scientists to
collaborate with persons like myself who are
intelligent and who have reconditioned their brains so
that they perceive this illumination that Krishnamurti
and others have described.
Summing up, there is a large number of less than
well-read individuals who are intelligent, but they
can't read well enough to become professional
educators working in a school or university. The
perceptions in some of these persons have been altered
appreciably by a process which Jiddu Krishnamurti
described many times in the book "Krishnamurti's
Notebook." Other so-called "mystics" have described
this same process, but working psychologists,
psychiatrists and other medical doctors haven't been
able to investigate the mystical experience well
enough to clearly define it's value. Sample reports
are provided for the reader to review. Since 1979 the
author has retained this perception and has studied
local individuals and tested them informally to see
how well they are able to sense in this extraordinary
way. He has observed as a general rough rule that the
more bookish a person is the less able they are to
sense in this way and be intuitive enough to realize
that this extraordinary sense is genuine. The next
step required to get sufficient evidence to prove the
legitimacy of this extrapordinary sense is to find
some professional scientists who are interested in
working with semi-literate people. Not even the
authors of books considered holy had or have true
comprehension of this important subject.
Footnotes and Bibliography:
1. Ziman, John E.D. Klemke, Hollinger, Robert, Rudge,
David Wyss with Kilie, A. David, Editors,
"Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science"
third edition, Prometheus Books Amherst, New York 1998
p 52
2. Krishnamurti, Jiddu "Krishnamurti's Notebook"
Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1976 p 38.
3. ibid. p 36.
4. Sloss, Radha Rajagopal, "Lives in the Shadow with
J. Krishnamurti" Addison-Wesley Publishing Company,
New York 1993 p 22
5. http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/K_bala.htm page
3 of 5 accessed 1/28/02 author S. Balasundaram
6. http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/K_bala.htm page
1 of 5 accessed 1/28/02 author S. Balasundaram
7. Watts, Alan "Nature, Man and Woman" Pantheon
Books, Inc. New York 1958 p 125
8. Wilson, Colin "The Quest For Wilhelm Reich" Garden
City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1981 p 165
9. Huxley, Aldous, "The Devils of Loudun" (Chatto &
Windus, London 1970) p 353
10. Weeks, Andrew, "Boehme" (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1991) pp 1,2
10:30PM Friday, February 15, 2002
9:15PM Saturday, February 16, 2002
7:20PM Thursday, February 21, 2002
John L. Waters
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