Meditative Self-Inquiry with Mukesh Gupta, June 11, 2026

We met at the Gorge Park Pavilion. Mukesh gave a talk titled “The observer is the observed”, which, together with the following talks in this series, is available on our YouTube channel, and the Q&A session followed:

Q: There’s a joy in naming. Can I do that while also looking without naming?

A: We cannot deny the brain its job of naming; just don’t stay with the name / on the level of knowledge. Go beyond it or I am denying myself the experiencing of that present moment.

Q: How to relate to others? Whether they are aware of this deeper possibility or not?

A: If I am relating to you with an open heart then that affects others. I am emanating a different kind of vibration. But how they receive it is not determined by me. I see that this is the most beautiful way to be without making it into an ideal. Ideal means choice which means the observer has come who wants to be good.

Mukesh wanted to add something to his talk:

The whole reason Krishnamurti emphasized the observer/observed is to remove the conflict because energy is wasted in conflict. The experiencing has its own living and dying process. What do I have to do with it? All energy has to change. When I come in conflict with what is then I delay the transformation. It’s like we’re fighting with the truth. We waste a lot of energy.

Each time the entity [‘me’/the separate self] comes you can just see it as a reaction to the thought process. The separate self can come in a subtle form which means our observation has to be subtler.

K has used “observer” to mean the conditioned entity / ego — because there’s no entity in this,

whereas in Vedanta, ancient traditions etc. use it as pure observation / witness / unconditioned consciousness.

The source of the observation is not in the past, not in thought, not in the field of knowledge; it’s in the now. It doesn’t depend on my past accumulation. This is the awakening, awakening of pure observation, of pure love, observed with the totality of your being. And then it can be dissolved. ‘I’ don’t want it to be dissolved, it dissolves by itself.

If I have an idea of enlightenment then it’s just a part of the thought process. Is enlightenment a one-time happening or moment to moment? Then the moment is gone; I cannot hold onto it. I cannot make it happen, it is a happening. K: “When you are not there, the other is.” The other is the unknown. The problem is, I want to hold on to myself while having the other.

“On the path of love only one can walk” (Kabir) so the other has to die. There is not a separate entity that is “ego” and it can be problematic to believe in a separate “ego” until it is observed and seen.

Thought and desire work together —thought has no power without desire. Everything has its right place. Meditation is the process of putting things in their right place. How can I find this light, the living teacher inside us, our guide.

 

• Kathryn Jefferies