“The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all humanity.”
– Krishnamurti, from The Core of the Teachings
This is imo a very radical view of what it means to be a unique individual. To realize it seems to call for nothing less than a full-on revolution of the mind.
Can we be free from the content of our consciousness? It is all that we know, all we think and imagine, we are utterly embedded in it our entire lives.
I observed thought is dependent on the mood but not the opposite. If I am angry then my thoughts will try to defend the self deep inside. If I feel pity for someone, then I get a whole different set of thoughts towards the subject. If I feel Jealous then everyone knows the kind of thoughts a person gets.
Yes, everyone can be free from the content of consciousness, as it is just a state of mind. The question is, how to reach such a state and remain in that state? for the disturbances occurring due to this society.
It may sound overconfident but I observed it at some point in my life.
To be somewhat free of some of the content, that’s definitely possible. But to be totally free of all of the content … that seems like a spiritual fairy tale to me.
But that’s just a best guess based on my experience. I can’t speak for others.
Yes, I have moments of serenity. But I doubt that even in the serenest of these moments I am totally free of the content of consciousness. They are temporary, usually short-lived oases of serenity. And like an oasis/mirage, even when I feel at peace, it might well be that chaos reigns beneath the surface of my conscious mind, where the darkest of dark things dwells.
How one answers the question “Can we be free from the content of our consciousness?” depends to a large extent on whether you consider consciousness to include only the conscious mind or the so-called unconscious mind also. I’m a big believer in the reality and power of the unconscious mind. When I say freedom from the content of consciousness, I mean freedom from unconscious content also. And that might be in the realm of a fairy tale. Or not! I don’t know.
You can’t honestly say that if it’s not true for you. With all due respect, it’s a lie, a falsehood, an arrogant assumption. You don’t know what being “free from the content of consciousness” is, or if it’s even possible.
I felt that it is just a state of mind. In such state there is questioning, feeling, being attentive and just responding in a situation with the knowledge. The reason why I felt it is free from its own consciousness is because of questioning(Socratic way), in such a state.
Maybe my understanding is not clear enough, what everyone thinks about the ‘mind free from its own content’.
I thought of sharing my observations on a particular state of mind, which happened to me. I knew that sharing such an observation feels overconfident, but I thought of knowing the response from others in this thread.
As always, it’s important to remember that Krishnamurti is speaking about psychological freedom. He is not asking if we can be free of the content of consciousness in the sense that all content disappears.
Can we be psychologically free of the content of consciousness?
What is psychological freedom? It is freedom from the psyche-ego and all that it spawns: ideas, images, emotions, opinions, intuition, feelings. It is freedom from conditioning, freedom from ego-centric thought.
So can we be free from the spawn of the psyche?
It’s certainly possible to have moments of psychological freedom on the conscious level, moments that we are not consciously driven by ego.
But:
Are these limited to being fleeting moments, little oases of freedom?
And for me, the all-important question, can we ever be free from the unconscious egoic mind? That is, will there always be thoughts and feelings swirling around in our minds that are not accessible to awareness?
Greetings, i read k.
A man was doing a certain thing. Then he become suddenly aware of the ‘state’. The state is exactly the same compared to couple of days ago. So there is no improvement to the state.
So the state is constant and everything ‘happens’ around it.
Being “free from the unconscious egoic mind” means seeing how it is more dependent on thought than direct perception; seeing how it “sees” only what it can accept, deny, or distort.
It seems reasonable to say that if the brain breaks through its conditioning and sees the danger in the beliefs, traditions, etc that it has accumulated, sees the destructiveness in the divisions they have caused , that it would jump away from them like any other physical danger that it perceives.
I don’t think we ever can, with certainty. All we can see is what we can see: the content of the conscious mind. Sometimes unconscious content bubbles up into the conscious mind and we catch a glimpse. Other times it pushes against the border of consciousness and we can detect its presence. This happens to me (I think) when my conscious mind is calm but there is a feeling of something roiling around ‘beneath’ it.
