Your consciousness is the consciousness of all humanity

Kinfonet Discussion
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Perhaps the number one factor that Krishnamurti emphasised towards the end of his life especially, was that our consciousness is not separate from the consciousness of the entire human consciousness. He felt that we are not, in essence, individuals, but that we are each one of us representatives of the whole of mankind, and that our consciousness is not ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ but human consciousness. This means that when we suffer or enjoy it is not our personal suffering or enjoyment, but the sorrow and joy of a human being, of humanity as a whole.

This means that our responsibility is not just for ourselves as individuals, but for all human beings, for humanity as a whole. This is something to be understood, perceived, not merely acted upon as a duty or willed into being. It involves having a global perception of what our consciousness is.

Krishnamurti said that to have this perception of the whole - the feeling in one’s blood that one is not an individual but the entire humanity, that one represents the whole of human consciousness - is itself transformative.

He also said that if one can have an insight that transforms one’s consciousness, that ends suffering, that empties consciousness of its content, such an insight contributes something infinitely precious to global human consciousness.

And that, conversely, if we do not end our suffering through insight, if we do not empty our consciousness, then we are helping to continue the stream of content of consciousness - with its pain, suffering, conflict, despair, etc - in the world. To die to this content of consciousness is to bring about a totally new beginning, a new dimension of consciousness.

I am attaching several short(ish) videos that outline this topic:

(48 secs)

(1 min, 30 secs)

(10 mins, 10 secs) This video addresses the fact that the crisis in the world is a crisis in consciousness, and that this crisis in consciousness is a global crisis, not local to ourselves as individuals:

(5 mins, 21 secs) This video suggests that by bringing about a transformation in our consciousness we contribute something significant to human consciousness as a whole:

(1 min, 47 secs)

(4 mins, 42 secs) This video looks at how if an individual who lives within the stream of human consciousness can investigate their own suffering clearly, without escaping from it, they can have an insight which is not of the stream:

(5 mins, 54 secs) What is death in relation to this fact of common consciousness (which Krishnamurti says we are)? - “Where there is an ending, there is a totally different beginning”:

Krishnamurti also said that the realisation or perception that one is not separate from the rest of humanity is already a revolution (60 second clip):

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Is the consciousness of Putin also included? or he is not human being?Why is chaos in this world? or 3% we are consciousness and rest ----.We do not use more than 10 % of Brain.

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In the 5th video excerpt above (“The salvation of all humanity”), Krishnamurti says:

So the question is: if you change fundamentally, you affect the whole consciousness of man. Napoleon affected the whole consciousness of Europe. Stalin affected the whole consciousness of Russia, and human beings all over the world like the Christian saviour, he has affected the consciousness of the world, and the Hindus with their peculiar gods have affected the consciousness of the world. So, when you as a human being radically transform psychologically, that is, be free of fear, have right relationship with each other, the ending of sorrow, and so on, which is radical transformation - which we shall go into presently - then you affect the whole consciousness of man. So it is not an individual affair. It is not a selfish affair. It is not individual salvation. It is the salvation of all human beings of which you are.

So yes, Putin is part of the consciousness of humanity. He is clearly affecting human consciousness with his imperialist nationalism, with his personal egotism which affects the whole of Russian society, Europe and America. But the Buddha has also affected human consciousness. So my understanding of Krishnamurti is that he is saying human consciousness is the responsibility of each person, and any change we make in ourselves can and will affect the whole (in small or large ways - though this isn’t made explicitly clear in what K says in the video).

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What is death in relation to this fact of common consciousness (which Krishnamurti says we are) ? - “Where there is an ending, there is a totally different beginning” (I have now added this to the introductory post):

(5 mins, 54 secs)

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Krishnamurti also said that the realisation or perception that one is not separate from the rest of humanity is already a revolution (also added to the introductory post):

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Putin is not suffering. How one can kill Children?Accoding to me his action is fully unconsciousness?
A murder says perhaps 20 or more persons I have killed.The world is full of such persons.There is difference between theory ind practice. I appreciate K but the World is not going to change.

