On J.Krishnamurti: Unbecoming Unaware

Acharya Prashant
8 min readSep 25, 2019

Listener: Acharya Ji, what does J. Krishnamurti mean when he says “Become deeply aware”.

Acharya Prashant: It is said, become deeply aware.

Now, we already live in problems and challenges. We already live in incompleteness. We already live in the quest to achieve something, to become something. When it is said, become deeply aware, we add one more item, to our list of problems. And that item now is?

L: Awareness.

AP: Awareness. Oh, there is so much to do and achieve and the next item is awareness. The words of a wise man must be read with wisdom, with empathy. One must be alert, whether, one is able to, cross over his personal ways of interpreting. Words might mislead.

There is nothing called becoming aware.

Read it as — unbecoming unaware.

We have become unaware. Awareness is, over awareness, there is a shroud of illusionary unawareness. Over the innate awareness, there is a cloud of assumed unawareness. The aware core is shrouded by, assumed unawareness which has no substance. There is no fact in that unawareness. You just have to see that there is no fact, in your assertion, that there exists unawareness. So, you unbecome, unaware.

You cannot become aware. Awareness is not something that you can achieve or become or reach.

It is.

Are you getting it? Now, you see, how driven and tense you feel, when the problem of awareness confronts you? The problem of awareness. Awareness means, that in any given situation, even in the worst of situations, even in the most challenging of situations, you still have the capacity, the capability, the right, to understand. That is what is meant by saying that the awareness always is.

Even when the world is overwhelming you, still it is not mandatory that you will succumb. This not mandatory-ness implies an unconditional awareness, that need not be reached. An awareness, that is inviolable. No penetration, can ever, dent it. And is it not something, that you already know?

Even in the moment of your death, you can be still, composed, calm; that is what is meant by the inviolable certainty of awareness.

That stillness is