The Content of Yourself – Observing Consciousness
“So is there a way of observing, seeing the whole content of consciousness without analysis? I hope you understand the question. We say there is a way of observing without analysis, which reveals the total content, not through time – instantly. That is, to observe the cloud, the color of your dress, to observe your wife or your husband or yourself without any image – to observe without image, without the word. Because the image is time, the image is the past, and when you look with the eyes of the past you are bound to divide the present as the present and the past, and therefore in that division, there is the observer and the observed, the analyzer and the analyzed.
But if you can observe without a word, just to observe, give your complete attention, then you will see all the content is spread out before you, the content of yourself. And you are looking at it not as an outsider looking in – you are that. And that, when you observe without the word, justification, or condemnation, that transforms, and you go beyond it.”
J. Krishnamurti
Public Talk 4
Santa Monica, 1971
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The Immeasurable is dedicated to exploring the essential questions of our existence: who we are and where we are going. The intent is to inspire readers to question assumptions of the mind, offering opportunities to ask deep questions into common life themes which are superficially accepted.
We encourage an investigation into the fabric of reality and our physical and cultural conditioning. In this exploration, we might find a new understanding of time and its relation to our thinking processes. A perception of the interconnectedness within the totality of life might arise in us as our perception expands through these explorations.
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“Surely, to find out what is true your mind must be free to inquire, which means that it cannot merely accept or believe. I can give you a description of the truth, but it will not be the same thing as your experiencing the truth for yourself.”
J. Krishnamurti
Life Ahead book
I have past memory of data so consciously / unconsciously which are always referred and produce the thought . Is there way to see the cloud / color of dress without apply brain/mind. Can you elaborate bit??
“Can you elaborate bit??”
See j.K.’s “Passive Awareness” as a way of “discovering” how your mind works.
You will then come to what j.K. is saying from your own experience.
Active Awareness as opposed to Passive Awareness is our normal way of cluttering our minds with opinions, judgements, goals, etc. Passive awareness is awareness w/o the clutter of thought.
IF
I feel that this excerpt is clear, precise and succinct and is a complete statement of the means to bring an end to suffering and conflict, both within the individual and society. It would have been better, in my view, if Krishnamurti had made this the theme of all of his talks and elaborated upon it. But, it leaves out the problem of why people do not come to this for themselves. And that opens up the far more difficult topic of our conditioning and attachments and ambitions. It reveals a very complex psychology of humanity and makes the entire message very difficult to grasp. And often the talks do not begin with the overview provided here but on a sub-division of some problem such as desire, attachment, belief and so on. And i feel this leaves the listener confused, and worse, creates the “searching self” and the “me” that must pursue these elements over time. It then creates the paradox between the self that apparently needs to pursue each of these elements over time and the imperative to merely observe, without the thinking, analysing self. Wouldn’t the truth of these elements become apparent for oneself without any discussion, or did Krishnamurti believe we would not be capable of finding out for ourselves the nature of our own attachments and conditioning? I would argue the clarity of the excerpt is at odds with his emphasis on analysing each of the problems that prevent us from doing the observation for ourselves. The end result is we end up caught-up in the analysis and postpone the observation.
It needs a special eye, a special heart and a natural life to see beyond.
I attended a few of Krishnamurti’s talks when he was alive (obviously!), listened to many full-length videos of him publicly speaking or in dialogue with one or several other people, and have read extensively his talks and writings (as well as many biographies), making mine a unique position (with many others sharing that psychological space) from which to observe, listen and hear this message. Well done! It is amazing, though, that one slight difference in the presentation can have a very identifiable change in meaning. When Krishnamurti said, “We say there is a way…”, the narrator’s inflection would lead us to believe that “We (say there is a way)…” means humanity in general as a common belief. I think K meant that those among us, including himself, who says that there is a way of observing without analysis, is the exception, not “the rule”, as might be implied by how it was actually recited on this short video.
In this era of authoritarian regimes mostly the world over with an assault on the sensibilities and delicate nuances of life to meditate on the immeasurable, free of thought is seeing beyond our limited self and is freedom.
The skill of withdrawal of the self from the action, and to be an observer, is a powerful tool to achieve total detachment, the action now being performed without any expectations. Celebrated in the Bhagwad Gita as Nishkam Karma- action without any expectations of fruit, this is the path to free us from stress, anxiety, anger, greed – the avenues which consume productive energy in worthless direction, reducing the energy available for achieving excellence. This could change our personal and professional lives.
Thank you . x
When we say the mind must be free to inquire, it doesn’t mean an inquiry is what I must do to be free, because we have an image of inquiry, and I am not free from all my methods and techniques of inquiry. I might be inquiring, and really I am conducting it in a way which appeals to people who want to chat together. We have to see the responsibility of oneself, as the watcher, the listener, the reader, the thinker, etc., directly, and not make it all a topic of discussion. We can talk together, but this matter of free to inquire, is a responsibility, not an agenda.
🌿💕🌏💕🌿
Sir,how can one articulate clearly our early experiences ,which are so deep and subtle in the psychological field in childhood?
Particularly from our environment so entrenched,in tribalism,religion,and a suffocating environment, I don’t want to say we had a monopoly over suffering and so on , our parents had no chance what so ever?
Any ideas?
Kind regards Seamus
Don’t just’copy/paste what somebody else says he has experienced. Only your own experiencing at this moment counts.
If you slow down, stop all your activity, your mind has the chance to do the same. Your thinking (at last!) gets the chance to be quiet.
Don’t be afraid of the sound of your own wheels, if it’s the first time you now notice how fast and chaotic the mind is moving.
This is no new situation; before you just were not aware of your own thinking.
You may find this disturbing at first, but if you persist, thought will finally calm down.
The first and last step to take yourself. Meditation may or may not come to you, whatever you do. Let it be.
The reality is the materialization of thought, so in meditation the thought ceased to exist, therefore the reality ceases to exist, and that includes time. In meditation time doesn’t exist so one can access the universal consciousness without any limitations. Am I right ? I don’t know
if i have to look into the content of consciousness which is entire information about the ” observed”( animate or inanimate),based on my subjective likes,dislikes and individual conditioning,in short ,every product of cause and effect,which is time,then,logically,the one that “looks” has to necessarily not have any of those qualities which are intrinsic to those found in the content of consciousness.This means that the entity “looking into the content of consciousness “has to be necessarily causeless,timeless,hence eternal.would this factor then,be the unifying factor,in that it is identical in entire living beings? content of consciousness,being subjective,has to be divisive,hence the cause of conflict and wars.
This is a such a lovely message, so beautifully expressed visually and in the inflection of the spoken word. And to hear it from a modern voice, that apparently of a young woman, made it wonderfully fresh and new. As if K were speaking again, anew, today. I sent it to my daughter immediately.
Thanks so much. Send many more of these bite-sized doses of vitamin K, please!
I can get no to look with the eyes of the first time, but sometimes,I see in my mind things many clear, there are many lightss and the things got sharp, very sharp,and goes on. I think I am in the right way of K. teaching