Krishnamurti: The Talks on Freedom - The First Rule of Life

                               Pay Complete Attention


                                                         “I am suggesting that a mind that is aware requires that the mind must enquire into your
                                                       ambition, your desire for power, prestige, position, the way you treat people; how you crawl
                                                                  on your knees when you meet a big man, your desire for security, a job, position.
                                                                                                   See the structure of all this, be aware of it.
                                                              And when you are totally aware of it, you are out of it in a flash, it has dropped out.”
                                                               (The Krishnamurti Text Collection: Bombay, India; 1st Public Talk, February 19, 1961)
                                                                                                                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
              "... if we can be aware - and we can go presently into what it signifies, what it means, to be aware - perhaps we shall be able to uncondition the
               mind without the process of will, without the determination to uncondition the mind. Because the moment you determine, there is an entity
               who wishes, an entity who says, "I must uncondition my mind." That entity itself is the outcome of our desire to achieve a certain result, so a
                            conflict is already there. So, is it possible to be aware of our conditioning, just to be aware? - in which there is no conflict at all.
                                                             (Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Awareness may burn away the problems' - May 25, 2008)
                                                                                                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The term 'choiceless awareness' encapsulates the depth of the discussion on awareness, does it not? What does it actually mean? It means, "awareness without any choice" - simply what it says. Non-directed awareness, non-concentration, non-exclusion. Awareness, that is, without any chooser, who says 'I like this,' or 'I don't like that.' The chooser is the self, the judge, the evaluator, the censor. Whereas there is just awareness, or attention, or perception. This lies at the heart of the talks as it is the touchstone of everything in life.

Awareness is not concentration. To concentrate is to focus the mind on a particular subject or event, which means you are resisting other things; it is an override. Awareness is attending to everything within and around you - therefore it is revolutionary in that sense, as we have been trained from childhood to concentrate. Choiceless awareness, then, is simply being aware of everything going on, without excluding anything. It is the fictional self which chooses (or controls) what is concentrated on: "I will attend to this and not that."

You don't need to think, to be conscious, to be aware of your environment. Awareness is of the natural bodily organism, with all its senses operating in harmony. Life in many ways is like driving a car: if you don’t pay full attention, without thinking about that which you are aware (and in which there are obviously periods of brief inattention), you will come unstuck. (You also must attend to what is further down the road, not just the car in front. So to live you must attend to the practicalities of the future and not just the present moment.) Life demands attention, it is the quality, level and intensity of this attention that is the issue:

                                                           "Naturally, that awareness cannot be constant. But to be aware that it is not constant,
                                                                            is to be aware of inattention. To be aware of inattention is attention."
                                                                              (Saanen, July 1980, Questions/Answers)

Awareness takes chronological time, even if measured in nanoseconds. But awareness is not of psychological time; it is not a process of accumulation, of knowledge. You cannot store it up, it is only in the immediate present. When you have a flash of understanding about something you can observe how thought then comes rushing in with all its reactions and associations, based on the past, which is time:

