What is Awareness?

Kinfonet Discussion
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To this point, K sometimes begins by talking about simple seeing or awareness (‘just awareness’), and ends up describing an attention in which there is limitless space.

For example in one of his talks from 1977 (in Saanen) K says:

Choiceless awareness implies to be aware both objectively, outside, and inwardly, without any choice. Just to be aware of the colours, of the tent, of the trees, the mountains, nature – just to be aware. Not choose, say, ‘I like this’, ‘I don’t like that’ or ‘I want this’, ‘I don’t want that’. Right? To observe without the observer. The observer is the past, which is conditioned, therefore he is always looking from that conditioned point of view, therefore there is like and dislike…

We are saying to be aware implies to observe the whole environment around you, the mountains, the trees, the ugly walls, the towns, aware, look at it. And in that observation there is no decision, no will, no choice. Get it? You understand it?

And attention… In attending there is no center [English ‘centre’]. Right? You are completely attending. Are you now – if I may ask – attending to what is being said? If you are completely, totally attending there is no you who is attending – is there? You understand? If you are listening completely with your heart and with your blood, everything, there is no me attending. Right? There is no me which limits that attention. Then attention is limitless. Right? Therefore attention then has complete space.

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The centre is in our imagination. In observation there is no observer observing.

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Yes, but is choiceless awareness possible for the brain conditioned to distort, deny, or dismiss what it’s aware of?

Unadulerated awareness allows us to see facts, that is all. Awareness does not care what those facts are. It sees the fact of thought as impersonally as it sees a flower.

Yes, but when is awareness “unadulterated”? Doesn’t the brain’s conditioning adulterate awareness to comport with its conclusions?

I don’t understand why people equate choiceless awareness with the stopping of thought.

I don’t “equate choiceless awareness with the stopping of thought”, and I’m not aware of anyone who does. What I’ve said is that I presume the unlimited brain uses thought only when necessary, and is always choicelessly aware. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear.

The incessant movement of thought may be slowed down or quelled to some degree as a result of the introduction of awareness.

Yes.

There is only one way to find out the effect of awareness on thought and it has nothing to do with willfully trying to stop thought or any other choice.

I’m not sure what this “one way to find out the effect of awareness on thought” is, but I’ve made it clear that the conditioned brain’s desire/intention to stop incessant thought is what perpetuates it.

If awareness sheds light on things it misconstrued thought/I will self-correct automatically.

Sorry, but I don’t know what you’re saying here. Awareness can’t misconstrue, and thought doesn’t always self-correct, so…

Surely the only value of choiceless awareness is to to see clearly. A very worthwhile endeavor for ‘me’ I would say.

Yes, choiceless awareness is seeing clearly, but what “me” wants and endeavors to achieve is an improved “me” because it can’t imagine no me. It’s imagined existence is all it knows.

The conditioned brain wants to feel better about itself by whatever means it believes will do the trick, and for K-believers, it’s transformation. It can’t see that it is desire personified; that it can do nothing but escape itself via its chosen means, be it drugs, a new delusion, or transformation.

The conditioned brain is wanting, desiring, praying for the way out of what it is to what is too unfathomable to know.

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127

Can awareness and unawareness exist at same time

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Yes, choice is thought. So thought cannot stop thought.
I feel the right question at least for me is ‘is thought the right tool to meet life?’. If it is not, as awareness is not thought, then can thought no longer play the role of a tool. If that tool is no longer used, what happens?

Anything natural is not outcome of choice. You cannot choose to go to sleep, nor can you choose for your heart to stop beating. It happens not as choice, but naturally as body is made by nature, not choice.

If thought is no longer tool to meet life, then natural awareness is happening as awareness is not choice, not thought. In it there is both awareness of outer world and inner world of thought, feeling and sensation.

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Yes, I think this is a good question. Is thought the correct tool with which to meet fear, suffering, violence, etc? Is thought capable of comprehending the wholeness of life?

Thought is limited. While natural awareness (or attention) may not be limited. So why meet life with a limited tool?

However, as K often said, this does not mean that we jettison thought entirely. Thought still has a place in communication, in technology, in using language and carrying out projects in daily life. We still depend on thought for a great many things.

