And the various social media platforms amplify and solidify the belief-driven divisions. Any ‘worldview’ you may imagine has support groups somewhere on the web. And with the help of AI the material glorifying every group can be of professional-appearing quality. Vadda mess!
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For me the core of Krishnamurti’s contribution to the world is asking the ‘impossible’ question: Can we be free of our psychological conditioning? It’s a question that can only be ‘answered’ by unending learning and exploration of the self.
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The problem is as soon as thought enters I reduce it to a psychological object and no longer see directly. As soon as I label someone as a Russian, American or whatever, I don’t see that the other person is just a human being like me. In awareness without labelling of thought there is no sense of division. The choiceless awareness which K talks about has no sense of division. He says the division is an illusion and that is love.
If thinker is present, there is sense of me separate from you, which I feel he says is illusion. He says thinker is the thought, observer is the observed. In that there is no thinker, it is observation without observer, observation without word, labelling, without conflict, without division, which does not leave a psychological mark as me in time. The me being psychological time as psychological mark.
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Is this necessarily the case?
It could be that all concepts (ie things) are fundamentally mental projections, at least as far as we relate to them.
I’m not saying that no things exist outside of our experience of them, just that our experience of “things” occurs necessarily via our brain.
It feels like I am directly interacting with the material world as it exists out there, but this might not be the case.
And of course it gets worse, as you say, our opinions and beliefs about those objects in the outside world (including my body and social prestige) are subject to debate.
I feel we are talking past each other again Adeen - I don’t know how much more clear I can make this? I feel you are wanting to talk about something else - ‘non division’? But I have been talking about simple, ordinary awareness - of a bird, an animal, a flower, the way someone is dressed. This was what we were discussing on the other thread (if you recall).
K says many times to start with the outer - he says that without the outer we have no criterion for the inner. The outer being, for example, our superficial sensory awareness - of trees, colours, birds, nature. And to become aware of our response to these things. Just one’s natural response (whether it is a conditioned response or a response from sensitivity, just to become aware, find out, learn).
I assume you sometimes look at flowers and birds, or a garden with trees, the blue sky, people walking by, or the flicker of a fire, the rain as it falls, listening to the wind as it blows. Right? It is quite straight forward. But one is usually not aware of one’s response to these things - so, slowing down, sitting on a train, relaxing at home, going on a walk, doing a chore, one becomes aware.
Looking at how one responds to people is more challenging because one has stronger associations of like or dislike in relationship to people (than to flowers and birds). This is where one’s conditioning throws up images, implicit bias, etc. But K says we can become aware of these images in action, of these projections as they occur in our thinking and feeling - without saying we should or should not have these images. This is learning about ourselves in action, meeting ourselves as we are (the what is). As K says,
Our conditioning is really very deep. It requires a great deal of investigation, understanding. To be conscious of our reactions, of our hidden motives and conditioned responses, this also is part of awareness.
This is the thing we were discussing previously, when you were saying that this is just ‘theoretical’. For myself, this isn’t theoretical - it is a moment by moment learning about oneself in action. Maybe you have already learned all there is to know about your conditioning and are free from it? But this is not the case for me.
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Perhaps if I take an example it may help.
If someone tries to insult you and in the moment if you insult back, there is no awareness. If someone tries to insult and you don’t react, there is awareness at that moment.
If you want to give a rebuff to the insult and still be aware of the reaction, practically I have not seen this to be aware.
For me awareness does not have the me or self in it.
If the self reacts at that moment, that is self is active, then there seems to be unawareness.
May be practically you have found something else.
For me in testing this has been the case.
If the self is not active and is silent at that moment, there seems to be awareness.
But you have found out something else, please share.
self being a form of absorption and so unawareness. There can be no awareness of the unawareness in the moment itself, but later, which means awareness and unawareness do not coexist at same moment. As soon as there is awareness, unawareness does not exist.
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I think the difference is that you are wanting to use the word ‘awareness’ in a very exclusive way.
Either the lights are on - there is no self, no thinking, no reacting, no emotion, no psychological conditioning of any kind;
or the lights are off and there is only thinking, reacting, emotion, psychological conditioning (and so no awareness at all).
It’s ok if you want to use the word ‘awareness’ this way, but this isn’t the way it is ordinarily used, and so it is bound to create confusion.
K sometimes made a distinction between awareness and attention that may indicate a way of resolving this confusion.
Ordinarily - to take your example - a person is aware (at least to some degree) of being ‘insulted’, of the hurt this creates in them (due to their self-image, though they may not know this), and of wanting to hurt back (together with any struggle to suppress the desire to hurt back).
