11 February, 2007

OBSERVER OR THE OBSERVED?


JKrishnamurti.org - Daily Quote ===

If you can look . . . without the observer, a totally different action takes place.

Questioner: If we are all that background, the past, who is the observer who is looking at the past? How do we separate the past and the entity who says, “I am looking at it”?

Krishnamurti: Who is the entity, the observer that is looking at the past? Who is the entity, the thought, the being—whatever you call it—who says, “I am looking at the unconscious”?

There is a separation between the observer and the observed. Is that so? Is not the observer the observed? Therefore, there is no separation at all! Go slowly into this. If you could understand this one thing it would be the most extraordinary phenomenon that could take place. Do you understand the question? There is the unconscious as well as the conscious, and I say that I must know all about it; I must know the content and also the state of consciousness when there is no content, which is a step further, which we will go into if we have time.

I am looking at it. I say, the observer says, that the unconscious is the past; the unconscious is the race into which I was born, the tradition—not only the tradition of society but of the family, the name, the residue of the whole Indian culture, the residue of all of humanity with all its problems, anxieties, guilt, and so on. I am all that, and that is the unconscious, which is the result of time, of many thousands of yesterdays, and there is the ‘me’ who is observing it. Now, who is the observer? Again, find out for yourself; discover who the observer is! Don’t wait for me to tell you!

Collected Works, Vol. XVI - 199


Peace
Tara

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