What's (really) going on here/now?

Kinfonet Discussion
62

Why did K use the phrase “choiceless awareness”? It seems to me that awareness is as choiceless as breathing; that we can’t choose to be aware - we just are. So to modify “awareness” with “choiceless” would be to point out that one can choose to distort what one is aware of according to one’s presumptions, prejudices, and biases. I don’t see any other way to understand what K meant by “choiceless awareness” since there’s nothing one do about it but lose consciousness.

Nevertheless, the phrase is misleading because it implies that one can choose to be aware.

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I’m not sure you have yet explained what you mean by this?

But anyway, all I mean by awareness is really something quite basic and obvious. I don’t mean by that word ‘obvious’ something condescending - something that is only clear to me and not to others. I just mean that it is - for me - something that absolutely anyone can admit to or see without mistake, so long as they are not completely absorbed in their thoughts (which is the danger of communicating on these digital screens, through words).

The senses are always in operation (at least when we are awake), and to sense something is the most basic form of awareness.

The senses are not abstractions. One can analyse them through a scientific theory, and then the whole act of physiological perception becomes a complicated abstraction to be deciphered by yet more theory.

But to see a woodpecker pecking at the bird feeder, or the trees across from the window where I type, or the pale blue of the sky between the light clouds, or the face of a friend who calls by my house - none of this requires any special capacity unique to me or you. To see or smell or touch or taste or hear - which we do all day, everyday - is to be momentarily aware (through that particular sense).

So one can experiment with being aware with all the senses together; or at least to notice, to pause, to take in a particular sensory perception: to look at the tree or the bird for a second longer than is our habit - to explore, be curious about the world we take in through our senses. After all, this is our most basic contact with the world, with nature. We share this capacity (of sentience) with the whole animal kingdom. It is a deep part of what we organically are.

Then, inwardly, there is something also going on, which also requires our sensitivity to observe: the whole movement of the psyche - the thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions - which becomes evident when we are for a moment alone with ourselves, or when in relationship with another there is some response, some reaction.

To notice these inward reactions - even if only to react! - is a form of awareness too. And yet we rarely slow down enough to see or sense more deeply what is going on - to intensify that awareness (not though an act of will, but simply because there is more there to see - just as there is more to see of the bird, the sky, the tree or the friend, once our eyes are momentarily opened).

There can be shallows and depths in our awareness - we can stay at a very superficial level of superficial registration of the world around us (because we are busy, preoccupied, or anxious). But we can also find moments in this stream of daily action when the mind is relatively quiet, and the seeing of the world is more acute, more patient, more ‘loving’ (as it were). The colours, the sounds, the perceptions are clearer, richer, less ego-driven.

None of this is alien to us - except when we are trapped wholly in our thoughts and speculations.

One must come down to earth to live as an ordinary human being.

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Isn’t this exactly the point? We are always distorting what we are aware of - with our preferences, judgements, likes and dislikes - and so we never wholly see the thing that is there to be seen.

This as true outwardly as it is inwardly - our preferences, our aversions, our likes and dislikes, actively interfere with perception - and so we generally do not see things as they really are.

All that one can do is to be aware that we are doing this - and then perhaps the very noticing of it is enough to put aside (for a moment or two) the habit of preference, avoidance, etc.

That is, we are (I am) talking about what happens in terms of seconds and minutes, not hours and days! If there can be a second or a minute of observation, seeing - without the rush of opinions, preferences, likes and dislikes interfering - then choiceless awareness ceases to be an ideal, an abstraction, something that one has to reach for or choose.

Choiceless awareness, for me, is more like a state than an action. It is a mode of being, a way of being aware, that already exists as a capacity - just like the deeper, quieter parts of a river already exist in the river.

One’s awareness of the world around and within is not static. There are moments in the stream (the river!) of daily life - maybe when on holiday, at the beach, or on a quiet summer night - when the thought-stream is less active, and there is a kind of abeyance of thought. You must have experienced this. These moments may not be frequent, but they can happen at any time - when one is on a train looking out the window, or doing a very practical (but not too laborious) chore, or playing tennis casually with friends and noticing the blueness of the sky, etc… And these are the opportunities to experiment, play with awareness.

In these moments - few and far as they may be - it is my experience (and a common enough experience it is too! I am not claiming any kind of genius in these matters) that a ‘deeper’ intensification of awareness can and does take place - when the mind is choicelessly observing the outside world and the inside world, like a very intelligent, alert child (if you have nephews and nieces you will know what I mean).

This is not an impossible, metaphysical state of affairs. It happens! - Which is not to say that there aren’t degrees of intensification in this awareness… Which is probably why Krishnamurti sometimes broke up (or not ‘broke up’ exactly, because they are a continuum; perhaps just indicated) these different qualities of awareness, by using different words - such as superficial awareness, awareness, awareness without choice, attention, attention without a centre, absolute attention, insight, etc.

But to play in the river one must first dive in. And one cannot do that by simply remaining at the level of intellectual description or analysis - right?

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I see awareness in a two truths kind of way. Conventionally, awareness is the seeing, hearing, feeling, knowing of phenomena. (By knowing I mean something like ‘seeing with the mind.’) Ultimately, awareness is the (infinite, timeless?) field in which everything arises and from which everything (including me) is made.

Mostly I don’t think about awareness, because it tends to short circuit my brain, which passionately desires to ‘figure it out.’

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Ah, finally! - Ok, I have sense of where you’re coming from.

