Page 168 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

the journal of the krishnamurti schools no.25

3. Thought is in the end fairly limited, there is nothing really new
in it—it is really endless construction and remixing! All it takes
is eighty–ninety mental models! When encountering a new area
of thought, a new subject, one can come to it with a ‘beginner’s
mind’, a mind that is well schooled in the ways of thought and
has at its disposal a modest range of highly effective tools. It is
quite likely that the new subject is an extension of something you
already know, a modification of one of your tools. Occasionally
one will encounter a new tool but even then, one will know its
place in the tool-kit!
4. The same beginner’s mind can also help active listening—the
tool-kit of mental models is not yours; they are sort of applicable
to all thinking, including those of others. This creates the space
of ‘understanding’—I can understand anybody’s thought. I may
not agree with them at all. But I can see that it is merely a matter
of them and I using different tools or models to think. And it is
quite likely that I know and understand their model.
5. While Munger’s list of mental models presents itself as objective,
I know, thanks to K, that the ‘self’ is not ‘outside’ the world and
it cannot ‘operate upon the world’. Therefore, the mental models
that you cultivate should include insights or models about the
self not just the world, i.e., the tool kit must give the craftsman
tools to imagine themselves in ways that are closer to reality. The
lesson about the relationship between thought and feeling is to
my mind one such model.

At around this time, thanks to a friend from the K community,
Venu Narayan , I met Rajesh Kasturirangan. Rajesh is a philoso-
2
pher, mathematician and cognitive scientist. He actually has two
PhDs! And he says about himself, “I think, write, meditate, agi-
tate”! Over the last eight years or so, Rajesh and I have developed
this line of thought further.

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