It just means that thought may no longer have any place in the mind and heart.

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131

Surely we can be neutrally aware of our thoughts and feelings and reactions? Neutrally aware of our reactions without labeling them as distortions or anything else. ‘Thought-based awareness’ labels, the simple, plain activity of being aware of thoughts flitting about doesn’t.

I didn’t say you did. What I pick up quite frequently not necessarily from you personally is that attention (as in simple, basic awareness) cannot occur at the same time as inattention (purpose driven thought). That there cannot be a non-analytical noticing of one’s thinking process as it occurs. It may not be easy (to sustain), but it is surely not impossible to do.

Me:
If awareness sheds light on things it misconstrued thought/I will self-correct automatically.

Sorry that is terrible phrasing. What I meant to say was: If awareness is allowed to flourish, thought will presumably be fed more accurate information and distortion will cease. In theory that is, we still have to deal with thought/self being threatened by what awareness reveals and shutting it down but that is way down the line. We are talking about baby steps here. Simple awareness.

So I am with you that awareness cannot misconstrue. Thought alone can err, distort as we are all here well aware. With the introduction of awareness, I am suggesting that, again, in theory thought will be privy to accurate information and as such respond more sensibly.

Perhaps we are all touching the same thing here but expressing it differently.

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What I am pointing out is, in the state of attention, state, it is a movement, it is not a dead thing, it is a movement of attention, not the movement of time - the movement of time is concentration - in that quality of attention there is no time, there is no border. You understand border? A fixation. Because there is no centre and therefore no circumference. That is attention. Now in that attention why shouldn’t there be inattention? You follow? It is within the whole area, I don’t separate inattention from attention. I wonder if you get this. It’s only when inattention says, “By Jove, I must leave this and capture that”, then you separate inattention from attention.

Saanen, Switzerland | 4th Public Dialogue 3rd August 1974

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I know you are responding to Inquiry, but I like your way of phrasing here:

‘Neutrally’ may communicate better to some people. And also ‘non-analytical noticing’:

However, what really interests me is the quote of K’s you shared:

K seems to be giving the word attention a really broad, inclusive significance here (such that it can also include inattention). Usually we think of attention as either being there, or not being there (in which case there is only inattention).

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I’m not so sure. They’re distortions before we know they’re distortions.

‘Thought-based awareness’ labels, the simple, plain activity of being aware of thoughts flitting about doesn’t.

I’d call it "thought-distorted awareness because it isn’t thought-based to begin with. We’re just not aware of how instantaneously our conditioning distorts awareness.

That there cannot be a non-analytical noticing of one’s thinking process as it occurs . It may not be easy (to sustain), but it is surely not impossible to do.

We’re more aware of our reactions to awareness than awareness itself because we identify with our reactions. If the brain is free of self (I’m supposing), it identifies with choiceless awareness because there is no one, nothing else involved.

If awareness is allowed to flourish, thought will presumably be fed more accurate information and distortion will cease.

Yes. When naked awareness is more interesting than my reactions to awareness, something radical is occurring.

With the introduction of awareness, I am suggesting that, again, in theory thought will be privy to accurate information and as such respond more sensibly.

Yes, but awareness always is and can’t be “introduced”. What can be introduced is self-knowledge, acknowledgement of one’s reactive distortion of awareness. Knowing that I am more conditioned reaction than innocent response undermines the confidence that sustains my reactivity.

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Yes to me this is his message: “There is no division” As he has said “Be attentive when you are inattentive”.

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Come on dan, division is all over the place, between man and woman between believers and nonbelievers, between politicians and people, between falsehood and truth… how can you (in general) possibly say that there is no division, I like to know.

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Division and non-division.
Division is self.
Non-division is awareness.
Awareness has nothing to do with thought.
Non-division has nothing to do with division.
Thought or self creates illusion of division.
Without self, there is fact which is direct awareness, which is non-division

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I’m not sure that K felt there was nothing he could do to help others see that there is no division. Why did he constantly invite his listeners to look at a mountain or a cloud? Why did he constantly point out the importance of attention? If one is fully attentive in any situation, even for a short time, isn’t there the possibility of being fully attentive in other situations? Perhaps for more extended periods of time?

