5. OBSERVER AND THE OBSERVED

Continuing on the summarizing through excerpts from “Talks and Dialogues” JD Krishnamurti.

We are serious about things which give us pleasure and satisfaction. But very few are serious in seeing the whole problem of existence, conflicts and suffering. To be serious about these issues means continual attention to these matters, not just sporadic interest, according to our requirement or convenience. If we are not serious about these issues, then we fritter away our life discussing endlessly things that really don’t matter, which is a waste of energy. The more one is serious inwardly, the more they are mature. Maturity is not a matter of age, or great experiences, or knowledge. This maturity comes only when there is wider and deeper knowing of oneself.

As discussed in the previous posts, in order to resolve fear, we have to look at fear completely, without any fragmentation. We are so afraid of so many things, and we may wish that we could solve each fear by itself, one by one. But that is immature, because there is only fear. But can we look at fear? Most of us run away from it or suppress it or control it or look at other forms of escape. We do not know how to live with the fear. Can we look at it without looking for escape, justification or suppression?

So what does this looking mean? I can only look at fear without doing anything to that fear, when I have a quite mind, when my mind is not chattering to itself, carrying a dialogue with itself. Only then can we look at fear completely. One can observe a tree or cloud with a fairly quite mind because it is something not very important to us. But when we have to look at fear, despair, when we are directly in contact with loneliness, with jealousy, with such ugly state of mind, can we still do it?

It is only with a quite mind, we can look at fear completely, observe it, know and understand it, its movement, everything. This is what JD means by living with fear. Have we every tried living with something or someone like that? Observing everything. It is possible only when our mind is free from all opinions, judgements and values, conclusions or formula. For that the mind needs to be so alive and subtle.

So once we observe fear and live with it, we will ask – who is that entity who is living with the fear. Who is observing? Is it a dead entity ? (a static being who has accumulated a lot of knowledge and information about himself, but all this experience and knowledge is the past, and the past is a dead thing) Is the observer a static dead past or a living thing? Are we a dead thing watching a living thing (fear) or a living thing watching a living thing? In the observer the two states exists – when we observe a tree closely, everything about the tree, how it lives, moves, feels – it is a living thing. But when we look at it with accumulated knowledge about that tree, and the knowledge is a dead thing. But when we look at it without any accumulated knowledge, then we (a living thing) is looking at a living thing (the tree).

Another example – When I look at my friend, am I observing with the memories of yesterday? Are you aware that yesterday is contaminating the present? OR are you observing as though there was no yesterday at all? The past is always overshadowing the present. The pleasures, flatteries, insults, memories of yesterday touches the present and give it a twist. The observer is both the past and the present. Anything of past is already dead. So the observer is both alive and dead and this is how he looks.

When the observer can go beyond, so that he is neither the past nor the present. Then the observer is the observed which is a living thing. This is real meditation. It is because the observer lives in the past and the present which is touched by the past, that there is division between the observer and the observed.

Observer being the observed doesn’t mean identification with the observed. For example, a painter could sit in front of a tree for days, months or years, until he was the tree. He did not actually become the tree, or identified with it, but he was the tree. There was no space between the painter and the tree, no space between the observer and observed. He was totally the tree, and only in that state could he paint. If we can understand this, we would forever be free from fear and only then we will know what love is.

We must understand the observer and not the observed, because it is of little value. Fear itself is of little value. What is of value is how we look at it, what we do or do not do with fear. As we watch the observer, which is ourself, we see that we are made of the past. Memories, hopes, guilt, knowledge are all of the past. When we say ‘we know’ it means what we knew yesterday, not right now. We are the past, living in the present which is overshadowed by the past.

When the state of mind is such, the observer has no space between himself and the thing observed, in which the past is no longer interfering at any time, only then the observer is the observed, and only then that fear comes totally to an end.

As long as there is fear, there is no love. What is love? Sex, belonging to somebody, being nourished? But in these there is always anxiety, fear, jealousy, guilt. There is so much conflict, there cannot be love. Love has nothing to do with pleasure or desire. Pleasure goes with fear, and a mind which lives in fear seeks pleasure. Pleasure increases fear, so one is caught in a vicious circle. By being aware of the circle, by watching it, living with it, never trying to find a way out of it (the cycle is broken not because you are doing something about it), you will break that cycle.