Online series The Urgency of Change with Javier Gómez Rodríguez, January 18, 2026
In this second session of the six-part series on The Urgency of Change (1970), we took up the theme of ‘Awareness’, which covered the chapter of that title and the related chapters ‘Perception’, ‘Seeing the Whole’, ‘Discipline’ and ‘Learning’.
The presentation explored Krishnamurti’s teachings about awareness, perception, discipline and learning. Beginning at the superficial sensory outer level, awareness was described as having great potential depth. In perception and awareness new information gets filtered through existing preferences and reactions, which can fragment and obfuscate perception. The perception of these reactions constitutes a second inner level of awareness. Seeing both sensation and thought as one movement without judgment was a third level and a fourth involved the awareness of time as the essence of the observer. The observation of thought without interference was part of the meaning of choiceless awareness, which K saw as the first step on the journey of self-knowledge. Choiceless awareness, looking at oneself directly and factually is a first step in the dissolution of contradiction and duality. For this we need to drop the ideal of what we should be and the cultural emphasis on becoming. This is all part of what K called the art of living, which includes the arts of seeing, listening, questioning and learning. Discipline for K is synonymous with learning (that is its etymological meaning), which requires freedom from conditioning. So learning, discipline and freedom go together. While in the technical field we accumulate knowledge from experience, we don’t seem to learn equally from the experience of war, nationalism and social injustice. It was suggested that relationship requires a quality of learning and perception not based on past experience but on sensitivity.
In the Q&A session, we raised the issue of what it might mean to see the whole. K had indicated that focusing on a single aspect, such as anger, was a form of concentration, which prevented seeing it totally. To resolve psychological issues, they must be perceived as a whole because they do not exist in isolation but are the outcome of a broad network of psychological issues. When he refers to seeing the whole of something like anger, K may be talking about perceiving the root of all psychological problems, which is the dualistic process of the self. While some issues might be resolved on their own, ending all division, conflict and aggressiveness requires a deeper insight. K maintained that all psychological problems are the result of inattention, so when attention is brought to bear on them, the problems disappear. Such attention is the key to learning in relationship, i.e. without the concentrated accumulation or application of knowledge. It was suggested that life requires total presence to meet its inherent danger and that the perception of danger makes for complete action. Life is new from moment to moment, which challenges our notions of causal order in which we have invested our security. As the psyche thrives on continuity, the changeability and discontinuity of life can lead to a crisis.
The group ended up touching on the meaning in life. The question arose as to what is the need to seek life’s meaning, when life simply exists? It was suggested that since meaning is contextual, the significance of the particular lies in its relationship to the totality. The presenter added that meaning is inherent to consciousness and cannot be avoided, as it is tied to our relationships and the broader context of life. Without that broader, total ground of relationship with the whole, we lack the basis to know whether what we stand on and for has any meaning.
- Javier Gómez Rodríguez