Krishnamurti on The Unconscious

Urgency of Change: The Krishnamurti Podcast

Episode 214

‘How is the unconscious to be exposed, without effort, without analysis, without the conscious mind which cannot examine it?’

This week’s episode on The Unconscious has four sections.

The first extract (2:43) is from Krishnamurti’s fifth talk in London 1962, titled: Understanding the Unconscious.

The second extract (22:42) is from the fifth talk in Saanen 1974, titled: Unconscious Hurts.

The third extract (34:48) is from Krishnamurti’s second talk at Brockwood Park in 1972, titled: Ending Unconscious Fears.

The final extract in this episode (58:19) is from the third talk in New York 1974, titled: Awareness of the Unconscious.

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I don’t think you have understood what Krishnamurti is saying Shankar. By using the word ‘consciousness’ K is not talking about the unconscious as something separate from consciousness.

K is using the word consciousness in an inclusive way: all thought, all feeling, all experiencing, both conscious as well as unconscious.

Furthermore, K is saying that all human beings share the same or similar contents of consciousness: we all (including Putin) think, feel, enjoy, suffer, get anxious, feel lonely, seek pleasure, get upset, feel irritated, get bored, etc. All of this is part of consciousness.

This doesn’t excuse Putin’s actions. It doesn’t mean that the actions of a murderer are correct. I’m not sure why you have interpreted what K said to mean this?

Are you asking what relationship one’s consciousness has to the consciousness of Putin? - how are we responsible for the murderous actions of Putin? - why, if I suffer, Putin does not seem to suffer, etc?

It would probably take some discussion to bring this out, but, from what you write I’m not sure that you are open to investigating it further?

If this is your conclusion, that’s ok. We do not need to say any more about it.

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Please write further. I am now about 82 and following K since years and see there no chane in this world. Thanks.

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I’m not sure what the question is? I shared the videos because I feel they contain interesting and useful content. Was there anything in the videos, or in the introductory post, with which you felt some connection, or towards which you feel you reacted strongly?

What is your chief interest with respect to the videos I shared, or the introductory post?

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Well, the same as Hamas kills children, Netanyahu kills children, Zelensky kills children, the president of the United States kills children, and anyone else who thinks that he is in possession of truth and that the death of children and innocent people is necessary for that truth to prevail.

But I think K was not talking about this, but about a deep personal change capable of producing a change (or not) in the people around you. So, before asking ourselves questions about others, shouldn’t we first ask ourselves, very seriously, what about our own change?

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you are right. Just observe till my “I” is observed.Sometime is some confusion or irritation.

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Hi Juan,

By reading your post suddenly the working of the atomiv bomb came along.

Nuclear fission creates less energy than nuclear fusion. Moreover, nuclear fusion is more manageable.

If this were a metaphor for how consciousness works, an individual contribution to the whole will be more effective than an individual contribution to split the whole.

And therein lies our task of contributing to the whole.

I realise it’s a crazy idea and at the same time it’s enlightening somewhat, don’t you think?

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Can it be proven scientifically that we share a consciousness or must it be a matter of belief or faith? A theory? That we DON’T share is the usual way of thinking about this; that each one of us IS an ‘individual’.

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Yes. This is a question I have often asked myself.

I can see that the contents of consciousness - fear, pleasure, suffering, hurt, etc - are shared by all human beings. But I see that they are shared in the sense that all human beings are similar. That is, it seems obvious to me that the inner life of all human beings is basically similar. Everyone goes through periods of feeling lonely, anxious, depressed, elated, bored, happy, unhappy, etc.

But this seeing or feeling that the contents of consciousness are shared, similar, is still an extrinsic observation. It is not a perception that sees human consciousness as essentially one, as essentially the same consciousness.

So it seems to me that the seeing of the oneness or the sameness of human consciousness - as distinct from the extrinsic observation that the contents of human consciousness are similar, broadly shared contents - requires a meditative perception or insight.

