We’ve all noticed how lacking in self-awareness many people are, and how we’re less likely to notice our own lack of self-awareness because we’re not observing ourselves as critically as others. We are self-centered, and that means we are not choicelessly aware, not free to observe, due to the illusion of division the self-centered mind creates and maintains.
The self-centered mind is selectively aware because choiceless awareness is incomprehensible to the mind that creates the false division between observer and observed. We are more serious about what we believe to be true than what is actual. We are the arbiters of truth - not what choiceless awareness reveals. This is selective awareness.
The fundamental illusory thing that we care about is the self that doesn’t exist except in our own minds. And we are fully aware of caring for it when we splurge $4,000 on a Canali suit and $1,000 on a Christian Lacroix silk tie. It’s things that exist - like our bodies - that we are less aware of and allow to grow fat and get riddled with underlying chronic conditions.
When you are hungry and eat do you ask who is it that is hungry? Or when the house is on fire do you ask who is it that knows that the house is on fire? You just put out the fire without analysis don’t you? In the same way imagination is a blinding factor in awareness .
Questioner: How can we go beyond this limited intelligence?
Krishnamurti: Through being passively aware of its complex and interrelated activities. In so being aware the causes that nourish the intelligence of the self come to an end without self-conscious effort.
Questioner: How can one cultivate the other intelligence?
Krishnamurti: Is not that a wrong question? I wonder if we are paying interested attention to what is being said. The wrong cannot cultivate the right. We are still thinking in terms of self-expanding intelligence and that is our difficulty. We are unaware of it and so we ask, without thought, how can the other intelligence be cultivated? Surely there are certain obvious, essential requirements which will free the mind from this limited intelligence; humility which is related to humor and mercy; to be without greed which is to be without identification; to be unworldly which is to be free from sensate values; to be free from stupidity, from ignorance which is the lack of self-knowledge, and so on. We must be aware of the cunning and devious ways of the self, and in understanding them virtue comes into being, but virtue is not an end in itself. Self-interest cannot cultivate virtue, it can only perpetuate itself under the mask of virtue; under the cover of virtue there is still the activity of the self. It is as though we were attempting to see the clear, pure light through coloured glasses, which we are unaware of wearing. To see the pure light we must first be aware of our coloured glasses; this very awareness, if the urge to see the pure light is strong, helps to remove the coloured glasses. This removal is not the action of one resistance against another but is an effortless action of understanding. We must be aware of the actual and the understanding of what is will set thought free; this very understanding will bring about open receptivity, transcending the particular intelligence.
Thank you for bringing this quote. There has to be this “urge” even though it is toward that which it can’t see. Is it a sensing that something isn’t right? The suffering, the fear, the loneliness, the dependency, the persistent violence, etc?
Incognito, would you mind supplying a citation for your above quote? Some of us may like to read more of the talk this quote came from. Quotes really require citations.