A different kind of awareness? I thought awareness is like the air we breath; it just is. We can react to it and distort it or deny it, but we can’t stop being aware without being unconscious.
The only thing to understand in the whole of human existence is yourself. You won’t get that understanding from somebody else, from second-hand absorption. And yourself, the reality of who you are, is revealed every moment of the day in all of your interactions with the rest of the world. At the moment, you are here, facing these words. As you react to them, that’s the entirety of you in those reactions. There is no other ‘you’ behind the scenes, some elevated, objective, shadowy figure. Also, there is no crisis here; there is no real challenge; and yet you still react to a cold lump of words on the screen in front of you by throwing up protective images of the rest of your fellows. Why? What on earth is going on here that we have reduced our lives and relationships to this?
So, no, sir, it is not the speaker who is in the wrong place. For him there is no right or wrong place. He has no choice about it. Therefore, you have to work out very carefully exactly why you are here, the significance of your existence, the reason why you were born. If you are seeking anything at all from any other human being, including K, then you are a greedy and destructive human being. Your search for the truth will be forever clouded by your own motives which have behind them the desire for power and security. Probably you have heard this said a thousand times over in different ways and yet you persist in the search for the truth as something far away. But the search is over. And so one must look around at the wasteland of one’s own behaviours and actions. The evidence for that is in our relationships with one another and nowhere else. Life is relationship; you have made a mess of it; and it is up to you to change it. As you well know, sir, K refuses to do that for you.
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We are asking what differentiates “pure observation” from different types of observation - we are looking at the different intensities, focus, motivations etc of attention.
If we have not had insight into the whole process of self/suffering/experience, but we believe that awareness/meditation is very very important (due to our cultural conditioning : K, Buddha etc) is that useful? Does it at least address harm somewhat?
If we practise some kind of allowance for awareness/mindfulness regularly, is selfishness/evil being addressed?
Maybe at least we are not reinforcing reality? Attenuating the authority of the known?
All with the assumption of course that we are meditating correctly (as opposed to incorrectly).
PS. I don’t know the answer to this question of voluntary mindfulness in the absence of insight (though I believe there are correct and incorrect ways to meditate)
True observation is not a matter of differentiating or categorizing; it is a direct seeing, free from any interference by thought. Observation, as K and Bohm spoke of it, is not a “type” of observation but a state of attention in which the observer, the “I”, is absent.
When thought begins to categorize, analyze, or ask how one form of observation differs from another, it remains within the same field of thinking. This movement of thought, though subtle, sustains division and fragmentation, preventing clarity.
What is the right question to put forward that would guide us out of this conditioned cycle of debate and analysis?
Okay - now we are saying that True/pure observation is attention in the absence of the known.
Is this because the known is necessarily always sovereign? Can there be no freedom in the presence of thought?
Is @James 's point about focus not helpful here? As in opening to the whole movement of experience rather than being drawn into specific contents.
We are also still asking the same question :
Which is related to : what provokes meditation (or true observation) - can it be a voluntary state or is insight necessary, is revulsion to harm necessary, is acceptance of death necessary?
I realise I’ve said this before, but I often get a bit lost in these conversations because the topic subtly changes from day to day and I forget what the previous day’s context was.
The big context is the relationship between observation and freedom.
The narrower context was a discussion about the relationship between observation and suffering, and you were saying that sometimes being ‘conscious’ of suffering increases it, or adds complexity - which is why I brought up the distinction between focussed awareness (concentration) and choiceless awareness.
Focussed awareness/concentration may involve thought, which amplifies suffering.
Whereas choiceless awareness is simply passive awareness of whatever is arising in consciousness - it doesn’t add anything.
I was saying that - from my understanding of what K talks about in the passages shared in the OP - out of this choiceless awareness of our imprisonment an insight may arise which dispels the suffering.
What the distinction is between choiceless awareness and insight may be a matter of the way these words are used, or it may be a matter of degree of intensity - I’m not sure - but this is a secondary issue for me in the discussion. What matters (for me) is the factor of observation - which involves perception, awareness, attention (and insight), rather than focused thought.
So, returning to what you wrote, I don’t think it is necessary to have total insight into suffering to observe it passively. This passive awareness is different to concentrated ‘consciousness’ of suffering.
What do you feel?
I agree - I said I didn’t know earlier, but looking at the nonsense contradictions I said in my PS earlier :
So if I’m being intellectually honest I have to agree - even dimwits meditating can be in a state of freedom from the known.
The problem for us dimwits is that
a) there are terrible methods of meditation practises on the market
b) they are all boring and seemingly pointless
Freedom, in its deepest sense, is not the absence of thought but the absence of identification with thought.
