The Antibody Network ·The Clearing
Reading 4 of 5 Who Is Asking

No one watching

Krishnamurti says the observer and the observed are not two, and that watching for it makes it vanish.

The reading — J. Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom (1954) / various talks

The Observer Is the Observed

When you observe a cloud, there is the observer and the thing observed, the cloud. But is the observer different from the cloud? He is not, because without the cloud there is no observer. Without the mountain, without the tree, without that person, there is no ‘you.’ So the observer is the observed.

The moment you have the idea that you are aware, that you are practicing awareness, awareness ceases. The very watching for awareness destroys awareness.

Truth is a pathless land. A man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation — not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

The framing

Without the mountain, without the tree, without that person, there is no ‘you.’ So the observer is the observed.

This is the most slippery reading of the course and it is meant to be. Krishnamurti is making the same move as Ramana, from the other side. Ramana said turn and look at the looker. Krishnamurti says: when you look at a cloud, is the looker separate from the cloud? Take the cloud away and where is the one who was watching it? The observer, he says, is made of what it observes.

Then the warning, which is the useful part. The very watching for awareness destroys awareness. The moment you notice yourself being aware, and feel a little proud, a new observer has stepped in behind the first one. Do not chase it. That regress is the ego reassembling itself out of the pieces. Just read the cloud sentence and let it stand.

Carry with you
Catch yourself once today being aware of being aware. Who stepped in?