Over the last six months I’ve been deeply intrigued by the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti. He was not at all the type of spiritual guru many people might assume. He firmly rejected any efforts to paint him as such (he rejected the notion of being a guru, and also of having followers). In actuality, his teachings were rooted in an almost supernatural understanding of human psychology, and he explored the nature of self and thought in a way that is stunningly intelligent and lucid. On the surface, his observations can come across as very intellectual, and yet what he was doing is pointing us beyond the realm of words and thought to a place of true freedom. Many of his concepts are actually quite simple, such as his explanations of the relationship between self and society. Those concepts that are more complicated are revealed as being quite sublime once they have begun to find their way into the deeper layers of the psyche. One of Krishnamurti’s key observations is that “the observer is the observed”. This can also be interpreted as “the thinker is the thought”. He asserted that thinking and the entity perceived as thethinker are in actuality a unitary process. And this makes perfect sense to me, although my understanding is still limited to the realm of intellectual thought. Really, there is only thought occurring in the field of awareness, and the entity we understand as being the thinker- the self- is no more than a defined sense we develop as a result of conscious and subconscious processes that draw on the accumulated knowledge of our past experiences. Even as we project this self onto our experience as it is unfolding in the present, we are simply making sense of the present by juxtaposing it with knowledge from the past. That knowledge that we are using to interpret the present is always extremely limited, even being rooted in a deep form of existential ignorance, and so we are perceiving our experience in a very limited and disconnected way. In other words, we are living in our limited understanding of the past as it relates to the present, and that includes the way we perceive ourselves. This would be fine if it did not also lead to so much conflict in our personal lives, and also on a global societal level. It can be argued that all conflict, as it manifests both personally and socially, is the result of this fragmented way of existing. We may sometimes break through this barrier to the present moment, in moments when our egos aren’t being triggered by external objects or events. Perhaps in those moments when we truly feel we are one with nature then we may be achieving a less distorted way of being. Personally, I have a great deal of affinity for the ocean and the forest, and when I’m in nature I notice that I’m not necessarily relating to my surroundings through the lens of the “I”. I have often felt that the sights and sounds of the ocean inhabit my being in a way that frees me from the burdens of my self, of my ego. I think that might be a glimpse of a different way of being. It’s much harder to achieve and maintain this state in a world of other “I’s”, subconsciously working at substantiating and perpetuating themselves as individuals in ways that are often competitive, superficial and passively aggressive. With the right understanding, with the right insight, I wonder if it might be possible to live without always relating to our experiences with the “I” at the centre, possibly freeing ourselves from the tension and anxiety of the constant state of inner reaction that now dominates most of our lives. If only we could truly see that this transient “I” that we are always defending and striving to nurture and reinforce is not at all what we think it is- that we are infinitely more sublime and essential than that- I wonder if we might wake up and sigh a sigh of relief that could be felt by all humankind.
