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How
is one to be aware? How are we aware of anything? How
are you aware of your relationship with a person? How
are you aware of the trees, the call of a bird? How are
you aware of your reactions when you read a newspaper?
Are we aware of the superficial responses of the mind,
as well as the inner responses? How are we aware of
anything? First we are aware, are we not?, of a response
to a stimulus, which is an obvious fact; I see the
trees, and there is a response, then sensation, contact,
identification and desire.
That is the ordinary process, isn't it? We can observe
what actually takes place, without studying any books.
So through identification you have pleasure and pain.
And our `capacity' is this concern with pleasure and the
avoidance of pain, is it not? If you are interested in
something, if it gives you pleasure, there is `capacity'
immediately; there is an awareness of that fact
immediately; and if it is painful the `capacity' is
developed to avoid it. So long as we are looking to
`capacity' to understand ourselves, I think we shall
fail; because the understanding of ourselves does not
depend on capacity.
It is not a technique that you develop, cultivate and
increase through time, through constantly sharpening.
This awareness of oneself can be tested, surely, in the
action of relationship; it can be tested in the way we
talk, the way we behave. Watch yourself without any
identification, without any comparison, without any
condemnation; just watch, and you will see an
extraordinary thing taking place. You not only put an
end to an activity which is unconscious - because most
of our activities are unconscious - you not only bring
that to an end, but, further, you are aware of the
motives of that action, without inqui1y, without digging
into it.
When you are aware, you see the whole process of your
thinking and action; but it can happen only when there
is no condemnation. When I condemn something, I do not
understand it, and it is one way of avoiding any kind of
understanding. I think most of us do that purposely; we
condemn immediately and we think we have understood. If
we do not condemn but regard it, are aware of it, then
the content, the significance of that action begins to
open up. Experiment with this and you will see for
yourself. Just be aware - without any sense of
justification - which may appear rather negative but is
not negative. On the contrary, it has the quality of
passivity which is direct action; and you will discover
this, if you experiment with it.
After all, if you want to understand something, you have
to be in a passive mood, do you not? You cannot keep on
thinking about it, speculating about it or questioning
it. You have to be sensitive enough to receive the
content of it. It is like being a sensitive photographic
plate. If I want to understand you, I have to be
passively aware; then you begin to tell me all your
story.
Surely that is not a question of capacity or
specialization. In that process we begin to understand
ourselves - not only the superficial layers of our
consciousness, but the deeper, which is much more
important; because there are all our motives and
intentions, our hidden, confused demands, anxieties,
fears, appetites. Outwardly we may have them all under
control but inwardly they are boiling. Until those have
been completely understood through awareness, obviously
there cannot be freedom, there cannot be happiness,
there is no intelligence.
Is intelligence a matter of specialization? -
intelligence being the total awareness of our process.
And is that intelligence to be cultivated through any
form of specialization? Because that is what is
happening, is it not? The priest, the doctor, the
engineer, the industrialist, the business man, the
professor - we have the mentality of all that
specialization. To realize the highest form of
intelligence - which is truth, which is God, which
cannot be described - to realize that, we think we have
to make ourselves specialists. We study, we grope, we
search out; and, with the mentality of the specialist or
looking to the specialist, we study ourselves in order
to develop a capacity which will help to unravel our
conflicts, our miseries.
Our problem is, if we are at all aware, whether the
conflicts and the miseries and the sorrows of our daily
existence can be solved by another; and if they cannot,
how is it possible for us to tackle them? To understand
a problem obviously requires a certain intelligence, and
that intelligence cannot be derived from or cultivated
through specialization. It comes into being only when we
are passively aware of the whole process of our
consciousness, which is to be aware of ourselves without
choice, without choosing what is right and what is
wrong.
When you are passively aware, you will see that out of
that passivity - which is not idleness, which is not
sleep, but extreme alertness - the problem has quite a
different significance; which means there is no longer
identification with the problem and therefore there is
no judgement and hence the problem begins to reveal its
content. If you are able to do that constantly,
continuously, then every problem can be solved
fundamentally, not superficially.
That is the difficulty, because most of us are incapable
of being passively aware, letting the problem tell the
story without our interpreting it. We do not know how to
look at a problem dispassionately. We are not capable of
it, unfortunately, because we want a result from the
problem, we want an answer, we are looking to an end; or
we try to translate the problem according to our
pleasure or pain; or we have an answer already on how to
deal with the problem. Therefore we approach a problem,
which is always new, with the old pattern.
The challenge is always the new, but our response is
always the old; and our difficulty is to meet the
challenge adequately, that is fully. The problem is
always a problem of relationship - with things, with
people or with ideas; there is no other problem; and to
meet the problem of relationship, with its constantly
varying demands - to meet it rightly, to meet it
adequately - one has to be aware passively. This
passivity is not a question of determination, of will,
of discipline; to be aware that we are not passive is
the beginning.
To be aware that we want a particular answer to a
particular problem - surely that is the beginning: to
know ourselves in relationship to the problem and how we
deal with the problem. Then as we begin to know
ourselves in relationship to the problem - how we
respond, what are our various prejudices, demands,
pursuits, in meeting that problem - this awareness will
reveal the process of our own thinking, of our own
inward nature; and in that there is a release.
What is important, surely, is to be aware without
choice, because choice brings about conflict. The
chooser is in confusion, therefore he chooses; if he is
not in confusion, there is no choice. Only the person
who is confused chooses what he shall do or shall not
do. The man who is clear and simple does not choose;
what is, is. Action based on an idea is obviously the
action of choice and such action is not liberating; on
the contrary, it only creates further resistance,
further conflict, according to that conditioned
thinking.
The important thing, therefore, is to be aware from
moment to moment without accumulating the experience
which awareness brings; because, the moment you
accumulate, you are aware only according to that
accumulation, according to that pattern, according to
that experience. That is your awareness is conditioned
by your accumulation and therefore there is no longer
observation but merely translation. Where there is
translation, there is choice, and choice creates
conflict; in conflict there can be no understanding.
Life is a matter of relationship; and to understand that
relationship, which is not static, there must be an
awareness which is pliable, an awareness which is
alertly passive, not aggressively active. As I said,
this passive awareness does not come through any form of
discipline, through any practice. It is to be just
aware, from moment to moment, of our thinking and
feeling, not only when we are awake; for we shall see,
as we go into it more deeply, that we begin to dream,
that we begin to throw up all kinds of symbols which we
translate as dreams.
Thus we open the door into the hidden, which becomes the
known; but to find the unknown, we must go beyond the
door - surely, that is our difficulty. Reality is not a
thing which is knowable by the mind, because the mind is
the result of the known, of the past; therefore the mind
must understand itself and its functioning, its truth,
and only then is it possible for the unknown to be.
Source: from book "he First and Last Freedom " by
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Related Article:
Witnessing is a Knack by Osho
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