The seeds have been sown

But does this analogy with sunlight work for what you wrote? It doesn’t appear to because you state that: awareness has no “aim, goal other than to be with, as fully as possible, whatever is there.” It seems there is at least one condition, when you include use of the word ‘other’, that does exist as a goal. Further, your statement gives the impression that awareness is something, has a forum, is a process. Is it? Or is awareness, choice-less awareness, the absence, the complete emptiness of the self, the center? As K as often pointed out. Was K saying that the Center, the Self is a small part of the mind? A static point, the past, a collection of experience and knowledge, that blocks awareness?

So it seems Dan was saying that there IS a goal. Doesn’t make sense to then write about sunlight not having a goal. Who has this goal to ‘be with whatever is there’? Obviously thought.

No, no goal. I don’t want to push the sun analogy, but is the process of photons leaving that body and streaming off into space its ‘goal’. It’s what it does, what it is…similarly (to me) awareness illuminates what is before it. No 'goal, no ‘aim’. Awareness of the self without choice or judgement is not an accumulation process. That is what thought/self does, accumulate in order to ‘become’, to be secure. Awareness does no such thing, has no such goal or aim.

Regarding the ‘who’ or 'what ’ is behind choiceless awareness, that was also my question. I recall that the way K. answered it was that there is neither… but a “state of observation”

I agree Dan. Thought, which has invented “who” or “what”, has no relationship with “choice-less awareness”. Thought is of time; the accumulation of experience and knowledge. At least that is the way K has so often described it. I don’t want to get into whether it is a fact or not. That’s up to each one of us to work out for ourselves.

Also, I’m growing a little apprehensive that we may be making “choice-less awareness” into a “thing”, a condition, something tangible. It’s my understanding that “choice-less awareness” is when thought is not. Choice-less awareness is not of time, it’s not being recorded or stored anywhere as we do with thought. Thought; time, the past has absolutely no relationship, no connection, no memory or experience of, no part in choice-less awareness. And as such choice-less awareness cannot be analyzed, theorized or philosophized about. We can discuss what it isn’t.

K has often described choice-less awareness as that which is when the mind, the brain is absolutely quiet. When there is no self, super self, super consciousness, center, ego, whatever we want to call it, operating. That is all I have been trying to bring out. Whether anyone agrees with this or not I hope it is, at least, clear.

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I put the part of your post in bold that is different than my understanding of this awareness without choice. It is here from the K. quote in the QOTD:

K.: “Truth is the silent observation of what is, and it is truth that transforms what is”.

That “silent observation” for me is this awareness we are speaking of, it is truth itself. It "transforms " when it sees silently that psychologically trying to get from ‘here to there’, is folly, because in truth ‘here and there’ are one. There is no division. For me what he is talking about here is something he said also in relation to our ‘attachments’…that why not let them all go now, our death, has already happened.

Jack talked about the brain being ‘absolutely quiet’. You call it ‘silent observation’. What’s the difference?..seems you’re both making the same point. Only you call this awareness ‘truth itself’. “it is truth itself”. What led you to that conclusion? Was it something you read or some experience you yourself had?

Both but I quoted K since it was conveniently one of the QOTDs:

K.: “Truth is the silent observation of what is, and it is truth that transforms what is”.

So I only see the truth of a flower or a sunset when the mind is silent. I only see the truth of my wife or child when the mind is silent. When I see them through the screen of thought and reaction I’m not seeing them as they actually are…not seeing the truth. And this is the root of division in the world perhaps. Not perceiving our neighbor as he/she is…but rather, reacting positively or negatively out of the needs of the ego.

Will you please provide a more complete citation for this quote? I would like to read the context from which this quote was taken. Thanks

I also don’t know what you mean by, “…our death, has already happened”. Obviously, for most of us our death hasn’t already happened. K talked about two different “deaths”. The physical body dies and there is a psychological death. Thought operates as both practical and psychological. K talked about dying to our psychological thought. Die to all of our yesterdays. These are memories, experiences, knowledge that form images of who we are, of others and so on. We need practical thought in order to find our way home, do our jobs and to do the countless other things one is required to do to live, to survive. Attachments are part of the psychological thought process, by the way. They don’t stand alone. Without thought there would be no attachments. That’s obvious, right?

Below are several quotes from K on transformation:

K states that transformation is truth and is not cumulative, not of time. It has no relationship with thought. Thought is of time. Thought is the past modified by the present and projected into the future. Thought has continuity. Time, which is continuity, can never find that which is eternal; eternity is not continuity. That which endures is not eternal. Eternity is in the moment. Eternity is in the now.

A mind which is desirous of a future transformation or looks to transformation as an ultimate end, can never find truth, for truth is a thing that must come from moment to moment, must be discovered anew; there can be no discovery through accumulation.

Transformation is not an end, not a result. Result implies residue, a cause and an effect. Where there is causation, there is bound to be effect. The effect is merely the result of your desire to be transformed.
The above is some of what K said about transformation in the book, “The First And Last Freedom” Part 38, “On Transformation”.

