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Part I appeared in Volume XV, No. 2. Part III will appear in Volume XVI, No. 2
Awareness, or being aware, is a crucial notion in my thinking and one on which there is an extensive literature, particularly in the East. However, I will quote mainly from Krishnamurti, a Hindu educated in the West, and Watts, an American Orientalist.
To them, L. L. Whyte may help us to make the transition. “Unitary thought rejects the dualistic implication of the conception of consciousness, and suggests that the valuable element in it is the reference to a relation of attention between the organism and a particular external or internal stimulus…. Attention to it (‘a stimulus’) is always transient. Nothing ever remains continuously in consciousness…. It is therefore wrong to isolate those transient moments of attention to particular forms, to endow them with a special metaphysical status as a ‘state of consciousness’ and then to ascribe to consciousness the supreme directing role in behavior…. Attention is an essential prior condition to adaptation to any novel stimulus…. Attention is only a transitory focusing of the extended system of processes which guide behavior. It is an inherent weakness of subjective thought that it must misconceive and exaggerate the role of attention.”49 Whyte indicates how unitary thought can help us transcend spurious dualisms in general, and specifically in the notion of consciousness (consciousness-unconsciousness) to which a permanent status is attributed, functioning as though it held a directive capacity. He narrows our focus to attention, which is transitory. And I add that the process of attending is but one aspect of being aware.
I shall start my comments on awareness with Krishnamurti because Watts follows him closely. “The word ‘awareness’ is used in the sense given it by J. Krishnamurti, whose writings discuss this theme with extraordinary perception.”50 Some comments about their styles of writing which manifest their philosophical premises are essen