The observer is NOT the observed

What can the brain do though with immensity, or immeasurable at this point? It has difficulty handling the fact no notion of an external is required to explain the physical and material universe, or that consensus reality is a defensive reflex preventing the freedom of the brain to enquire. Does it not have to contend with this first?

My beliefs colour the world I live in and the brain in my head.

Whether I believe this or the contrary, it will affect what I see and seek - my confusion and seeking depend on what delusion is considered real.

If I grew up in an animist culture, my confusion and questions would be thus.
If I grew up in a christian culture, my beliefs, questions and confusion would be thus.
If I grew up in the modern world of mix and match (Christian, Freud, Krishnamurti, New age…) etc

Maybe if the observer only had the correct beliefs, he may be able to merge with (or separate from) the observed? :crazy_face:

It is neither as described nor is it the contrary, nor should we believe that it is not as described (or the contrary?) - There is no observer (nor is there no observer) neither is there the observed (nor is there nothing, nor not nothing). etc

Depending on the known (christ, quantum, observer is the observed etc…) will not lead to freedom from the known. The best self is still the self, whether it experiences this, or that.

Yes, but do I see that or just say it?

The brain is heavily conditioned, both as the particular conditioning or background, but also generally in a way that is common to all, and yes science, including quantum mechanics functions at the level of belief as much as anything else, and curiously it can be seen, appears not to impact the observer of it very greatly, who can carry on being selfish and conflictual. I bring it in only to say that as part of the reality that is generally held to be the case by the self, there is in fact something in that very reality questioning the validity of it, just as I am doing, so it is your reality too.

Freedom from the known, which is the end of thought, the end of reality, is something else is it not? At issue in the first instance is an observer separate from what is observed, heavily engaged in generating what is observed, which is generally not seen, other than when attention is brought to it, which does not last long.

Knowledge, whether gained through insight or intellect is dangerous - it corrupts. It must leave no trace.

I see what I know - the observer is the observed.

PS - I love quantum!

It’s not a question of the knowledge though is it, which is merely used for the purpose of communication, it is a question of the action on the brain. Does the brain that sees it is conditioned dither in this way?

But isn’t shattering disintegration, the end of that which can experience fear and anxiety?

@Inquiry

I consider there is the ego structure, and then there is the cover it has adopted to escape the fear and anxiety it is. When for whatever reason its certainties are lost, it is similar to lifting up a rock, and exposing what is underneath, which has then to scramble for fresh cover. So while the cover may be blown the ego remains. Maintaining a degree of separation is critical for the ego which in reality wants nothing to do with an awareness that the observer is the observed.

The only credible evidence we have of “the observer is the observed” is Krishnamurti’s recount of his experiences in his Notebook and Journal. A case in point is this Notebook entry:

“The path went up gently past a cow shed but it was empty; the cattle had been taken to pastures much higher up. It was quiet up there, without people but with the noise of the rushing stream. Quietly, it came, so gently that one was not aware of it, so close to the earth, among the flowers. It was spreading, covering the earth and one was in it, not as an observer but of it.” (August 7th, Gstaad.)

Contrary to what you say, everyone in this forum seems to want to die now to that “separation”.

For others, who have not read Krishnamurti, separation between the observer and the observed is the rational consensus worldview.

It’s true Sree, it’s not the consensus view. It is quite radical to suggest that there is no ‘observer’ separate from what is being observed…no actual thinker’ that is separate from the thoughts he feels he is thinking…no ‘experiencer’ that stands apart and separate from his experiences. No ‘sufferer’ apart from the suffering. Etc.

I recall JK talking about looking at ones ‘anger’, not as something to be ended, gotten rid of, suppressed, etc but looking at it as if were a “jewel”. Not a personal, but a human sensation. That looking has to be “holistic”. It has to include the ‘one’ who is angry and the manifestation of the anger. That, it seems would apply to all that we do,are. Not an ‘observer’ outside of what is being ‘observed’.

Well that’s one way of keeping it at a safe distance. That the separation between an observer and what is observed is false, is itself true or false, in the same way that gravity is either true or false. And this is so for one and all in all instances or it is not at all.

Is it really down to what a person says, or even what they think, or is it down to how they behave? I might say I want to meet others here, and find out if that is possible, while not having the slightest intention of actually doing that. Human beings are tricky.

As with gravity, the truth of this has nothing to do with whether one has ever heard it said, or ever heard of Krishnamurti. It is true regardless. I sense most people have no notion of things being any specific way. It is similar to when a person is asleep and dreaming, were they have no view as such on whether they are dreaming or not.

