Everything is ultimately the mystery. But that doesn’t mean mysterious or to be worshipped. And sure the mystery of awareness can be explored, though may not be findable or experienceable.
To be ‘awareness’ is to be not a thing. The conditioned brain in not realizing this perceives itself as a thing, a self. Thought is moving, imagining, remembering, bringing in ‘time’ where it has no place. The brain suffers, thought struggles to find answers, it creates fantasies, it creates an image of itself , a thinker, trying to understand, to become free, happy, secure, etc….until the brain becomes ‘aware’ of what is going on and realizes that there is no actual ‘I’ or ‘me’; no one to become anything. It’s all been a ‘tempest in a teapot’.
If one calls it a ‘mystery’, or makes hard and fast collisions about it, then it’s not the immediacy of awareness. It is a form of prejudgement.
The fact is there is suffering. There is anxiety. There is fear. These are contents of consciousness that, when acute, are also immediate.
So my question is, what is the relationship between the immediacy of awareness and the immediacy of fear or suffering (for example)?
Krishnamurti often said ‘You are fear’, ‘You are suffering’.
So I am wondering if this is pointing to a state of brain in which the immediacy of awareness is directly related to, or non-different from, fear or suffering - and the effect this action of perception has on fear, on suffering?
By ‘You are X’ (X = pleasure, fear, sorrow, joy, wonder, whatever) he meant there is no concrete ‘you’ that is the ‘host’ of X. There is just X manifesting in a particular body-mind, for which you have the unique first-person view. Right?
Fear and hurt are ‘things’ in consciousness that the brain has created for itself through a lack of awareness.
What I am wondering is - what is the relationship between awareness, and fear or hurt (for example)?
When K says ‘You are fear’, ‘You are hurt’, is he pointing to a state of brain in which there is a perfect conjunction between awareness and the things in consciousness (created due to a lack of awareness)?
Is K pointing to the possibility that when awareness and fear (or hurt, etc) are perfectly conjunct (conjoined) - i.e. when they are not separate, non-dual, undivided - then awareness (which is not-a-thing) dissolves fear/hurt?
The brain with the self image becomes inflated (joy) and deflated (hurt)…without the presence of an inflatable / deflatable self image, what are the ‘sensations’ labeled ‘joy’ and ‘hurt’?
The brain isn’t aware “of what is going on” because awareness of how it perpetuates its sense of self would be the end of self-deception, which is what the brain has been practicing forever, it seems.
But the brain’s new belief that “there is no actual ‘I’ or ‘me’; no one to become anything”, sets the stage for a radical change in the way the brain operates.
The brain’s predicament is: “If I am deceiving myself, I must abdicate, but I can’t honestly do that without awareness of the mechanics of self-deception; without seeing how it operates”.
I’m looking at something a little different. K talks about the contents of consciousness - such as fear, hurt, jealousy, etc. Not the analysis of hurt, but hurt per se. Maybe fear, or even sorrow, is a better content to refer to.
One cannot analyse sorrow when it happens. Intellectual dissection is out of the picture. So one is, to all intents and purposes, completely immersed in sorrow.
Now when K says “You are sorrow”, what is he saying here (in the context of the present discussion)?
I am wondering if he is pointing to the direct meeting of non-analytical awareness and sorrow?
Yes - but also that this sorrow (X) manifests in complete attention. That is the meaning, as I understand it, of ‘You are sorrow’.
That is, the immediacy of sorrow (arising in the body-mind) is met by the immediacy of awareness.
He was saying that you are the feeling called “sorrow”, whatever that means to you; that there is no you apart from the feeling.
Not
The context of the present discussion is the extract from Bohm, where he described the ‘I’ in terms of the ‘unknown constantly revealing itself’, and Adeen’s post about awareness (on the Experiments thread).
The question being asked is: what is the relationship between the immediacy of awareness, and the immediacy of fear, suffering (or any content of consciousness)?
Awareness is not identified with any content, but suffering is awareness trapped in content.
So ‘You are suffering’ = awareness meeting or being awareness trapped.
One can verbally say there is no ‘me’ apart from suffering, but suffering still goes on, because it has not been met by complete perception, complete attention (awareness).
The change here being ‘a change in content is a change of consciousness’.
The transformation of fear or suffering, is a transformation, a liberation, of consciousness.
Is awareness trapped in content being aware of nothing but content?
Awareness trapped (in content, in psychological conditioning) is suffering (or fear, etc).
The question is whether the immediacy of awareness itself can meet the immediacy of suffering (or fear, etc), so they are not divided as awareness and suffering - but only a complete awareness of the fact of suffering, the absolute immediacy of it.
Expressed verbally this means there is only suffering, no ‘me’ that suffers, but only the fact of suffering.
A complete, undivided awareness of this fact.
Then, if such a state exists - according to K - suffering ends.
Suffering from what? If there’s no ‘me’, who or what is suffering? Can you suffer if you’re not there? No. Psychological suffering is a reaction. The conditioning is reacting to the environment.
It is a blessing because the ‘suffering’ tells you that you are ‘asleep’.:
“Be thankful not for the friend’s kindness
But for his tyranny.
So the arrogant beauty in you
Can become a lover who weeps.”
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It’s interesting how so few people currently on the forum have picked up this aspect of Krishnamurti’s teaching. As I said to Douglas, this is what we were discussing on the thread titled ‘Can the mind be totally aware of total conflict?’
Another quote randomly taken from Krishnamurti (this one from a public talk, number 8, from 1964 in Switzerland):
There is then no division between the observer and the thing observed. It is not that you the observer, the thinker, are in sorrow and are looking at that sorrow - but there is only the state of sorrow. That state of undivided sorrow is necessary
“Necessary” for what? why?
The extract continues:
That state of undivided sorrow is necessary, because when you look at sorrow as an observer you create conflict, which dulls the mind and dissipates energy, and therefore there is no attention…
Sorrow is sustained only when there is an escape from sorrow, a desire to run away from it, to resolve it, or to worship it. But when there is nothing of all that because the mind is directly in contact with sorrow, and is therefore completely silent with regard to it, then you will discover for yourself that the mind is not in sorrow at all. The moment one’s mind is completely in contact with the fact of sorrow, that fact itself resolves all the sorrow producing qualities of time and thought. Therefore there is the ending of sorrow.
Who understands this?
When there is nothing but the feeling e.g., sorrow, anger, fear, etc., there is no observer, no sufferer.