                                                    “In awareness there is only the present - that is, being aware, you see the past process of influence
                                           which controls the present and modifies the future. Awareness is an integral process, not a process of division.
                                ... If I am aware I perceive this entire process of the past, its effect in the present and in the future, integrally, as a whole.”
                                                                               (Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Introspection is incomplete' - June 16, 2007)
~~~~~~~~~
Observing without the observer -

                                                                                             “The self is a problem that thought cannot resolve.
                                                                                             There must be an awareness which is not of thought.
                                                To be aware, without condemnation or justification, of the activities of the self - just to be aware - is sufficient.”
                                                                      (The First and Last Freedom: 'The self is a problem that thought cannot resolve' - page 113)

This is the crucial point, which may hold the key to this whole subject of awareness. The observer, which is the self, which is the past, which is knowledge, which is memory, distorts and perverts the total awareness of the present, which is the only thing of which one must be aware. It sets up an artificial division by establishing a separate controller, censor, judger and evaluator of that which is observed. Then thought as this controller, as this thinker, reacts instantly to everything that it observes, using its memory of past reactions and experiences; hence nothing is seen anew, as it is, in the present. This is the process of abstraction, the inability to see the fact for what it is, without naming it. Only when the observer is completely absent is there true awareness:

“My mind observes loneliness, and avoids it, runs away from it. But if I do not run away from it, is there a division, is there a separation, is there an observer watching loneliness? Or, is there only a state of loneliness, my mind itself being empty, lonely? Not that there is an observer who knows that there is loneliness.

I think this is important to grasp, swiftly, not verbalizing too much. We say now "I am envious, and I want to get rid of envy," so there is an observer and the observed; the observer wishes to get rid of that which he observes. But is the observer not the same as the observed? It is the mind itself that has created the envy, and so the mind cannot do anything about envy. So, my mind observes loneliness; the thinker is aware that he is lonely. But by remaining with it, being fully in contact, which is, not to run away from it, not to translate and all the rest of it, then, is there a difference between the observer and the observed? Or is there only one state, which is, the mind itself is lonely, empty? Not that the mind observes itself as being empty, but mind itself is empty.

Then, can the mind, being aware that it itself is empty, and that whatever its endeavor, any movement away from that emptiness is merely an escape, a dependence, can the mind put away all dependence and be what it is, completely empty, completely lonely? And if it is in that state, is there not freedom from all dependence, from all attachment?”
                                                         (Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Is there an observer watching loneliness?' - August 19, 2007)
~~~~~~~~~
                                                        "Awareness is the silent and and choiceless observation of what is;
                                                       in this awareness the problem unrolls itself, and thus it is fully and completely understood."
                                                              (Commentaries on Living: First Series, 'Awareness' - page 101)

It is clearly stated in the talks that awareness starts with the outside environment. Once you are fully aware of things around you, only then do you shift attention to within. There is even a procedure as such (not a practice) to adopt each morning to be aware, to instill in the mind a quietness at the beginning of each day - see Is there any practice that can help one to be aware?

~~~~~~~~~
    Total, Passive Awareness ~
                                                                             “Only in passive awareness is the meaning of what is understood.”
                                                                   (Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Effort is distraction from what is' - August 28, 2007)

                                                                                                 “… to understand, the mind must be quiet.
                                                                                            The mind must be choicelessly, passively, aware;
                                                                        and in that state, there is understanding of the many problems of our life.”
                                                                                    (Collected Works: London, 4th Public Talk, October 23, 1949)

This very passivity may be one of the crucial stumbling blocks in the whole thing. We have been trained from childhood to take action - some action, any action - on what we see (these actions are in fact reactions). We are doers, we are trained to be positive, we act. The action can be escape, justification, censorship, judgment - all these are (re)actions. They are self-initiated actions, based on past experiences. If we see emptiness in ourselves, our automatic reaction is to fill it, or change it, or avoid it. Alert passivity implies simple objectivity, no reaction by the observer - the self - to what is seen. This is foreign to our conditioning from young children upwards.

So, all actions we take, which are reactions, are of the past. We cannot react without the past. Whereas this passivity means just observation and complete inaction on what is observed. One is intensely alert, but non-reactive. It is important to understand that one must stay with what is seen (the present thought/feeling) for any movement by thought away from it brings in the whole reactive past and prevents insight into what is happening. This passivity includes not even naming what one is observing:

“Try remaining with the feeling of hate, with the feeling of envy, jealousy, with the venom of ambition; for after all, that's what you have in daily life, though you may want to live with love, or with the word `love'. Since you have the feeling of hate, of wanting to hurt somebody with a gesture or a burning word, see if you can stay with that feeling. Can you? Have you ever tried? Try to remain with a feeling, and see what happens. You will find it amazingly difficult. Your mind will not leave the feeling alone; it comes rushing in with its remembrances, its associations, its do's and don'ts, its everlasting chatter. …
Can you look without the movement of the mind? Can you live with the feeling behind the word, without the feeling that the word builds up? If you can, then you will discover an extraordinary thing, a movement beyond the measure of time, a spring that knows no summer.”
                                                                          (Commentaries On Living: Series III, Chapter 37, 'Aloneness Beyond Loneliness'}
~~~~~~~~~~~
   The Realization of Thought ~

