The presenter began the session by citing Krishnamurti’s description of the layers of consciousness, with a first superficial level, below which is memory, under which is the will to become and, surrounding it all, a vast emptiness. The driving force is the will to become, which is an escape from the ocean of nothingness enveloping what is essentially a bubble of memory, thought, self and time. He suggested that the fear of nothingness may have its roots in the fact that thought can only deal with things and cannot grasp nothingness. This fear is focused on the psychological entity or self because the emptiness threatens its existence and continuity. So the whole investigation of self-knowledge at the core of K’s teachings concerns the understanding of this movement and the merging of consciousness with its original nothingness. K places the focus of conditioning in the self, which is the essence of fragmentation, conflict, and suffering. This conditioned identity is the product of tradition and the interconnection of thought and feeling, which is the content and movement of consciousness. A conditioned consciousness is dangerous because it relates to its own past, isolating it from the actuality and creating a division with what is. This conditioning is shared by all humanity, thus what unites us and should be our first priority in resolving our problems.

The presenter finished by sharing a curious aspect of the readings for this chapter, namely that the sense of nothingness results from comparing ourselves with others, creating a feeling of inferiority and self-pity. This that traps us in a vicious circle in which we are constantly running away from the false emptiness we ourselves create with our comparative measurements. Transformation therefore requires stopping this cycle and embracing what is. He quoted K saying that nothingness is not real, i.e. not a thing, but it is the truth. So living in truth may involve stepping outside reality, the field of thought, a rather challenging proposal for mankind.

In the discussion that followed, one of the participants had a list of questions. She began by asking whether we can ever see the truth, given that the movement of conditioned experience prevents it. In response, the presenter mentioned K’s statement that freedom is in the first step of our existence, i.e. in the now, which is beyond time and thought. He emphasized that perceiving the danger of thought or when thought reaches its limit and stops, the energy of silence breaks the momentum of the past and makes for insight, i.e. the perception of truth without a shadow of doubt. The second question concerned the possibility of awakening for people requiring a psychological centre or structure for existential security. Awakening means not being asleep, which humanity is on account of living in the past, the essence of which is the ‘me’. Awakening means becoming aware of and dissolving this self-identity. The third question concerned the nature of death as K understands it, which involves the ending of the illusory ‘me’, so it is at the heart of awakening. But if the self is illusory, what is it that dies? We are creatures of thought, of memory and time, of the past that overshadows our being. What dies is that structure of thought that runs our lives and in that dying we are reborn to being, which is in emptiness – not the fake emptiness of self-pity or self-denial but the actual one.   

It was commented that it is not only a question of thought but of the body, which as a living organism is naturally afraid of death. The question was raised about ‘intelligence’. It was explained that in the context of this inquiry it means reading between the lines, i.e. the truth or falseness of thinking and, still deeper, having an insight into the nature of thought itself.   

• Javier Gómez Rodríguez

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

In this first session of the six-part series on The Urgency of Change (1970), we took up the theme of ‘How to Live in this World’, which covered the chapter of that title and the related chapters ‘Conflict’, ‘The Individual and the Community’, ‘Suicide’ and ‘Order’.

How to live in this world is a question humanity has posed itself from the beginning. In inquiring into it, such key issues as conflict, individual versus society, order and the isolating nature of the self are involved. The topic of suicide might not seem to belong in this section, but K treats it as the act of despair to which the self-enclosing activity of the self can lead us and which signifies the ultimate meaninglessness of the way we live. For K this is not intelligent because intelligence involves seeing what is and acting immediately, the point being to live intelligently with love and sensitivity, which requires transcending the self and its time. Order is a natural aspect of this reflection, not a mechanical order but the dynamic, creative order of relationship, which is what both living and world are about.

This reflection involved a consideration of the sacredness of life and the importance of living in constant contact with ‘what is’. Being aware of ‘what is’ without distortion implies observing without the limitation of past experiences or preconceived notions, to see things afresh with eyes free from time. For K this was the way of order and relationship and suggested being choicelessly aware throughout the day and reviewing the day’s experiences objectively before going to sleep so there is deep rest and the renewal of the brain, so that on waking we do not begin with thought and pleasure, the known, but with the unknown of intelligence and love.

In the Q&A section we raised the question of life being sacred, not only human life but the life of animals. We considered that while from a scientific point of view life might be a random biological phenomenon, certain states of consciousness hint at a deeper, transcendent quality of being that could be considered sacred. This timeless dimension is life itself and involves the relation of the all with the all, which wholeness has the feeling of the sacred. We pointed out the importance of both mind and heart in understanding, acknowledging the difficulty of conveying it in words, as it has to be a living discovery rather than a concept.

The discussion then focused on the nature of order and identity. We contrasted the mechanical scientific order of the universe governed by necessity with the living order of relationship that requires freedom from the known. Our self-identifications and past experiences create divisions between individuals, preventing genuine connection, so K maintains that love and freedom come from emptying oneself of self-identity. K presents us with two divergent possibilities: to be nobody and live in joy or relate from the self and live in conflict and sorrow. This  involves being highly sensitive and intelligent, which relates to the state of unknowing.

The group then discussed the nature of self-awareness and intimacy, which led to the discovery that true inwardness involves the dissolution of the self. We explored further how awareness of ‘what is’ can lead to its dissolution, how undivided attention can transform potentially destructive psychological processes. We might explore this further when we meet again in two weeks, when we will be inquiring into the meaning of awareness, perception and learning.

• Javier Gómez Rodríguez

Saturday 6th December 2025

We began today’s session by asking: can there be a newness in life? Or are we condemned to a time and knowledge based existence; which implies an old mind. Can there be a new mind?

We began exchanging around various observations, without there being any particular unifying questioning happening. Apart from the usual exchanges  where thinking is being stimulated, were there any questions being asked that would stop us in our tracks as it were?

One participant asked how we would know if something were new? Another, whether newness was a feeling? Is newness a fact? Or is newness another state I strive for? Moving away from conjecture around what is new and not new; we asked whether a reaction of mild anxiety is left exposed or whether it is quickly turned into a state I recognise. Can I look at my mild anxiety as something I don’t know anything about?

Is there another kind of learning about this anxiety through the immediacy of a direct seeing? Can I learn through the anxiety unfolding and exposing its active presence? Nothing is being done, applied or memorised. Is this learning revelatory and not based of knowledge?

Is this learning new and does it generate newness?

Jackie McInley