I have no objection to the theory as such; but if the theory becomes more important than the living - if the essence is more primary than the existent - then…

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Depends on what you mean by “dive in”. I don’t feel I have any choice but to remain “at the level of intellectual description” because I don’t know what it means to dive in. Must one choose to dive in or is it spontaneous? Have you dived in?

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C’mon Inquiry (!) - you must sometimes have noticed a gap in the stream of your thinking? I’m not talking about something extra-terrestrial or outrageous… Just a moment, a second, 10 seconds, when you were more aware of the colour of the flower, the shimmer of the sea, the sough of the trees, the sky through the branches, than of your thoughts and preoccupations.

Hasn’t this happened to you? Have you never been on holiday? Of course you have - I’m certain that you have had moments like this.

‘Diving in’ can mean simply exploring these moments, enquiring in to these moments, when they arise - seeing if one can extend ‘the gap’ in one’s stream of thinking.

‘Diving in’ can also just mean staying with a reaction when its occurs - a reaction such as hurt, or annoyance, frustration, boredom.

There is no one unique or special place to ‘dive in’, because we are already ‘in’ the stream of daily consciousness (if you see what I mean). So all one can do really is to be aware that we are not aware of this daily living - and then see if that awareness deepens by itself or not.

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Then what?

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Well - then it just remains a (deep, interesting, insightful or speculative) theory.

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Of course, but I wouldn’t call that “diving in”, which involves going from being earthbound to being waterborne, and what you’re describing is nothing so dramatic or unusual. One does it without giving it any thought.

We know we’re not completely present because we’re compromised by desire and design, conflicted by the compulsion to carry on and the need to cease and desist. We’re stumbling through life, hoping something conclusive will occur.

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Did I make the claim that daily awareness is something dramatic and unusual?

Moments of mental subsidence are not unusual - even if (because of the busyness of our lives, or because of our conditioning to intellectuality) they can sometimes be infrequent.

Reactions like boredom, hurt, or comparison with others (envy, frustration, longing) - these are not dramatic or unusual. But we rarely stay with these reactions, experimentally - so as to explore how they feel, what they taste like, whether we are actually separate from them.

‘Diving in’ is just a metaphor. We are simply talking about waking up to the life one actually has - paying a bit more attention to it.

If the language of choice and choicelessness makes no sense to you, then drop it. No one is forcing you to feel (or see) something that you don’t feel (or see).

And if you don’t feel interested in your own reactions, or in the moments of mental quietude in nature (when they appear), then why not just be aware of that lack of interest? Or don’t be. - I mean, no-one can force us to do anything we don’t feel like doing.

Except maybe great suffering? And perhaps that’s when most of us (myself included) begin to wake up to the life we have.

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No. You advocated diving in, and I found that to be dramatic compared to your explanation of what you meant by it.

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Yes, I advocated the metaphorical significance of ‘diving in’ to the daily life we have…

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My problem with Krishnamurti is the language he used to “set man free”. He felt that he failed at his lifelong attempt to talk us out of our egocentricity and dishonesty, and I think it was because it may be something one can’t talk about. It may be that using everyday language to describe what’s beyond words and imagery is futile.

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You’re probably right. But how are we to communicate without using words (at least on a forum like this)?

Krishnamurti attempted - as far as I can see - to use words as accurately and carefully as he could to point out the things beyond words. He changed or updated his language from decade to decade, sometimes even from week to week!, to reach different people, different audiences, at different times and different places.

Maybe it is just a matter of finding the words from the right decade for you…? (it sounds a bit silly, but maybe?!). Or just throw K out and try something else?

Essentially, however - for me - the main issue, the ‘real thing’ we struggle with, is captured in a saying of K’s (though it could have been said by anyone):

to go far, you must begin very near

Because the very near is perhaps boring, uncomfortable, without clear parameters or boundaries. At least our thoughts and ideas have a certain clarity, a definite border to place them by.

But the real nonverbal daily **** - who wants to make time, space to look at that? Daily life - by which I mean the reactions, sensations, perceptions, feelings, moods, relationships, etc - has no secure borders. It’s messy. And yet that messiness is what is most near (and we can’t go far without beginning near, right?).

So I think that’s the main block.

77

Sounds like my “It’s all just stories” schtick.

78

Hello again James. Thanks for posting those fascinating excerpts where Krishnamurti describes, as you put it, “when the time-space between the observer and the observed disappears”.

The story about Aldous Huxley and LSD illustrates how taking certain drugs can seemingly allow one to experience a state where there is no space between the “me” and another living thing. K points out the serious potential problems associated with taking drugs to experience this state. Without taking drugs, I think we all probably have had experiences where we have felt a particular closeness to other living things, where there is some sort of melting away of division or separateness (to some extent, at least). K encouraged us to experiment with a natural way of looking at a tree, a flower or the face of a person. But are we blocked because we hope that looking in the way that K described will result in time/space dissolving? All I can say is that this type of looking appears to be something that is certainly worth exploring. As you say James, “One can only begin from where one is, however humble or simple that looking might be.” I wonder if the beginning is the stumbling block, rather than the hope of achieving something.

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79

Yes. As K said, “the act of seeing is the only truth; there is nothing else”.

Yet simply trying something we have not tried before, taking a first step, is the most difficult part of any journey. Just to make a start, a beginning, requires a bit of courage, free-spiritedness, that no-one outside ourselves can provide.

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80

Krishnamurti never did anything that he didn’t love to do therefore never regretted what he did. So please don’t falsely advocate that K felt that he failed . This forum can be read by any person without being a member so please be factual when you talk about K.

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You don’t know whether he felt regret or not. You’re making an assumption, as usual.