Suppose I had to take seriously the notion that I was not separate from what I observed, and I had to consider why I am thinking something to the contrary of what is true, what reason would I give myself for doing that? If I am holding truth at bay continuously, that is quite some feat, and I must have a reason to be doing that, while reducing it all the time to an intellectual curiosity that I can dismiss and go back to sleep.

The reason is that I don’t exist if I’m not “holding truth at bay continuously”, and I don’t want to find out what does exist if I am not there to weigh in on it.

It could be that panic attacks are moments of truth. What could be worse than ceasing to exist?

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The consensus view is the down-to-earth view that kicks into operation when we go about our daily grind of a life. This view puts the observed world outside and separated from the observer who must deal with stuff on the front burners (navigating the physical body through space and relating the observer with other people in the family, at the workplace, and elsewhere in the public space. On the back-burners are other matters (tax returns, health/house/car insurance, bank/credit card/mortgage statements, etc…).

I wouldn’t say that it is radical. I would say that it is not practical. It’s not the state of mind of one who has any use to anyone including himself, in this world.

Krishnamurti lived an abnormal life. The only chore he ever had to do was going to the bathroom and taking a shower. I copied that lifestyle as closely as I could (for ten years now) just to find out if that sacred benediction could come upon me when “all space seems to disappear”, the self is not, and the observer becomes the observed.

Spacing out is not hard to do. Spacing out without effort is something else. Most people, even the fortunate ones who can pull in two hundred thousand dollars or more a year have to slog like dogs just to afford a month-long vacation in the Bahamas to space out. There is no telling if one could even wind down and destress to a point where the mind is in any shape or form to meet that “otherness”.

Yes if for whatever reason I suddenly find I have fallen out of a plane I am in, without a parachute, when I ordinarily consider it important to remain in that plane, I have to reconstitute that scenario immediately or face what it has provided protection from.

Does any of this really prevent seeing the fact here, or is this simply a description of what maintaining a space is? Am I aware while being this space, that it is, or is there a state of immersion, of forgetfulness, until I momentarily recall it again once prompted in some fashion?

What fact? That the observer is the observed? Researchers have been examining this since David Bohm. His time spent with Krishnamurti was not to seek the “otherness”. His motive was for resolving experimental anomalies besetting quantum mechanics and to develop his concepts of modern physics to deal with them.

A consciousness-only ontology is already out there to explain the relationship between the scientific observer and the object of observation. A paradigm shift could usher in a new ho-hum consensus worldview fusing the observer with the observed. It may not be the radical transformation that Krishnamurti readers expect.

Let’s start from the observer is not the observed. Is that an observable fact in the sense it can be shown to be demonstrably so by science? My sense of it, is that ordinarily human beings do not operate or profess a specific conscious belief in being separate, but they do exhibit behaviour in line with such a belief, whether conscious or unconscious. Where the sense of separation matters most is in the field of the psychological, and where that is at its most problematic is in the phenomenon of genocide, which is where this belief in the reality of separation is at its most dangerous. Now why have I not put everything it takes into discerning whether the sense of myself as separate from another is actually true, and if there is no real evidence to support such a claim, what there is in operation sustaining this as a false belief? Why do I not want to know the truth about myself once and for all? If I can put effort into making money I can do this surely.

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Since, according to K, finding “the truth about myself” is arduous, but effortless, one begins by understanding the difference.

It is an observable fact that can be shown to be demonstrably so by the cat pouncing on the birds in my garden. The squirrel leaps from branch to branch, and from tree to tree, chasing another squirrel. Doesn’t that show you that non-human animals also see the fact that the observer is not the observed, and the sense of separation you question and decry is critical to their ability to survive?

Genocide is something else. The human psyche – both of the individual and the group - is a complicated mess. When Cain killed Abel in the biblical story, there was more at play than a sense of physical separation.

And human culture is filled with love stories – both real and imagined – of undying affection between observers and their observed.

The next time I’m a squirrel I’ll check that out :slight_smile:

Is violence not just where things about the self breach the surface in a way that is transparent, but that what makes for this is there all along, but there has been a putting up with it?

You don’t have to be the squirrel to check that out. Neither did Galileo have to jump off the Tower of Pisa to check out the effects of gravity. He dropped a ball instead. You can do it the scientific way by observing the observed.

“Putting up with it” implies the existence of the self, namely you (observer) who is separate from violence (the observed). This makes you the bad guy if you don’t get rid of violence. In a way, Krishnamurti had made humanity the bad guy who needs to shape up (transform). He put a monkey on our backs.