“In this relationship called society, every human being is cutting himself off from another by his position, by his ambition, by his desire for fame, power, and so on; but he has to live in this brutal relationship with other men like himself, so the whole thing is glossed over and made respectable by pleasant-sounding words.” … “Thought, which has been giving all importance to itself, isolating itself as the `me', the ego, has finally come to the point of realizing that it's held in the prison of its own making.”
                                                                         (Commentaries On Living: Series III, Chapter 37, 'Aloneness Beyond Loneliness')

The central issue of awareness appears to be its level of intensity and energy, and this quality may start only with a realization of thought. It is stated that a full realization of thought will temporarily bring its movement to a halt and enable full attention to occur:

“So long as the ‘me’ is the observer, the one who gathers experience, strengthens himself through experience, there can be no radical change, no creative release. That creative release comes only when the thinker is the thought, but the gap cannot be bridged by any effort. When the mind realizes that any speculation, any verbalization, any form of thought only gives strength to the ‘me’, when it sees that as long as the thinker exists apart from thought there must be limitation, the conflict of duality - when the mind realizes that - then it is watchful, everlastingly aware of how it is separating itself from experience, asserting itself, seeking power. In that awareness, if the mind pursues it ever more deeply and extensively without seeking an end, a goal, there comes a state in which the thinker and the thought are one. In that state there is no effort, there is no becoming, there is no desire to change; in that state the ‘me’ is not, for there is a transformation which is not of the mind.”
                                                                           (The First and Last Freedom: 'The gap cannot be bridged by any effort' - p. 140)

The crucial aspect of awareness that has received very little consideration is the nature and importance of this realization of thought.
~~~~~~~~~
Awareness & Insight ~

The issue that arises in the talks concerns the actual nature of insight. Is there a subtle differentiation between awareness, perception and insight? No. The point is to look at all the barriers to perception, such as fear. To be aware of fear is the beginning of attention.

The following dialogue on this subject is from: The Transformation of Man: pp. 238-39; ellipses added, one word emphases in original):

K: “Any form of conclusion is detrimental to perception.…
K:   If I am in fear my perception will be very partial. That is a fact.
Q:   But don’t you need perception to end fear?
K:   Ah, but in investigating fear I have a total perception of fear.
Q:   Surely if there is fear, or attachment, even one’s logic would be distorted.
K:   One is frightened - as we said, that distorts perception. But in investigating, , observing, going into fear, understanding it
       profoundly, in delving into it I have perception.
Q: Are you implying that there are certain things you can do which will make for perceptions? …
K:   I realize I am distorting perception through fear.
Q:   That’s right, then I begin to look at fear.
K:   Investigate it, look into it.
Q:   In the beginning I am also distorting it.
K:   Therefore I am watching every distortion. I am aware of every distortion that is going on.
Q:   But you see, I think the difficulty lies there. How can I investigate when I am distorting?
K:   Wait, just listen. I am afraid and I see fear has made me do something which is a distortion.
Q:   But before I can see that the fear has to fade away.
K:   No, I am observing fear.
Q:   But I cannot observe fear if I am afraid.
K:   Take a fact: you are afraid. You are conscious of it. That means that you become aware of the fact that there is fear. And
          you observe also what that fear has done. Is that clear?
Q:   Yes.
K:   And you look more and more into it. In looking very deeply into it you have an insight.
Q:   I may have an insight.
K:   No, you will have insight, which is quite different.
Q:   What you are saying is that this confusion due to fear is not complete, that it is always open to mankind to have insight.
K:   To one who is investigating, who is observing. …
K:   In observing it … in the very unrolling of it you have a certain insight. That is all we are saying. That insight may be partial.
      Therefore one has to be aware that it is partial. Its action is partial and it may appear complete, so watch it.
       …
Q:   But you are also saying, that as a matter of fact, when you have a distortion, the one thing you can look at is the distortion.
K:   That’s right.
Q:   That factually you have that capacity.
K:   One has that capacity.
Q:   … Could one say that the fear can look at itself?
K:   No, no. One is afraid: in looking at that fear - not having an insight, just watching it - you see what it does, what its action is.
Q:   You mean by looking, being aware of it.
K:   Without any choosing - being aware. …
Q:   But there is still the question: in that moment of fear, I am fear.
K:   How you observe fear matters - whether you observe it as an observer, or the observer is that.
       …
K:   How you observe, how you investigate, that is the real thing. That is, perception can only take place when there is no
       division between the observer and the observed. …”
~~~~~~~~~~~

