That is something worth noticing. I had thought the same thing reading that passage. I can only make suppositions based to my knowledge of K.'s teaching.
When K. argued that there is no soul or atman, he was meaning that everything we can suppose it’s just a product of immagination or something we read or heard of and so just an idea, Just like God. One cannot talk or think about God because what one will do will always be talking of a mere abstraction. He never denied the existence of God, he only said that the god we “know” is not god (actually once he said: your god is not god). So the soul we know from religion is not the real soul. After all God could be something completely different from the concept religions have postulated and that makes something futile to talk about it. Similarly the “real” soul could be something we cannot imagine or postulate, yet something is there when we are living and something goes away when we die.
This for what concern K. Now I try to make my own (perhaps futile) postulate. Often etimology can help.
Soul in latin is called anima, it comes from the noun animale (animal) and the verb animare (animate or liven up in English), so anima (the soul) in ancient times was just the vital energy which animated a living creature. It corresponded to the greek anemos which meant “wind” or breath, and also the latin word for spirit (spiritus) originally meant wind or breath. Same thing in ancient Hebrew, rauch (spirit or soul) meant breath. In the bible god blows in the mouth of the clay statue of Adam and in this way he gave him the life. In ancient times people were more practical ( and didn’t have many abstractions like us today. And even K. talks about an “energy” (remembering not to cling to words), and I think we should also reformulate the idea of what energy is… (
Well I agree that it would be ‘great’ if there was a system or some method to bring about this "urgent’ change…but it looks like after all this time that there isn’t. So it looks like if this urgent change is to actually come to pass, it really is all up to us.
It’s not clear why we’re often talking about ‘choiceless awareness’ then. It won’t change man nor bring about the total transformation K spoke of, so why even bother talking about it?
Because through an awareness that is not directed by the self, the self (you / me) can be exposed , revealed, to itself. Without that discovery the self / thought / time will continue and will stay in control with all the misery and destruction we have seen. It will resist… K. said thought / time must have a stop. It seems that it will not “stop” until it has been completely revealed to itself. Choiceless awareness is nothing more than a light shining into the darkness of the ‘I’ process…but without it, change will be just exchanging one ‘pattern’ of thought for another. It must stop.
We first and last have to realize that we are in the ‘stream’ …before there can possibly be a “stepping out” of it. As I see it.
" So it looks like if this urgent change is to actually come to pass, it really is all up to us", you wrote. But if it’s choiceless what does that mean…‘it’s up to us’? Up to who? The one who chooses…who decides?
Someone says that you are living in ‘darkness’. Everyone around you is also living in that darkness. Some hear about the ‘light’ that they are missing and seek it. But the search is useless because what they are searching for is just another product projected in the darkness. Some people promise that if you follow what they say,do, they will deliver you into the ‘light’. But they are also living in the darkness and we can’t know, discern their motives for wanting to ‘help’. We are on our own in it. with no guarantee that we will ever emerge before our death. Supposedly the brain has shut out the light and opted for a safer more orderly security. It unwittingly sold its birthright for a ‘mess of potage’.
Now if any of that is true and not just fancy, there has to be a breaking out if we are to come into the ‘light’ before the physical death. which can happen at any moment. Only a total awareness of the workings of the self-image, this “I process”, could do it. That is the ‘darkness’ that ‘passes’ for light. Suffering ‘helps’ as a stimulus but it isn’t necessary because living as we do there is always an undercurrent of pain and fear. And the exquisite thing about this ‘light’… it is always there. It is always now in this instant.
How do you know it’s always there? This is conjecture or perhaps recollection of a past experience in the ‘light’. If K were here today on the forum with us I think he’d strongly disagree…or question that statement.
Choice implies a chooser, a person who chooses or selects out the field of awareness, the target of attention. “Choiceless awareness” could be a state of awareness that comes into being when the chooser is forgotten. It happens when you space out in a daydream. When that happened to Krishnamurti (and apparently, it happened easily with him) at school as a child, his teacher would slap his jaw shut.
Choiceless awareness does not mean necessarily that no thought arises - it may happen for a while - but only that we observe passively, without rejecting or approving anything that arises. We end up in conflict when we want to achieve a result like having no thoughts. In buddhism they have an expression (not sure about English translation): one should accomodate, welcome or embrace everything passing in our mind. That means no will to do anything, not even to observe. We maybe infact be distracted for a while, that is natural. If we are aware of the distraction the passive awareness is restored.
Yes, it’s not the way we’ve always been functioning, and that of course creates some difficulties.
I think we should have a simple approach to this matter, otherwise we will be going in circles, entangled in a multitude of suppositions which do not lead us to clarity.
K. talked quite often of this simple approach which he called “the art of observation” or the “art of listening”. When we are observing with interest, with care something or someone, we are not there. The bundle of memories which constitutes the ego with its reactions, emotions, etc. is temporarily deactivated and there is choiceless awareness. It’s very simple but we prefer to make it complicate!
Of course, that does not last very long, why should it? Thought comes in again, it’s his “duty”, as we are used to give importance to thought and feel the necessity of it. Therefore, as K. said, there must be a revolution of values, we must learn not to give value to thought, non to give it importance except for practical chores. The more we devalue thought, the less it will interfere with our observation. For all our lives we were accustomed to feed thought, to give it energy, we must learn how to feed our perceptions instead.
and didn’t have many abstractions like us today. And even K. talks about an “energy” (remembering not to cling to words), and I think we should also reformulate the idea of what energy is… (