Consciousness — The Totality of Life — Awareness

WHEN WE BECOME aware of our conditioning we will understand the whole of our
consciousness. Consciousness is the total ield in which thought functions and
relationships exist. All motives, intentions, desires, pleasures, fears, inspirations,
longings, hopes, sorrows, joys are in that ield. But we have come to divide this
consciousness into the active and the dormant, the upper and lower levels — that is,
all the daily thoughts, feelings and activities on the surface and below them the so-
called subconscious, the things with which we are not familiar, which express
themselves occasionally through certain intimations, intuitions and dreams.
We are occupied with one little corner of consciousness which is most of our life;
the rest, which we call the subconscious, with all its motives, its fears, its racial and
inherited qualities, we do not even know how to get into. Is there such a thing as the
subconscious at all? We use that word very freely. We have accepted that there is such
a thing and all the phrases and jargon of the analysts and psychologists have seeped
into the language; but is there such a thing? And why is it that we give such
extraordinary importance to it? It may be as trivial and stupid as the conscious mind
— as narrow, bigoted, conditioned, anxious and tawdry.
So is it possible to be totally aware of the whole ield of consciousness and not
merely a part, a fragment, of it? If we are able to be aware of the totality, then we are
functioning all the time with our total attention, not partial attention. This is
important to understand because when we are being totally aware of the whole ield
of consciousness there is no friction. It is only when we divide consciousness, which
is all thought, feeling and action, into different levels that there is friction.
We live in fragments. We are one thing at the of ice, another at home; we talk
about democracy and in our heart we are autocratic; we talk about loving our
neighbours, yet kill him with competition; there is one part of us working, looking,
independently of the other. Are we aware of this fragmentary existence in our sel ?
And is it possible for a brain that has broken up its own functioning, its own thinking,
into fragments — is it possible for such a brain to be aware of the whole ield? Is it
possible to look at the whole of consciousness completely, totally, which means to be
a total human being?
If, in order to try to understand the whole structure of the ‘me’, the self, with all its
extraordinary complexity, we go step by step, uncovering layer by layer, examining
every thought, feeling and motive, we will get caught up in the analytical process
which may take you weeks, months, years — and when we admit time into the process
of understanding our self, we must allow for every form of distortion because the self
is a complex entity, moving, living, struggling, wanting, denying, with pressures and
stresses and influences of all sorts continually at work on it. So we will discover for
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ourselves that this is not the way; we will understand that the only way to look at our
self is totally, immediately, without time; and we can see the totality of our self only
when the mind is not fragmented. What we see in totality is the truth.
Now can we do that? Most of us cannot because most of us have never approached
the problem so seriously, because we have never really looked at ourselves. Never. We
blame others, we explain things away or we are frightened to look. But when we look
totally, we will give our whole attention, our whole being, everything of ourself, our
eyes, our ears, our nerves; we will attend with complete self-abandonment, and then
there is no room for fear, no room for contradiction, and therefore no conflict.
Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion;
attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. But most of us are not aware,
not only of what we are discussing, but of our environment, the colours around us,
the people, the shape of the trees, the clouds, the movement of water. Perhaps it is
because we are so concerned with ourselves, with our own petty little problems, our
own ideas, our own pleasures, pursuits and ambitions that we are not objectively
aware. And yet we talk a great deal about awareness. Once in India I was travelling in
a car. There was a chauffeur driving and I was sitting beside him. There were three
gentlemen behind discussing awareness very intently and asking me questions about
awareness, and unfortunately at that moment the driver was looking somewhere else
and he ran over a goat, and the three gentlemen were still discussing awareness —
totally unaware that they had run over a goat.
And with most of us it is the same. We are not aware of outward things or of
inward things. If we want to understand the beauty of a bird, a fly, or a leaf, or a
person with all his complexities, we have to give our whole attention which is
awareness. And we can give our whole attention only when you care, which means
that we really love to understand — then we give our whole heart and mind to ind
out.
Such awareness is like living with a snake in the room; you watch its every
movement, you are very, very sensitive to the slightest sound it makes. Such a state of
attention is total energy; in such awareness the totality of yourself is revealed in an
instant.
When we have looked at yourself so deeply we can go much deeper. When we use
the word ‘deeper’ we are not being comparative. We think in comparisons — deep and
shallow, happy and unhappy. We are always measuring, comparing. Now is there such
a state as the shallow and the deep in onesel ? When I say, ‘My mind is shallow, petty,
narrow, limited’, how do I know all these things? Because I have compared my mind
with your mind which is brighter, has more capacity, is more intelligent and alert. Do
I know my pettiness without comparison? When I am hungry, I do not compare that
hunger with yesterday’s hunger. Yesterday’s hunger is an idea, a memory.
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 If I am all the time measuring myself against you, struggling to be like you, then I
am denying what I am myself. Therefore I am creating an illusion. When I have
understood that comparison in any form leads only to greater illusion and greater
misery, just as when I analyse myself, add to my knowledge of myself bit by bit, or
identify myself with something outside myself, whether it be the State, a saviour or an
ideology — when I understand that all such processes lead only to greater conformity
and therefore greater conflict — when I see all this I put it completely away. Then my
mind is no longer seeking. It is very important to understand this. Then my mind is
no longer groping, searching, questioning. This does not mean that my mind is
satis ied with things as they are, but such a mind has no illusion. Such a mind can
then move in a totally different dimension. The dimension in which we usually live,
the life of every day which is pain, pleasure and fear, has conditioned the mind,
limited the nature of the mind, and when that pain, pleasure and fear have gone
(which does not mean that you no longer have joy: joy is something entirely different
from pleasure) — then the mind functions in a different dimension in which there is
no conflict, no sense of ‘otherness’.
Verbally we can go only so far: what lies beyond cannot be put into words because
the word is not the thing. Up to now we can describe, explain, but no words or
explanations can open the door. What will open the door is daily awareness and
attention — awareness of how we speak, what we say, how we walk, what we think. It
is like cleaning a room and keeping it in order. Keeping the room in order is
important in one sense but totally unimportant in another. There must be order in
the room but order will not open the door or the window. What will open the door is
not your volition or desire. We cannot possibly invite the other. All that one can do is
to keep the room in order, which is to be virtuous for itself, not for what it will bring.
To be sane, rational, orderly. Then perhaps, if you are lucky, the window will open
and the breeze will come in. Or it may not. It depends on the state of our mind. And
that state of mind can be understood only by oneself, by watching it and never trying
to shape it, never taking sides, never opposing, never agreeing, never justifying, never
condemning, never judging — which means watching it without any choice. And out
of this choiceless awareness perhaps the door will open and we will know what that
dimension is in which there is no conflict and no time.
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