However, had there been complete attention from the very beginning of the process (i.e. of being insulted) then no hurt would be registered.
So I think the word ‘attention’ would be a better word to express what you want to say.
Whats the difference between awareness and attention - is there effort in either?
If I am present in awareness then its not pure awareness - its just me vs me
In this case the person is ‘aware of’ only the word. He may react and call the other person idiot, enemy or whatever. This is illusion in case division is illusion. People are killing each other in war out of this illusion.
For me generally awareness, fact, truth have same meaning. Illusion or unawareness have same meaning.
If self recognises it is living in illusion, in non fact, in illusion of division and conflict, is it then silent? This is something I am inquiring in daily life and my daily relationships.
I don’t know answer to this. In one of the conversations with Buddhist scholars K says attention is much deeper.
What I feel is that in choiceless awareness there is no fixed object, it is flowing. Naming makes it into a fixed object. Without naming there is flow. Perhaps in attention there is also no flow, there is nothing. Everything has flowered and come to an end. I have not seen this directly.
I am using the words awareness and attention as I see them.
I was asking James - because he was making the distinction - I think you are using “awareness” in the magical, uncompromising, undivided K sense.
The question we seem to have difficulty addressing is : how? what makes it so? We can’t just decide to be enlightened. Cannot decide to dissapear into pure awareness.
Yes. But this is creating (imo) unnecessary confusion.
As Douglas says
In the discussion with Buddhist scholars K says that in awareness there is still a sense of centre, whereas in attention there is no centre.
From the way he used the words awareness and attention during the late 70s and 80s it is clear there that for K there is a distinction between ordinary awareness and attention. Total attention, he says, ‘wipes out the I’. This is not the case, however, with ordinary awareness.
Is this a fact? Isn’t he/she also aware of the hurt he/she feels in reaction to the word? He just doesn’t see the whole of what is taking place in that process - i.e. he is not completely aware (he is not in a state of attention). But he is sentient.
I think it’s simpler to explain if we say that zombies can’t be hurt by words - a zombie is pure ‘unawareness’ (to use your phrase). There is nothing it is like to be a zombie - the lights are off.
But a person, a human being, is not a zombie. He/she may be very ignorant of themselves, be unaware of how their own brains operate, and react out of inattention. But they are not completely unaware like zombies are (and they would have to be according to your black and white definition).
Very good point, but I can’t decide whether Zombies are pure awareness or pure unawareness. 
How do you explain people killing each other in war? To me it is form of unawareness.
The war is just the ultimate expression of what is happening in daily life.
From my experience, I feel thought believing it is aware is one of the biggest illusion. Most people are caught in that and I also see the danger of that including myself. The entire media industry is based on thought, words. Even social media like Instagram or Tiktok is based on that, on words. You can see how hate is cultivated as division, as word. How media takes sides as division and wants wars to continue. Politicians use words as nationalism to boost ego as a separate entity.
I think I have tried to express as much as I can. In case you feel thought and awareness can coexist, self and awareness can coexist, I think it might be true for you. It is not the case for me through my testing. As each has to find directly let us leave it to that. Anyway it cannot be found out in online dialogue through words at least for me.
In the book ‘The Urgency of Change’ there is this questioner asking Krishnamurti if there is God. As usual, Krishnamurti doesn’t give a direct answer and he comes to the point where he says that ‘if there is no illusion, the ‘what is’ is sacred … ‘what is’ is most holy’. The questioner answers back by saying that then even killing another is ‘what is’ and so everything is sacred!!! … And here you have the wrong turn once again and always!!! No, Krishnamurti says that if you see that ‘what is’ is holy you don’t kill, you’re responsible, you care… So again, it’s paramount that we give intelligence a chance and don’t eagerly jump into conclusions.
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This matter was being discussed or touched on in the other (Total Awareness) thread.
How does a person meet the anguish and rage that takes place in their heart and mind when their husband or wife or child or parent is savagely killed by terrorists or by a missile blast?
If they are unable to meet it with complete attention, then the anguish and hatred will fester on - the wound will remain in the psyche - and they will act out of their woundedness.
But even if they are not capable of meeting the shock and grief of loss in the moment that it takes place - very few people can - they may still be able to meet that wound later on, after it’s intensity has died down, by becoming aware of it in their psyche: how it feels, being present with it, caring about it (without indulging it).
All this takes sensitive awareness, care, not judging the wound and saying it shouldn’t be there, it’s bad, etc.
K has talked about all this many times, so I don’t understand why you reject this.