Thought, being a mechanical process, can never bring about true freedom because it is inherently conditioned by past experiences, knowledge, and memory; like water in a river that cannot stop flowing or see itself as “the river”.
Thought is necessary in practical matters, but when it spills over into the psychological realm, it creates division, fear, and conflict. When Krishnamurti speaks of “putting one’s house in order”, thought is but a piece of furniture in the house, not the house itself, nor the one who dwells within it.
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Agreed - Amen.
Maybe people will still have many thoughts to share - but as it stands the current thread is stating that :
Pure observation is Freedom from the known.
Agreed. But are we saying that passively observing is a meditation technique? I realise it is marketed that way (i.e. as ‘mindfulness’, etc), but is it actually a practice, something to be repeated?
My understanding of passive (or choiceless) awareness is that it arises out of, and is a continuation of, ordinary awareness. As soon as it is organised or made into a technique (with a view to various outcomes) it is no longer passive.
What do you think?
I think you have forgotten a third possibility, namely: knowing that it is an illusion and yet enjoying the show.
In the passages shared in the OP, K talks about the importance of choiceless observation, which he says reveals our limitations, our lack of freedom. Out of this choiceless observation a perception is possible which has great energy, which can free the mind of its limitation and enslavement.
So, for instance, if one reflects on the following extracts taken from the OP:
What matters is to observe your mind without judgment – look at it, watch it, be conscious of the fact that your mind is a slave. That very perception releases energy, and it is this energy that is going to destroy the slavishness of the mind
If you perceive completely, absolutely, that the mind must be free, that very perception brings an action which will set the mind free
the problem is, surely, to free the mind totally so that it is in a state of awareness which has no border or frontier. How is the mind to discover that state? How is it to come to that freedom?
if you actually perceive the narrowness of the spirit, the increasing slavery of the mind, you will find that out of perception comes energy. It is this energy, born of perception, that shatters the petty, respectable, fearful mind
If you are aware that your mind is narrow, limited, slavish, petty – aware of it choicelessly – then you are in a state of perception. It is this perception that will bring the necessary energy to free the mind from its slavery
A way of parsing this would be to say there is a distinction (not a division) between ordinary diffuse awareness (choiceless observation) and a high energy perception (or insight). Insight (in my understanding) is a continuation of ordinary awareness but it is an awareness that has greater energy and totality - in that it dispels limitation rather than just passively noticing it.
True freedom is not “from” something; it is a state of being untouched by the movements of thought, without detachment or any direction to be freed “from”.
Can we stay with this question, without rushing to a conclusion, for longer than the space of two line breaks? 
While meditation itself cannot be provoked, questions and insights that disrupt the habitual activity of thought can awaken awareness. This awakening is not the same as meditation but may create the conditions for it to arise.
In essence, to “provoke” meditation is to misunderstand meditation entirely. True meditation begins where provocation, effort, and intention end.
For Krishnamurti, meditation is not something one can “do” or “bring about” but rather a spontaneous unfolding when the mind is free of conflict, division, and the need to become something.
Should death be accepted? 
Could you elaborate on this please? I am curious to know exactly what authority the suffering has.
If I may -
Suffering seems to say that I exist - I suffer, therefore I am.
The conditions may appear bad, so I have fear, anger or boredom, or pleasure and euphoria end, so I suffer. Could it be that I only have meaning being a sufferer and otherwise do not appear, unable to be conscious of myself, unable to suffer because there is no content of consciousness without suffering?
I don’t really know - I can only think of visiting an illumination of buildings or parks, i.e. projections of colors or pictures or a magical performance.
Otherwise, if an assumption turns out to be illusory, the feelings associated with the assumption also disappear, I would say.
This question reflects a profound and sensitive observation about the nature of the self and its relationship to suffering.
It’s a question not to answer but to stay with. Are we willing to observe this without seeking resolution or conclusion?
Suffering, as one movement of consciousness, gives shape and weight to the sense of “I”. Without suffering (or without any psychological content), what remains? Is it that consciousness without content ceases to be, or does it open into something entirely different, something beyond thought and identification?
The challenge here is not to escape suffering or to conclude that the self is only suffering, but to observe this whole process without judgment.
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Suffering/pleasure is the boss of me - Yes? No?
If I accept death then fear/desire/suffering dissapears, is no longer my boss - no longer the basis/filter of experience and action.
Have we anthropomorphized ‘death and suffering’? (If that’s the right word?) : The nameless ‘exchanging of energy’ that has been going on here for eons before the human brain came on the scene bringing ‘negativity’ (opposites) into the picture?