Awareness takes place when one observes…

You know, concentration is effort: focusing upon a particular page, an idea, image, symbol, and so on and so on. Concentration is a process of exclusion. You tell a student, ‘Don’t look out of the window; pay attention to the book.’ He wants to look out, but he forces himself to look, look at the page; so there is a conflict. This constant effort to concentrate is a process of exclusion, which has nothing to do with awareness. Awareness takes place when one observes—you can do it; everybody can do it—observes not only what is the outer, the tree, what people say, what one thinks, and so on, outwardly, but also inwardly to be aware without choice, just to observe without choosing. For when you choose, when choice takes place, only then is there confusion, not when there is clarity.

J Krishnamurthy