Are You The Omnidirectional Knower?
Last night, a teacher said a few words that fused and crystalized the gaps in my understanding.
I am the omnidirectional Knower.
Jiddu Krishnamurti had said,
"So consciousness, which includes both the conscious and the unconscious, is like a vortex which you are observing, but not as something apart from yourself.
You are that vortex. You are the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed; there are not two different states." - Selection of Public Talk 5 Saanen, Switzerland - 16 July 1963
Jiddu says, 'you are the vortex.'
I can conceive of this, after all, in between of all of the people I have been in my life, I am.
You are.
Jiddu here is talking about high-level teaching, so it's no surprise that it sounds confusing. The concept is difficult to speak of, but it is easy to represent in a picture.
The knower and the known enter into the scene at the same time, and depart the scene at the same time.
The thinker and the thought arise together, and fall away together.
Jiddu is saying, you are simultaneously the Knower and the Known.
Yes, it does go deeper than that.
From the more secular Theravada branch of Buddhism, Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach had mentioned meditating on the Knower.
Tara writes,
“I asked myself, “Who is aware right now?”
I was aware only of awareness: There was no “self” to locate.
There was no entity that was failing, no self that was fearful and distraught, no foothold for self-doubt.
While streams of sensations and emotions were moving through my body and mind, there was no one behind the scenes who possessed them or controlled them.
I could find only the endless space of awareness—formless, open, knowing.”
- Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha
Tara writes of this present experience of vast, endless awareness, all-encompassing, and with it, the sense of knowing.
Jack speaks of this "Knower,"
"Your spacious mind is the natural awareness that knows and accommodates everything.
My meditation teacher in the forests of Thailand, Ajahn Chah, called it the “One Who Knows.”
He said this is the original nature of mind, the silent witness, spacious consciousness.
His instructions were simple: Become witness to it all, the person with perspective, the One Who Knows.
“All the world’s a stage,” wrote Shakespeare. Sometimes you get caught in the plot. But remember, you are also the audience. Take a breath. Look around. Become a loving witness to it all, the spacious awareness, the One Who Knows.
..In the midst of your crises, you will begin to sense a witnessing consciousness, a wise presence inside of you, the One Who Knows.. Even in the.. most catastrophic challenges and fears, the One Who Knows in you remains calm and clear. It already accepts whatever is going on.. It sees beyond the immediate situation to something much larger..
But how can we find this “One Who Knows” in the midst of our most overwhelming difficulties? Go to the mirror. Look at your body. You will see someone who looks older than you looked several years ago, though inside you don’t feel any older. This is because it is only your body that has aged. The timeless awareness through which you see your body is the One Who Knows. Your body is only a temporary vessel for this awareness. It is a temporary and impermanent container for the undying consciousness of the One Who Knows.
When we rest in the One Who Knows, time drops away, self drops away, the one who suffers is released. We are simply the awareness of it all.
As the One Who Knows, witness it all, let loving awareness make room for everything: boredom and excitement, fear and trust, pleasure and pain, birth and death.
Return again and again to loving awareness, come home to the One Who Knows, the wise and gracious heart that is your true home.
-- Article - Jack Kornfield – Awaken the One Who Knows
In my opinion, Jack is introducing the aspect of oneself that is the Knower. At least, that is how I perceive the information is being presented.
But who is the knower? And isn't there more than this? If you notice, there is nothing deeper than this question, what is that? Who am I?
This is and will always be the fundamental question of my search, and no answer will satisfy this. I have to know that it is so. If I am something, then I must experience without doubt that I am that, I must look and see that I am that, and it must be so absolutely. I cannot know who or what I am unless there is absolutely no possibility of it being otherwise. Until then, who am I is not known.
To misquote and expand upon Gurdjieff;
To know is not enough. I want to feel that I know. I want to know why I know.
If you tell me that I am God, I should kill you. If I am God, then I should know it fully.
To Know that there is a Knower is not enough. Who is the Knower?
And what about the rest?
Osho spoke of the seer and and the scene in maybe hundreds of quotes, but just one here:
"The Creator is the Creation. The world and God are not two things. The Creation is the Creator. It is not like a painter. A painter creates a painting. The moment the painting is created there arc two things, the painter and the painting. The Creation is like a dancer, where the dance and the dancer are one." -Osho
Here we've zoomed out the world and are now looking at two parts.
One Creator. One Creation.
If you are, if you exist, as the creation, you must be the whole of creation.
It cannot be otherwise. The creation cannot be separated from itself. It is what it is.
And because the seen and the seer arise together:
If you are the creation, you are too the creator. These too cannot be separated from each other.
You can picture this:
A perfect, unchanging Creator, and a changing Creation.
Alan Watts said, "You Are It."
There are two words printed and repeated through history.
Know Thyself.
Know Thyself.
If I am That, then I should know it.
I should come to know it.
If I am That, I should come to know myself.