There is also the point with awareness that one doesn’t continue with the things that one observes in oneself, one ends them. Negates them as the false, wipes them away. Do we actually do that? Or is it because we only see things in abstraction that we continue with them? Is it that we haven’t actually seen the falseness of them, the danger in continuing with them, because we are only observing them through an observer and the observer does not want them to end?:

“So envy and jealousy are not love and I wipe them out; I don't go on talking about how to wipe them out and in the meantime continue to be envious - I actually wipe them out as the rain washes the dust of many days off a leaf, I just wash them away.”
                                                                       (Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Sentiment and emotion breed cruelty' - May 5, 2007)

“… The description is not the fact. You may describe something in the most lovely language, put it in the most spiritual or lyrical words, but the word is not the fact. When you are hungry, the description of food does not feed you. But most of us are satisfied with the description of truth, and the description, the symbol, has taken the place of the factual. To discover whether there is a reality or not, we must be capable of seeing the true as the true, the false as the false, and not wait to be told like a lot of immature children.”
                                                                       (JKTI: 'The description of food does not feed you' - Collected Works: Vol. X, page 165)

Have we ever actually seen the falseness of anything? What is the action of seeing the falseness of something and then completely dropping it, setting it aside? The mind is so intent on accumulation, craving more and more of everything; this gathering is highly gratifying and gives a measure of so-called 'security.' To drop accumulation appears to run counter to our whole being, to our entire social evolution.

Are we only able to see the truth of something but not the falseness of something else? Is this because we don’t really want to drop the false things, but want to continue on with them despite the pain they bring? Is this seeing and dropping the false the real difficulty we have with this thing called awareness?

That we never end the false?
                                                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~
        Q:   “Will you please explain what you mean by awareness?

A: Just simple awareness! Awareness of your judgments, your prejudices, your likes and dislikes. When you see something, that seeing is the outcome of your comparison, condemnation, judgment, evaluation, is it not? When you read something you are judging, you are criticizing, you are condemning or approving. To be aware is to see, in the very moment, this whole process of judging, evaluating, the conclusions, the conformity, the acceptances, the denials.

Now, can one be aware without all that? At present all we know is a process of evaluating, and that evaluation is the outcome of our conditioning, of our background, of our religious, moral and educational influences. Such so-called awareness is the result of our memory, - memory as the `me', the Dutchman. the Hindu, the Buddhist. the Catholic, or whatever it may be. It is the ‘me’, - my memories, my family, my property, my qualities - which is looking judging, evaluating. With that we are quite familiar, if we are at all alert. Now, can there be awareness without all that, without the self? Is it possible just to look without condemnation, just to observe the movement of the mind, one's own mind, without judging, without evaluating, without saying "It is good", or "It is bad"?