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I think there must have been a discussion about ‘no division’ on Kinfonet where this notion was explored; but I wasn’t around when it happened, and so I find this phrase ‘no division’ a little oblique.

In order to maintain the thread discussion on awareness here I have opened up a new thread on ‘no division’, and so perhaps that conversation (which I feel is very important) can continue there rather than here.

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Inquiry, when you stub your toe, are you not immediately aware of the pain of stubbing your toe? The pain is not a distortion is it?

What you do next may be a distortion - that is, how you react to the pain of stubbing your toe. But the pain is just pain. That’s awareness.

It’s the same with thoughts and feelings. You feel irritated or hurt or jealous for some reason. The content of the feeling may be a distortion, but the feeling itself is just a fact. That’s awareness.

What is your objection to this simple awareness of obvious experiential facts?

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Would it be helpful to clarify the difference between awareness itself and the intention to be aware? Words like “pursue” and “introduce” do indeed point to some kind of future desired outcome. Whereas awareness - as it always present - is already in operation as Inquiry points out. And as James has said, we have all had experiences of what we would could call heightened awareness - a different quality of mind that comes into being of its own accord, unbidden, even if it only lasts a short time. A snapping to attention.

Thought as intention is narrowing, focused on the particular, and that focus, that interest/desire/observer is what obfuscates? pure awareness. Is it then a question of control in the present? Control is a funny thing. It is present even if we think ourselves confused, it may be in the very naming, identifying , labeling of our feelings that is happening unwittingly.

Could it be that ‘unconscious’, non-conceptual awareness is naturally there when seeking of any kind is in abeyance? That is, awareness is not something to be summoned, but rather it is what would be there (in the sense of not entirely covered over by the observer entity) if there were total leisure, if we were able to put down our troubles and woes even for a second and allow whatever is imprinting on our consciousness to do so without moving a muscle. It is rare that we allow ourselves such freedom. An activity in the present not in order to get something in the future. Are we even capable of such a thing or is every action we embark on based on desire? Are we hard-wired to unconsciously ask “what’s in it for me?” at every turn thus making it impossible to meet the present moment, life, creation without preferential selection.

Ironically, to be concerned with what effect awareness may have on the observer/observed dynamic is no different that any other concern, any other focus that keeps us spinning in the personal. Even the concept of doing nothing can be legitimized by thought, and incorporated as noble intention.

Krishnamurti seems to have felt that finding out for ourselves what it is that routinely blocks out pure awareness, is central to understanding how it is that we humans are capable of committing such horrendous violence.

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If the brain is not conditioned to resist or distort awareness of physical injury, one is “immediately aware of the pain” and “the pain is not a distortion”.

What you do next may be a distortion - that is, how you react to the pain of stubbing your toe. But the pain is just pain. That’s awareness.

Yes.

It’s the same with thoughts and feelings. You feel irritated or hurt or jealous for some reason.

If I’m feeling “irritated or hurt or jealous” I’m reacting to something I am aware of. But I was not aware of how quickly the brain went from naked awareness to its reaction. It’s the brain’s sleight of hand. When awareness doesn’t align with its conditioning, it “corrects” it.

Or to put it simply, when I don’t like what naked awareness reveals, I clothe it to suit myself.

The content of the feeling may be a distortion, but the feeling itself is just a fact. That’s awareness.

Yes, the feeling - whatever it is - is the conditioned response of a brain that believes it is who it thinks it is, in the environment it believes it occupies, and not just a brain.

What is your objection to this simple awareness of obvious experiential facts?

Awareness is simple, but the conditioned brain is complicated, incoherent, conflicted, and at odds with awareness when it doesn’t verify or validate its conclusions about itself and its environment, so it reacts by distorting, denying, or dismissing the awareness it reacts to.

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Yes, I think that’s right. The intention to be aware is a habit of thought; whereas awareness is just awareness (e.g. of the habit as it occurs).

Yes, I think that’s right too. As you say, it’s rare to just stop and take in a fresh moment, to have the leisure and freedom to do that. But it’s very natural to stop sometimes - everyone does this from time to time. And when one stops (i.e. when the observer is in abeyance) the world opens up, the senses open up, the heart and mind open up. That is awareness.