Krishnamurti’s statement ‘the observer is the observed’ baffled me for many years, and still I have not fully accepted it, or come to terms with its implications. Have you?
But I think what he meant and was describing, and that we are terrified to admit, is that ‘we are the world, and the world is us’. Therefore, there is nothing we can change about it.
The observer, which is our mind, is a collection of the past observations we have made, the conditionings which are now largely unconscious in us. I found this video below from Saanen 1981 to be refreshingly direct, in which he makes several statements of what actually is the ‘truth’. Like all true spiritual teachings, I believe the truth is simple, and what K is describing is so, however our minds fight to find the complexity in it, and failing to do so, abandon it as below our intellect. To look directly at what K is saying seems to me to take great courage, as the implications of of doing so are to question the foundation which our mind (since there is only one) is made of and how it operates. To see that it is not capable of overcoming its problems, is to begin to distance from it. I believe that to distance ourselves from the mind that we have created, is likely the greatest fear the human being is capable of. A Course in Miracles alludes to this fear in many places, but advises that we do not have to cross this wilderness ourselves, nor can we. K also states that we cannot seek the truth, the truth will come to us when we are ready for it. In the movie below is a central theme to becoming aware of ourselves, and as this awareness comes from an area beyond the thinking mind it is already calling this other presence. Or that’s my own clumsy way of describing it to myself. I hope this short talk is of value to you.
This is not something to memorize. It is something to do.
I hope K will forgive me for using all these cat images.
