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Meditation on Observer and Observed


Picture Source: www.kfoundation.org

Universe is a question? How does it accomplish as a function to exist? Whether it reveals in me or particularity as a fragment cannot grasp the totality? What is time? A movement of thought, a function, or having any substantive value at all? I find a penetrative discussion on these themes by two philosophers, Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm. Krishnamurti asked to observe the structure and nature of thoughts, its movements, to grasp the thinker or observer, as well as thought itself. He finds that observer is observed and thinker is a sum of thoughts. There is no possibility of psychological time unless there is a movement of thought. Time is nothing but movement. Once thought is observed as a material process, there appears to be a fundamental change in the perception of reality. It's like "awareness is watching awareness", or thought is observing thoughts. David Bohm substantiates this  theme in these words:

"We already had this point that the observer cannot be separated from the observed. In fact, whenever you observe, the thing observed is changed because it cannot by this interaction be reduced below a certain level. Therefore, you have the transformation of the object observed in the act of observation. I had already noted the similarity to consciousness: that if you try to observe your thought in any detail, the whole train of thought changes. That is clear. So therefore you cannot have the separation of the observer and the observed in consciousness".

In the process of observing thoughts, mind becomes still, and in its stillness, mind connects to the universal reality, the infinite energies, in form of love and compassion. That is what J. Krishnamurti referred as "intelligence". In that state, there is total awareness about what is happening inside mind and outside. According to David Bohm:

"I felt that there was a parallel between what is in consciousness and what is in matter in general, and I felt movement was also a question, that the movement that you see outside, you feel inside. In general therefore, I felt that we directly apprehended the nature of reality in our own being".

In fact, we waste our energies in creating and imposing images about who we are. In that sense, identities are conditioned and fragmentary. Once we are aware about its limitation, its state of confusion, there appears to be no process of being judgmental, but to proceed for an inquiry. In that process, one, who prefers to listen authority, takes help of any book, blocks the possibility to have an inquiry, to know what's happening here and now? Inquiry begins with watching everything, including our own thought process, its structure and functioning, and to accept the limitations of our all conditioned thoughts. Life as sacred reveals to those minds only, who find no craving for psychological security, a fear of loosing something in future, and a fear of projection. Once thought is carefully watched, it starts loosing its vitality as a supreme condition of being and time. Then mind moves into a territory of unknown, fresh, vital. And what's bliss if it doesn't transcend a mechanical life of repeating self in fear of loosing what have been acquired hitherto? The projection of becoming is our limit condition. Only Being is real if thought as a movement of past experiences does not shapes our observation. In words of J. Krishnamurti, 

"Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophic 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 and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection".

The eternal possibility of watching things as it is could be achieved in the state of no being, no time, no movement of thought, but being there, feeling the freshness of love and compassion. Being one as a Universal mind.

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