What did Krishnamurti mean by 'The Observer is the Observed'?

Kinfonet Discussion
21

I don’t think I have understood what you are saying here Dan.

Maybe if I rephrase my previous question it will become more clear.

The phrase ‘I am the world’ - as I understand it - can be understood in two quite distinct ways.

The 1st way is the one DeNiro shared in her post, and which connects to the 9th and 10th extracts in the OP. This is the perception that I am literally the world. The world - the actual physical world of people, trees, nature, the sky, and by implication the whole universe - is ‘I’ (in this poetic use of the pronoun ‘I’).

The 2nd way is the suggestion that when we look out onto the world of society, with all its violence, conflict, greed, envy, stupidity, etc, that world of society is not separate from my own private conflict, greed, envy, stupidity, etc, so the greed of the world is my own greed, they are the same…

(…the perception of which may make me feel culpable or responsible for what is taking place in wider society, in the wider world - but this is a secondary point).

Do you see the two distinct connotations this one phrase (‘You are there world’) can have?

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I think so. Putting my house in order is my responsibility. There is nothing I can do about yours. I can’t do anything about your beliefs and the horrors they bring about. I can only inquire into ‘mine’. That is my responsibility as I see it.

If the human brain does have the possibility to connect with a different dimension, mind, my understanding is that the brain cannot be in a state of agitation, turmoil, fear, guilt, worry and clogged with influence, fantastic beliefs, desires, authority etc. It is in the silence, the ‘emptiness’ that the connection is made…if any of that is true, it seems a pity not to make such a (possible) connection before dying?

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23

I think this is right. The second sense (as I explained previously) of ‘I am the world’ is related to the feeling of responsibility, because the world of society is made in our own image. So if we want to change that world (of violence, conflict, greed, etc) then we have to begin with ourselves - that is, with putting our own house in order.

While the first sense (as explained previously) of ‘I am the world’ is connected to a state of mind, a state of perception, in which there is absolutely no interference of thought at all: there is only the world :earth_africa: (of people, trees, animals, nature). And such a perception can only take place when the mind is empty of thought, empty of any mental images, so that there is a truly pure perception (without a perceiver).

(And such a state has as its ground - according to K - silence and stillness, as you mention).

24

I also think that in “I am the world” concept, when someone irritates or annoys me, that trait of the other is also within me. I must be sensitive to when I am annoying or irritating. My reactions are to my own aspects, and I may have to dig deep to find them.

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MY ANSWER
No distance/space between the mind and the sunset means: I see the whole field, not only the sunset, this field is far beyond a sunset, it is unknowable, and actually there is a sense that I do not need to know what it is.“Seeing without distance” means : there is no seer nor the seen. There is only immersion into the unknown, which means the me and the (image of) sunset …dissolve (the mind dissolves).

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26

We touched on this matter a little in the ‘pure attention’ thread, but it seems that there are different depths or intensities in perception.

One ‘depth’ or ‘intensity’ of perception is when ‘I am the sunset’ :sun_with_face: (in the same way that the Chinese artist, in extract 10, ‘is the tree’ :deciduous_tree:). There is no distance, no time-gap between the perceiver of the sunset and the sunset that is perceived. In a sense we are saying that, all that exists is the sunset :sun_with_face: .

However, another ‘depth’ or ‘intensity’ of perception is when neither myself nor the sunset :sun_with_face: exist at all. Not only has the perceiver disappeared, but the perceived has also vanished in the intensity of the perception.

An example of this latter ‘depth’ or ‘intensity’ of perception was shared on the ‘pure attention’ thread, but may be worth sharing again here:

We were going up the path of a steep wooded side of a mountain and presently sat on a bench. Suddenly… All space seemed to disappear; what was far, the wide gap, the distant snow-covered peaks and the person sitting on the bench faded away. There was not one or two or many but only this immensity. The brain had lost all its responses; it was only an instrument of observation; it was seeing, not as the brain belonging to a particular person, but as a brain which is not conditioned by time-space, as the essence of all brains.

