My mother and father, who met at a Theosophical meeting in Vancouver, introduced me to some of the rudimentary teachings of Krishnamurti when I was very small. I was born into a vegetarian household of parents who believed in reincarnation and karma. When I was very young, I was taken to Orcas Island to attend Camp Indralaya. My family returned to this American Theosophical camp twice, when I was older. My father and mother kept a large garden, including vegetable and fruit, and it was always difficult to leave this in the summer as much of it had to be bottled or frozen for the winter, so it was a rarity to go away during the holidays, even to Indralaya. A couple of years ago, I attended an Indralaya summer camp and it was so like it was when I was thirteen that it was as if time had stood still for both of us. I will be returning again at the beginning of June for a healing workshop.
Anyway, I have been listening to Adyashanti throughout today. While I was cooking dinner for my Self, I tuned into a conversation between Adya and a Satsang attendee about the observer and the observed. As I tried to get an idea of what it must be like to be the oberver and the observed at the same time, I realized with a start that this might be exactly what I was experiencing last Wednesday when I had a sudden feeling of what it was like to be my mother receiving what I was giving her, and on an earlier occasion that weird little dialogue with the depth of my being about small talk. Could it be that I am becoming the observed as well as the observer? Here is a quote from Krishnamurti:
"Q: Is there a difference between the observer and the observed?
We are so conditioned, so heavily burdened with the past, with all our knowledge, information how can the mind be spontaneous? Can the mind observe its activity without prejudice, which means without images?
When there is a division between the observer and the observed there is conflict but when the observer is the
observed there is no control, no suppression. The self comes to an end. Duality comes to an end. Conflict comes to an end.
This is the greatest meditation to come upon this extraordinary thing for the mind to discover for itself the observer is the observed."
When Adya was saying that the observer is the observed, I immediately thought of the double-slit experiment. I have often contemplated the observer and how it affects what it sees. I have tried to personalize this in order to understand it. In other words, I tried to figure out how by observing, I am affecting what I see. I haven't come up with any answers yet. All I know is that by looking, I am supposedly collapsing what I am looking at into one. To me, the word observe implies looking, and I was coming at this problem from that perspective. What I experienced in the mall when I was thinking about small talk, and with my mother in the restaurant, was a perception of energy responding to my energy. I think that for the first time, I experienced true empathy. I consider my Self to be an empathetic person, but usually when I am empathetic it is because I have actively imagined what I would feel like if I were "in the other person's shoes." In this new way of being empathetic, the shift to the other person's perspective happened without me doing anything, and I experienced their energy and what they were actually getting out of the interaction, rather than a projection of my own thoughts and feelings onto the other person.
An interesting footnote and something that I will have to attempt to monitor: when I worked as a cashier at Zellers, I found out that I am somewhat psychic and could intuit unknown details about many of my customers which sometimes spooked both them and me. (My son and his paramour have lately been witness to my ability, so I think it must be for real.) What is interesting about the intuitive hits I was scoring in Zellers is that I tended to intuit children and the elderly, and rarely people of the age to be involved in the workforce. Anyway and my point is that if I am beginning to experience being the observer and the observed at the same time, I am curious to know if it is more likely that I will experience this with the elderly and young, or will it work with everybody, equally.
Namaste
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