One can logically and through observation see that human beings share similar contents of experience. But to see that human consciousness is one inseparable whole I feel requires something that goes beyond ordinary logic or ordinary extrinsic observation.

Whether science will ever be able to prove the fact of shared consciousness is a secondary matter, because even if it does prove it, this will still only be a proof at the level of thought and idea (or a mixture of observation and theory).

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That is how I see it as well. Similar rather than identical. I can see we are all products of society and that as K sensibly points out “what I am in my relationship to another creates society”. What is not evident is how the radical transformation of a single individual is equivalent to the radical transformation of the whole of society, which K also alludes to at times. The transformed consciousnesses of Krishnamurti, Buddha and Jesus (assuming the latter two were real people) did not effect a total transformation of all human consciousness.

The following excerpt is more down to earth, saying to me that a single individual can perhaps have an outsized effect on the society at large, negatively like Hitler or positively like Einstein for example, but an outsized effect is different than a total reworking.

K: When we look to a system for the transformation of society, we are merely evading the question, because a system cannot transform man; man always transforms the system, which history shows.

The First and Last Freedom

So I agree if human individual consciousness is indeed identical to the whole of human consciousness, it would require some extraordinary insight to bring that comprehension into being.

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Yes. There are two distinct questions here:

  1. Is the consciousness that I take to be ‘my’ consciousness actually part of one, inseparable consciousness of mankind?

  2. Will a radical transformation in ‘my’ consciousness intrinsically - as opposed to outwardly or superficially, sociologically - affect human consciousness as a whole?

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When it was understood that what the eyes were seeing was illusory and not the truth i.e the sun revolving around the earth, the brain made that adjustment…similarly, viewing a distant object as one neared it, the object seeming to grow larger was an illusion that could be proven to be false. Perhaps a similar sort of thing is happening here, that there is missing this information (insight) that we are in a “reservoir” of ‘living’ things which only appear to be divided and are not. That the appearance of division in the world and us included is what K discovered and was bound to point out. We believe our eyes until we don’t?

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This point I think is unknown. On the one hand there is the obvious empirical fact that past human transformations have not ended war, or ended human suffering and conflict. This is an unavoidable fact.

However, on the other hand we also cannot rule out what these transformations may have added or contributed to human consciousness which wouldn’t have existed without them - it may be, for example, that they added a potential for insight, love, Intelligence.

Clearly the Buddha’s transformation didn’t end the suffering of all human beings. But the way that K talked about the effect of transformation (the Buddha’s or anyone else’s) leaves open the door that some essential dimension or ingredient is added when a transformation takes place. In one of the videos above he talks about something “incalculable” being added to human consciousness (when a person undergoes complete transformation), suggesting that transformation helps to open up another dimension of consciousness to the human brain.

There’s a Christian hymn which talks about how Jesus’ life “opened the life-gate that all may go in”. There are similar notions in Buddhism about how the life of a a Buddha or Bodhisattva makes access to a higher dimension of awakened consciousness possible (or more possible) for ordinary human beings. But clearly these notions lie in the realm of speculation.

So the fact is that unless we have been transformed ourselves we may never be able to know for sure what effect transformation has on human consciousness.

But the critical question is whether this transformation is possible. Because of one is society, if one’s consciousness is inseparable from human consciousness as a whole, then there must inevitably be an affect on the wider human consciousness. This is just mathematical logic.

So the two important questions for me are not what affect such a transformation will have, but:

  1. Is such a transformation possible?

  2. Is ‘my’ consciousness really and truly inseparable from human consciousness as a whole?

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Effect of Krishnamurti on this world is only as example, pointer or possibility.

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If we strip away, even if only for a moment, the labels and descriptions of form and function of all the ‘things’ around us,
the view of Nature undergoes an enormous change…the interactions among the ‘things’ stripped of all sentimentality, all anthropomorphism etc becomes a cohesive ‘mechanism’ of sorts. Or a ‘system of exchanges’? Of which human brains and bodies are a part. Seamless, no division but which our eyes can’t see? At this point we see ‘individuality’ everywhere.

K said we are not a “thing”.