(Notebook, July 17th 1961 )

What is common is that in both cases Krishnamurti indicates that this quality of perception - in which ‘I am the world’ or the observer is the observed (in the particular sense we are talking about it here) - goes beyond (in some way), or is outside, the brain :brain:. And in both cases the sense of self, of ‘me’, is dissolved.

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27

Wherever the attention goes, which is now free to look, there is only one field, which fills completely the senses.

I look at the sunset, there is only sunset.
Or, we can say the sunset “stands alone”.

Moments later, my eyes see a tiny spot on a dry leaf, or my skin feels the wind, each time there is the “what is”, seamless, undivided, uninterrupted by what is seen.

So yes, we can say there is only the sunset, there is only the spot on the leaf…

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28

Bio-chemical sense perception must not be confused with seeing reality as it actually is.
It would be an error to believe that the absence of cultural and psychological beliefs results in seeing the truth.
Awakening is about seeing the movement of the psychological self for what it is. In no way does it mean that “lower” life forms are free from motivation, fear, violence and delusion.

The jewel beetle prefers to mate with beer bottles, rather than with female beetles because of what it perceives. The male chimpanzee, when it sees a foreign male, sees an enemy that must be attacked and killed mercilessly. These are not cultural (or psychological?) a prioris. They see the beer bottle as a mate, the other as that which must be attacked & destroyed.
For humans, practical thought may be necessary, but it can be incorrect. Cultural conditioning can lead both to violence or respect - two people from different cultures will not see the same thing when they look at it.
But that does not mean that the jewel beetle is in direct contact with reality and the christian fundamentalist is not - they are both perceiving the projections of their brains.

I suppose I’m saying that the teachings are for humans, not for beetles. The stream of evolution (of consciousness) is being “pulled forward” - we are not wishing for the good old days.

The Chinese calligrapher that becomes one with their subject is something new, that could never have happened before the advent of complex thought.

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Douglas, I really don’t know what you are wanting to say here? You make so many different statements - about culture, about sense perception, about jewel beetles (which are a big interest of Hoffman’s), about chimpanzees and the evolution of consciousness, about Chinese calligraphers (by which I’m assuming you mean the Chinese artists referenced by K in extract 10) - that I don’t know where to begin a reply, or what single point is most salient for you in all this.

Do you want to talk about Hoffman’s views (as your example of the jewel beetles seems to signify)? Are you wanting to talk about the presence of thought in chimpanzees (which creates the image of an enemy)? Are you wanting to defend/uphold/promote the value, the importance of culture?

Maybe I can take a few statements of yours that seem clear to me (as statements), but which I nevertheless find quite confusing.

Why do you say this? (which is not to say that the absence of cultural and psychological beliefs is sufficient for seeing truth, but it is surely part of it). So why do you say this?

I get the first statement about awakening - which I interpret to mean awakening to, being aware of, the psychological movement of thought - but I don’t see how this connects to the process of awakening in nonhuman animals?

? I think you are wanting to make the Hoffmanian point that natural selection has adapted the perceptual apparatus of various organisms according to a criterion that we find baffling. Yet by equating the perceptual flaw in jewel beetles (about which Hoffman writes) with fundamentalist ideology you may be making a simple category error. Jewel beetles are hard-wired to perceive in the way they perceive, but human brains are not similarly hard-wired to be fundamentalist Christians.

The Chinese artists K was talking about were modern homo-sapiens, meaning that they existed after the advent of complex cultural thinking (ancient China was to all intents and purposes as complex as medieval China, in terms of its culture, philosophy, literature, etc; and the artists K is talking about may well have belonged to medieval China anyway - it’s difficult to know without a clear reference).

So which of these points do you want to address more clearly?

And, if I could ask Douglas, don’t wait 24 or 48 hours before replying, otherwise we cannot resolve any of these questions properly.

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Maybe I should add another statement you make that I find more than a little confusing.

Are you saying that when K talks about seeing and listening he is not talking about visual or auditory perception?

Obviously, there may be aspects of perception that go beyond the brain :brain: (this was being discussed with @crina ). But ordinary seeing and hearing begins with the brain’s :brain: capacity to sense-perceive its environment, doesn’t it?

