Sorry to jump in, and I realise the question wasn’t addressed to me, but I would say that the “second depth” is virtually unexplored territory. Do we have any idea at all what lies there? Apart from K, did anybody else actually go into this area at all?
The term ‘direct perception’ may be problematic for some people.
In practice (that is, in daily experience) what we have going on in our mind is usually a combination of
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sensory perception (of the world around us - trees, people, houses etc - and sensations of the body); and
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our reactions to those perceptions, in the form of images, feelings, emotional responses (fear, hurt, pleasure, envy, desire, etc); which partake of both conscious and ‘unconscious’ background contents (aka memories) that we have accumulated from childhood, and from the collective consciousness.
The ‘second depth’ is certainly a distorting factor.
The challenge is to be aware of both aspects of our experience - both the outer and the inner - as they present themselves to us moment by moment (choicelessly, if this is possible - as you mentioned earlier).
Is this is what you meant?
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I’m unconsciously aware of lots of things: the feel of keys, the look of the screen, the sounds outside, the thoughts/thinking needed to write these words. I know that I was unconsciously aware of these things in hindsight by recalling what I’ve been unconsciously perceiving for the past few seconds.
I’m consciously aware of much less. In fact, unless I make the effort to be consciously aware, I’m ~100% unconsciously aware of what I’m aware of, i.e. running on autopilot.
By ‘second depth’ we are speaking about the inner life of our reactions, images, feelings, thoughts, emotions, beliefs?
In principle, psychology and psychotherapy are supposed to explore this terrain. But I guess you are aware that there is a particular history and culture around these practices (influenced by Freud and Jung, etc) which divides them off from the awareness that K was talking about.
There are some forms of psychology - like Gestalt Therapy - that attempt to get at this ‘second depth’ more directly (by attempting to draw the client’s attention to what is happening ‘here and now’). But there are still a lot of unexplored assumptions involved in Gestalt Therapy, lots of distracting theoretical and analytical overlay; together with an importance given to the therapeutic environment and the therapist that K’s approach denies.
Some forms of modern mindfulness may be closer to what I understand K to have meant by ‘second depth awareness’ (though others will reject this completely) - and I’m sure there have been many other non-K approaches.
Does second depth awareness employ thought, interpretation, discernment? Or is it ‘pure’ looking?
I’m just wondering if direct perception is natural and our conditioning is a reaction to it. It may be that the conditioned brain never has direct perception due.
It seems to me that we’re both experiencing the same thing but reacting to it differently.
More the latter - but calling it ‘pure’ might mislead (one mustn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, right?).
K and others have used language like ‘non-judgemental’ and ‘choiceless’ looking. But some people have trouble with this too (because it seems impossible - or very difficult - for the mind to stop judging and preferring, choosing).
So maybe just looking with as few expectations or directions as one can have, as being as simple as one can be…
Yes - as ever, it is probably a matter of language.
There is a simple, straightforward way of using the word direct-perception, as when we point out to another the house, the person, the tree. All we mean by this is an immediate (practically speaking) sensory perception of the house, person or tree.
However, there may be another depth of awareness in which direct-perception has another meaning: a perception in which time and space no longer separate the observer from the observed. This is totally different - or at least, has a totally different quality - from ordinary everyday sensory perception.
Everyone will accept the first meaning - that of sensory perception (unless they are mentally unwell); but most people would probably object strongly to the second meaning - of pure perception. This doesn’t mean that such a thing does not occur, only that - if it exists - it is rare and qualitatively different from ordinary experience.
Being aware that one is running on autopilot is pretty key (IMHO). The degree to which I am able to do this (the %) is perhaps secondary.
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As far as I understand, K described moments when the separateness, division, between other living things and himself completely disappeared. He discovered this by himself and spent his life pointing out what, at the very root of things, causes this division. The question seems to be if we are really capable of watching the movement of thought choicelessly
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The theory is that just looking, simply observing is learning and intelligence. True? This sounds very mysterious, alchemical even! It’s easy to understand how observing and thinking is a learning experience that might eventually lead to intelligence. But simply observing, in one ear and out the other? How does learning take place without the analytical/reasoning mind engaging? Or, perhaps better: What manner of learning requires the absence of thought?
Or if we can do anything choicelessly…
Yes. You may know that Krishnamurti was close friends with Aldous Huxley, the man who wrote a book called The Doors Of Perception - in which he describes the perceptual effects of taking certain drugs under controlled conditions.
