This week’s text for study was from The First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti, Q & A # 27, “On Naming.” We had finished half way through the chapter in our previous meeting. The focus is on the process of naming a feeling or an emotion and thereby reducing it to an abstraction. K invites us to be aware that we are usually looking from a “centre” which names and evaluates every experience and keeps us stuck in concepts and rigid ideas about ourselves and reality. When the process of naming is understood through observation, then the mind can perceive from silence and see things as they actually are. Then there is no longer a centre apart from thought. This opens the door to the “eternal.”
There were three of us in attendance. We went back and forth from the text to group inquiry of what was read and found the explorations to be interesting and fruitful. We looked into the question of what remains when we no longer identify as a centre or separate self and felt our way into actual experience as much as possible.

In this chapter, Rupert discusses three possibilities for ourselves—(1) to be a body and a mind  (2) to be the witness of the body-mind world, or (3) to be pure Knowing—not just the witness of all experience but the substance of which it is made.

 

In today’s audio, he led us into a contemplation which focused on our actual experience, not our thoughts, feelings, beliefs or opinions. With eyes closed, we were led into deeper and deeper insights about the falsity of separateness and duality. As we explored the nature of our experience more profoundly, the labels we usually apply to it became more and more refined—until the mind itself disappeared.

 

We came to see that, when luminous empty Knowing dances in one way, it takes the shape of hearing, when it dances in another it takes the shape of thinking, feeling, sensing, seeing, etc., but it is always the same dancer—pure Knowing or consciousness. This is ultimately what Krishnamurti is saying–in his own way.

 

At the end of this contemplation, Rupert reminded us not to relate to others as separate from our Self but rather to know everyone as our Self. He concluded with a profound insight—when we stop relating with an outside world made of dead matter or mind, and relate with a world made only of the alive substance called Knowing, our experience shifts. Then the world responds in the form of beauty and others respond in the form of love.

 

Participants in our group today shared their experiences of this, captured by the following phrases—

• See what actually is
• Fall back into ourselves
• Relax and cease trying to be what we’re not
• Experience the emptiness of our common denominators
• Bask in the energy of those meditating with us
• Since I can’t detach anything from myself, I am everything, happening all at once

 

Some of us ended the afternoon consuming delicious refreshments, others finalized their observations in the Meditation Room.

Krishnamurti Victoria Event
Church of Truth
Friday, April 6, 2018

The subject of this month’s meeting was “Awareness”. Three people were present at the Church of Truth to watch a video from the “Beyond Myth and Tradition” series by Evelyn Blau featuring selections from J. Krishnamurti’s talks and interviews. The episode was entitled “Choiceless Awareness.” In various contexts K spoke of the importance of being aware of our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and motivations without evaluation or judgment, simply observing ‘what is’ rather than attempting to change it. He went into the nature of awareness and what it means to be completely attentive.

After the half-hour video we entered into a verbal and energetic sharing of insights and questions about awareness and what it actually is in our own experience. What is K pointing to, and how is it real and true for us? What are the challenges to being aware in the way described? What is the difference between the word and the thing, or no-thing? We had a delightful and satisfying dialogue, experiencing a sense of something beyond any thought and analysis. Participants read and took home a handout from the Krishnamurti book, Freedom from the Known.

Paul’s first visit to Victoria was warmly received by a very full room at the K centre. Of course his message was clear and direct, asking us to entertain the possibility that we are not our bodies or the sense of self that has been with many of us since early childhood, and that we also aren’t the ideas we have about ourselves – the projections into the future, or the recollections of the past.

What I loved, besides Paul’s absolute earnest and unabashed gritty sharing, is that he was able to break it down a bit further into a framework that seems obvious and immediate… within the field of experience right now. One of the key concepts he covered is the notion of ‘selfing’, what he describes as a verb – mimicking something defined/solid and absolute… Those in recovery circles know that the disease of addiction is closely related to chronic self-centredness…. Everything is perceived as to how it pertains to me. ‘Selfing’ is a misdirection of attention, intended to preserve the ego, the stories, and emphasising a sense of separateness.

Paul suggested that when people first notice selfing activity, they can make the common assumption that ‘I’ am selfing… I’m doing it. Later, with continued discovering, people can find their view opens to a larger field of possibility (much like an aperture on a camera can open wider). A growing conscious contact with ‘wholeness’ may reveal that “I’m not that”. I’m not this body, the mental activity, or that set of identities I’m wearing – the mother, the hard worker, the spiritual ‘attainer’… and if I’m not those ideas, what’s there? What’s prior to the sensations and coalescing concepts that seems like a self?  The part that is central and continuous to all of the passing perceptions and beliefs is the seeing, the pure seeing – without identification as the ‘see-er’.  At its core, Paul noted that our inner being is prior to all experience and beyond any description.  There were times during the talk that from my own experience, this wholeness/vastness shone through the crowded room, the words and the wind outside.  The exquisite stillness felt amplified in our gathering.

Paul did challenge us to consider that continued searching – for self-improvement, mystical experiences, spiritual attainment, even enlightenment – that these may actually reinforce the sense of a self… because our search is primarily based on the premise of ‘self’ getting something or somewhere. Of course there are many who will tell you otherwise, who offer ‘intensives’, retreats and satsangs. And Paul’s suggestion is that while many of these may be well-intentioned – even relaxing and nourishing to the body (who doesn’t love taking time out to recharge), if the assumption is that ‘you’ will get something, or that you will find a higher state, the effort will be futile and can often serve to strengthen the sense of identification as a self.

Krishnamurti also has commented on the notion of effort-based practices: “Is there a meditation that is not the ego trying to become? Is meditation conscious if every effort implies time?”

So what then?

A few years ago, while I was pondering with some anxiety, attendance of a thirty year high school reunion, some of this became clearer. Exploring this resistance, it became obvious that my resistance to going was very closely linked to a core fear of not being good enough, or not being seen as successful. When I looked a bit closer, I noted that all of the judgements that fellow alumni might have had about me had to be based solely on their ideas about who I was: fictions and projections at best. And anything that I would defend – my career status, my marital status, my weight, my looks – every single one of those were also purely concepts and ideas – mere representations of what identities I’ve adopted. I found myself laughing as I drove to work that morning – at the irony of thinking there was anything in my sense of self that wasn’t just an idea or thought. It was an initial opening of the aperture – so clear that there was nothing here to defend, uphold or promote! True being – is boundless and fearless.

Paul described with some modesty a simple sense he is travelling lighter with his seeing through the identification as a self. In part, that’s because there is less suffering if one is no longer identified with the stories and drama linked to being a ‘me’. There was a wonderful space imbued in this talk, and many great conversations in the corridors and coffee shop after the meeting with Paul… even hints of a future visit which I hope comes to fruition.