The awareness which springs from the self, which is the awareness of evaluation and judgment, always creates duality, the conflict of the opposites - that which is and that which should be. In that awareness there is judgment, there is fear, there is evaluation, condemnation, identification. That is but the awareness of the `me', of the self, of the `I' with all its traditions, memories, and all the rest of it. Such awareness always creates conflict between the observer and the observed, between what I am and what I should be. Now, is it possible to be aware without this process of condemnation, judgment, evaluation? Is it possible to look at myself, whatever my thoughts are, and not condemn, not judge, not evaluate? I do not know if you have ever tried it. It is quite arduous, because all our training from childhood leads us to condemn or to approve. And in the process of condemnation and approval there is frustration, there is fear, there is a gnawing pain, anxiety, which is the very process of the `me', the self.”
(Collected Works: Volume 9, Amsterdam, 5th Public Talk, May 26, 1955)

~~~~~~~~~~~

More significant quotations:

“To me there is only perception, which is to see something as false or true immediately.

This immediate perception of what is false and what is true is the essential factor - not the intellect, with its reasoning based upon its cunning, its knowledge, its commitments. It must sometimes have happened to you that you have seen the truth of something immediately - such as the truth that you cannot belong to anything. That is perception: seeing the truth of something immediately, without analysis, without reasoning, without all the things that the intellect creates in order to postpone perception.

It is entirely different from intuition, which is a word that we use with glibness and ease. To me there is only this direct perception - not reasoning, not calculation, not analysis. You must have the capacity to analyze; you must have a good, sharp mind in order to reason; but a mind that is limited to reason and analysis is incapable of perceiving what is truth.

If you commune with yourself, you will know why you belong, why you have committed yourself; and if you push further, you will see the slavery, the cutting down of freedom, the lack of human dignity which that commitment entails. When you perceive all this instantaneously, you are free; you don't have to make an effort to be free. That is why perception is essential.”
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Immediate perception,' September 14, 2007)

“... in answering these questions, one fundamental thing must be borne in mind. It is that they are merely a reflection of the ways of our own thinking, they reveal to us what we think. They should act as a mirror in which we perceive ourselves. After all, these discussions, these talks, have only one purpose, and that is the pursuit of self-knowledge. For, as I said, it is only in knowing ourselves first - deeply, profoundly, not superficially - that we can know truth. And it is extremely arduous to know ourselves deeply, not superficially. It is not a matter of time, but a question of intensity; it is direct perception and experience that are important.”
(The Collected Works: Ojai, 9th Public Talk, August 13, 1949)

“To move away from sorrow is merely to find an answer, a conclusion, an escape; but sorrow continues. Whereas, if you give it your complete attention, which is to be attentive with your whole being, then you will see that there is an immediate perception in which no time is involved, in which there is no effort, no conflict; and it is this immediate perception, this choiceless awareness that puts an end to sorrow.”
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'This choiceless awareness' - October 10, 2007)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Summary:

* Freedom from desire and fear - freedom to look without bias - is necessary for complete attention; there must be a state
where there is no motive, conscious or hidden - that is, no self; and no concentration, which is exclusion, not awareness ~
* A quiet, passive mind, sensitivity, and a high level of energy are needed to be fully aware of the constant movement of thought. With awareness, one begins being aware of the outer environment and then moves inward, to thought/feeling ~
* The energy required comes when you pay full attention, without identifying with what you observe in yourself, that is, when you are fully attentive without the presence of the observer (the self) ~
* The observer is that which identifies with what is seen; it ceases when you realize there is only thought and no thinker ~
* Full awareness then is actual and direct contact with what is, with complete passivity - with no reaction to it whatsoever.
                                                    *****

"What is the nature of thought that it ceases when there is complete attention and when there is no attention it arises?"
                                                                  (The Transformation Of Man: The Wholeness of Life, Chapter XIX, page 215)

An extraordinary question! Thought arises due to our state of inattention? Thought ends when one is at complete attention?

Very little notice has been given to the implications of this simple statement.

We really only pay attention when we anticipate some reward to be gained through it. We are reacting all the time to the things happening around and within us. As a result, we can read and listen to things without actually listening, or grasping, what we are reading. We simply don't heed most of what we read. What we do heed are those things that set off a reaction in the mind, which we then listen to, and react to.

These reactions, rather than what we are reading, become all important. Hence the mind has a remarkable facility to close itself off from a full comprehension of what is being read or heard. As a result, we don't think things through, and we never see the whole picture of anything.

We have closed, insensitive minds - period. The fact is - extraordinary as it sounds - that we have not openly listened to the talks at all - only to our reactions to them.