During the 1960s and 1970s Krishnamurti sometimes refers to this incident when talking about the art of seeing, to indicate what can happen when the time-space between the observer and the observed disappears. He encouraged his audience to experiment - not with drugs!! - but with ordinary seeing, looking at a tree or a flower:
We were talking one day to a very learned doctor [Aldous Huxley], who had taken a drug called LSD, a minute dosage, and there were two doctors beside him with a tape recorder registering what he was saying. After a few seconds he saw the flowers on the table in front of him, and between those flowers and himself there was no space. It doesn’t mean he identified himself with those flowers, but there was no space, which means that there was no observer. We are not advocating that you should take L.S.D., because it has its own deleterious effects; and also when you take such things you become a slave to them. But there is a much simpler, more direct, more natural way, which is to observe for yourself a tree, a flower, the face of a person; to look at any one of them, and so look that the space between you and them is non-existent. And you can only look that way when there is love (The Awakening of Intelligence)
We have probably all had moments when being in nature, or perhaps when listening to music, when this sense of time-space has been greatly reduced, and perhaps even momentarily dissolved. It is something that anyone can experiment with.
But it is also clear that there are degrees of intensity in this. In Krishnamurti’s Notebook, for instance, he often describes these moments of spatiotemporal collapse as moments of complete dissolution (or total perception), where the distinction between the observer and the observed has completely ended:
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 (July 17th)
As we walked along the narrow grassy path through fields, the mountains, with their snow and colour, seemed so close and delicate, so utterly unreal. The goats were bleating to be milked. Quite unexpectedly, all this extravagant beauty, colour, the hills, this rich earth, this intense valley, all this was within one. It wasn’t within one, one’s own heart and brain were so completely open, without the barrier of time and space, so empty of thought and feeling, that there was only this beauty, without sound or form. It was there and everything else ceased to be. The immensity of this love, with beauty and death, was there filling the valley and one’s whole being which was that valley (September 2nd)
One can experiment with seeing, looking - but the expectation or hope that one will dissolve time-space in the way described here by Krishnamurti may become a block - no? One can only begin from where one is, however humble or simple that looking might be.
You know, I wonder if it isn’t a matter of reframing what is meant by choicelessness?
We may be taking choiceless awareness to be an action (something positive) that we can perform or fail at performing - something that depends on an anomalous capacity some people may have (and others don’t have), or on some miracle of perception.
But what if choiceless awareness is literally what the words mean? - that is, something wholly negative: an awareness in which we have absolutely no choice.
An example: one is sitting in a cinema watching a film, and some people in the next row open a bag of crisps (or chips) and proceed to eat them very noisily, with the smell of the fats and additives creating a stench!
As it is immediately presented to me, there is no choice in the situation. I might prefer that the people had not opened the bag of crisps, I might get irritated by the sound or smell, I might choose to move seats (if I can), or cover up my face with my collar. But the fact that the crisps are being eaten (with the sounds and smells that ensue) is simply a fact. I am aware of this fact whether I choose to be aware of it or not.
So, I am aware without choice.
What do you make of this?
Why, if I might ask, are you introducing the words ‘learning’ and ‘intelligence’? I don’t recall us having discussed it.
On the subject of learning, obviously you must know that Krishnamurti uses this word in a very different way from its conventional connotation - he means by it a learning in which there is no accumulation of what has been learnt, no theoretical horizon for observation, no analysis of what is being learned. In fact, ‘learning’ for Krishnamurti seems to be completely synonymous with observation, seeing.
However, going into this may take us off track.
Are we only talking at a theoretical level? Is awareness something theoretical?
Yes. I like to make side trips. Would you prefer I don’t? I’m happy either way.
Well we’re both pretty enamored of words, turning a good phrase, conceptual clarity. (Though we have very different styles.) That would argue for a joie de theory. What do you think?
That which the word awareness points to is imo real, though maybe not in the way we think.
It is sometimes unclear to me what your (often laconic) remarks imply?
You seem, on the one hand, to be saying that you accept that awareness is something concrete, non-theoretical (which was my question).
But in the second sentence you then leave the door open to something that requires further (theoretical?) exploration, but which you do not explain or unpack.
Probably we will never fully understand the source of awareness intellectually - how it relates to the architecture of the brain, whether it is wholly contingent on electro-chemical operations in our neurology, or whether it is grounded in some subtler energy of the body (or of physics) that scientists have yet to explain.
But for me theoretical speculation is only interesting up to a point. One has to live - existence precedes essence and all that - so my preference would be to remain with the most concrete and actual side of the equation, and deal (if at all possible) with what is. With one’s actual existence in the world - with the awareness that one actually has (not could have or should have), if you see what I mean?
To me too!
I guess I do that because I want the words to stand ‘on their own?’ If they happen to resonate with the reader, great, maybe we can talk about it. If not, oh well, maybe next time. Or, maybe I’m just trying to be mysterious? https://youtu.be/62Ty1JfdQuA?t=25
This approach makes good sense for a Krishnamurti forum. And I’m definitely prone to veer towards “what if” instead of “what is.” But in this case, when I say maybe awareness is not real in the way we think it is, I’m not exploring the awareness we could or should have, rather the one that actually is.
Is the total situation revealing itself? If not, why? If yes, to what?