The Challenges Of Awareness, By J. Krishnamurti

Our mind, our thoughts and our knowledge are of the past. Life and its problems are in the present. We cannot solve our problems by fixing them in the framework of our past. They need fresh looking, awareness, every moment. Life constantly requires a fresh look and a sense of ongoing discovery. He says that it is a tragedy that when faced with any deep human challenge most of us submit to the authority of experts and pontiffs, rather than finding out for ourselves. All these barriers to seeing clearly (observing) what is happening in our lives call for our awareness and understanding of them.
J. Krishnamurti wants his listeners to ‘go into’, ‘explore, free from any conclusion, and prejudice’. There is no predetermined method that can solve
Concentration excludes all that is not required while attention excludes nothing. We often concentrate on our own problems, ideas and on our own world but that concentration is not objective awareness. One has to be aware. He has to be aware of everything right from his thinking, speaking and doing things. Choiceless awareness will open the door of total consciousness in which there is no conflict and no time. One must be aware of oneself neither introspectively nor analytically, but actually be aware of oneself as one is and see if it is at all possible to be entirely free for all those issues that seem to clogging the mind.
J.Krishnamurti denounces the Guru – Śişhya relationship saying that it only boosts the ego of the Guru and makes the Śişhya dependent. “The beauty of freedom is that one does not leave a mark. The eagle in his flight does not leave a mark: The scientists does. This enquiry of freedom requires both, the scientific observation and the flight of the eagle”
These are inborn mental afflictions, which beset man from birth itself and are accumulated over several past lives. These mental afflictions program a human being. Every human being carries this program inevitably. Every thought, every action, and every experience strengthens this program further. It seems man has no escape from this. Man’s ego-hood (asmitā) – acting from a centre, his likes (rāga), his dislikes (dveṣa) and his clinging to this life (ābhiniveśa) are born out of his avidyā (ignorance). Whereas JK never makes it explicit or discusses at length as to why the content of human consciousness is one common bundle full of fears, anxieties, pleasures, sorrows, every form of faith, love, compassion, uncertainty, insecurity, utter despair of loneliness, jealousy, greed, envy, sufferings, etc, the Sāṃkhya metaphysics (on which Yoga is based) clearly states that the programming and strengthening of this programming with each lifetime is grounded in the original cause of avidyā. This ignorance (‘contrary knowledge’ according to Patañjali) is in simple terms due to not recognizing the true nature of one