And when this seeing and listening is obscured by psychological thought, psychological images, images created by human culture, knowledge, this limits or interferes with perception doesn’t it? Or are you wanting to deny this?

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Firstly I agree that all Chinese artists are modern homo sapiens :rofl:

I suppose that I’m pointing out that the evolutionary tree of consciousness that we are on is a stream flowing in one direction, and that there was not a point on it that can be considered “the good ol’ days” when we were in direct contact with reality.
That there is a spectrum of self that does not begin with complex psychological self. The chimpanzee is not seeing reality any clearer than us.
Freedom from the known is not only freedom from cultural bias, because fear and a subjective experience of reality does begin with modern homo sapiens - but only humans have the possibility of addressing this issue.

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No-one was claiming this as far as I understand Douglas. But this is a secondary matter anyway, so we can put it aside.

If I can put the same point you are making but more simply:

chimpanzees also use thought, image-making, to a limited extent. This use of thought is mixed in with their instinctive desires and urges to protect themselves.

Human beings also mix in the use of thought with their instinctive desires and self-preservation, but to a much greater extent. We are human beings, so we are exploring the process of thought (or ‘self’) as it occurs in human beings.

We are talking about psychological fear, the fear created by imagination and memory - not instinctive fears, or fears engineered into the organism by natural selection.

An essential aspect of being free is being free from cultural conditioning (which is put together by thought).

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Why do you say that imagination, memory and psycho fear (or maybe just psycho fear?) is somehow outside this evolutionary stream of consciousness?

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So the observer is the image-maker, thought or memory which comes after experience has already taken place. The past judging the present therefore creating a gap which is conflict. Being aware of this movement puts thought in it’s right place.

35

I don’t understand the context for your bringing in this issue of an “evolutionary stream of consciousness”?

On the ‘pure attention’ thread we went into this pretty thoroughly.

The mechanics of perception we said (including perceptual cognition, the brain’s immediate processing of sense-data, etc) is part of our perceptual and organic hardware. This hardware is the result of millions of years of evolution.

Thought, imagination, memory, and knowledge based on these, is part of the brain’s much more recent software. This has probably only existed in its present form for 100 thousand years or so (depending on who one reads).

There’s nothing we can do about our perceptual hardware.

But Krishnamurti, the Buddha, etc, have said that there is something that can be done about our psychological software.

So we are discussing (K is discussing - at least primarily) our psychological software, not our perceptual hardware.

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36

The observer is the me who wants or desires an object or an outcome. The observer always has a motive , an end.
Only self knowledge leads to freedom.

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I agree re: psychological software and biological hardware. But these frontiers are poruous/conceptual, affect each other.
Reality itself (in both the sense of experience and actual reality) is changed by our relationship to it. And we shouldn’t think that the images we hold (via the teachings) are actually authoritative/truth.

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There is no denying the porous relationship between the software of thought and the hardware of sensory perception. Thought, after all, is a material process taking place in the soft tissue of the brain. Psycho-somatic illness is a widely attested phenomenon. Mind and matter are inextricably linked.

Nevertheless there is a clear distinction between them that ought not be casually blurred. All psychological thought, imagination, memory, is parasitic on sensory experience. There can be no images without a sensory base to launch them into existence. There can be no knowledge or memory without physical experience. So biological sense-perception is not to be shortchanged by conflating it with mentally, psychologically, projected images.

I’m not sure exactly what “images” you have in mind here - given the context we have had for talking about images so far in these discussions - but I’m guessing you are meaning Krishnamurti’s teachings as a whole. You are saying that what K said is - for the audience, for the listener - a series of images, and not truth. The word is not the thing, etc.

Which is true of any statement made by anyone anywhere.

So the question for us is then to find out if a statement points to something true, that we can test out in real life (in direct experience), or if it is demonstrably false.

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Likewise with the images we hold via scientific dogma.

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Which is illusion , but there is sensation without any imagery attached to it.
Thought is an opportunist which sustains sensations.