If anyone cares to read this fairly short piece on transformation it is quite clear what K is pointing out. These are my words below. I suggest everyone who is interested read what K wrote in the above referenced book.

When thought ends completely, which is time ending completely, when the mind is silent, no movement there is truth which is transformation. Thought can never know, never experience transformation or truth because thought is time and transformation/truth is timeless. Transformation/truth is always in the present, now always renewing not continuing which is time, which is thought.

Contact the site manager, it was on the home page here a couple of days ago without citation.

It may be just a verbal problem but the use of ‘I’ here is confusing. The ‘truth’ is the seeing of the "screen of thought and reaction’ (which is the ‘I’ / ‘self’) and in seeing it, negates it (transforms it?). In the moment, the seeing transforms the ‘what is’ , in this case, the false division between me and the other. The truth is that the division between me and the 'world 'is false.

Yes, there can be ‘seeing’ of the ‘screen of thought and reaction’, but there can be seeing of the cloud, seeing my wife or neighbor, the flower or tree, the mountain, the bird, and whatever one observes free of the interference of the word …free of knowledge…free of memory and image… thinking.

Free of the conditioned duality / division between the see-er and the seen…between the “observer and the observed.”

To me what I see K. was pointing at in that provocative statement was that there is only ‘Now’. The ‘same’ now for my birth, my life, my death…it is all now, no past, present, future…so my death has already happened (in the ‘Now’) in that ‘dimension’ where all is eternally gathered together in the ‘instant’…so his point as i read it, was why hang on to all these psychological attachments, gathered out of fear of what the ‘future’ may hold? The future is ‘now’ and they’ll all disappear at the moment of physical death anyway…so why not give them up now and realize a different way of living: “free from the known”?

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Yes, but this is only true if the self, the center, thought has been dissolved. It’s not automatically true for everyone. For those of us who are still functioning within psychological thought, who are psychological thought, this is not true. We still have a past, present and future.

Yes, and that is what he came to set us free of.

There is nothing “automatic” as I see it, about any of this. Being ‘free of the known’ is to move off to, who knows where. Holding on to anything is fear. Being a light to yourself. No security, no guarantee. A ‘once in a lifetime’ chance.

A once in a lifetime chance for who? You realize that no part of what you call DanMcD, or what I call JackPine, are ever going to know, experience transformation, truth, what is beyond thought. Because we are thought. You, all the rest of us, who still identify with our past, with our knowledge, our experiences will never experience transformation/truth. Experiencing is of time, continuity.

It’s not a once in a lifetime chance. Truth is there from moment to moment, always renewing, but as long as we, the self, the center exists it is the denial of that truth. This is what I hope you will understand. You can’t talk about what transformation is, what truth is. “You” can’t experience transformation. Experiencing is continuity, time which can never know the timeless. K points this out over and over. This is why philosophizing, theorizing, intellectualizing about truth is so patently absurd.

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I would say there is a process associated with all this. In Hinduism, it’s called Yoga, meaning one increasingly discriminates between what is the Self from non Self and ceases identification with the non-Self or justifying it. The very process of being aware is to set this distance firmly from thought,feeling, action complex which is of matter, from, consciousness associated with as little matter as possible. As the process goes on with persistent awareness the entity we call as Self/I becomes ever-changing but at the same time getting lesser and lesser associated with material process of thought/feelings/action, as more and more of it’s association gets revealed. We may call it self knowing which is endless.
But the moment we posit a super self so to speak entirely free from thought/feeling/action or as existing outside observation, we move into abstraction from the concrete. Therefore there is no ‘becoming’, but a deep understanding.

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This second quote seems like it is saying that what you wrote above is a process of becoming. Yes we could look to a 5000 year old religion to try to find answers. But since this is a Krishnamurti discussion forum we could also try to understand what K is saying about understanding ones self.

Also, K rejected organized religion. Many religions have been around for thousands of years yet the situation here on earth just keeps getting worse. Maybe, as K had often pointed out, we should reject organized religion and find out for ourselves who we are and if there is something beyond the narrow self with it’s illusion of separateness. Religion, nationalism and our own self interests are dividing humanity and destroying the world.

We have seen that thought leads nowhere. Thought can’t solve the problems of the world. Indeed, it is thought that has created so much confusion, hatred, wars, destruction, created the problems of the world. So if we can’t think our way out of this mess what is one to do?

Can we watch thought without reacting to it? See thought for what it is? Will this lead to the ending of thought? I don’t know. K seemed to think that there was something beyond thought; truth, eternity.

Jack, I don’t see K’s teaching as any different from what Hinduism for example has said, and in my case it’s the latter which helped me with understanding along with bouts of 'suffering’and bring K too within it’s ambit. As I said before, everyone has their own trajectories when it comes to spiritual unfoldment, if one could use that word and therefore no point in being dogmatic about sticking with one or the other. As this is a K-discussion forum, I am trying to put things in K’s perspective as well and understand that there is no contradiction in the core message.