Understanding Self from teachings of J Krishnamurti

Jidu Krishnmurti had explained about Self through his writings and lectures and advised interested truth seekers to realise self not through past religious dogmas and rituals but through our daily experiences.

In our daily experiences there is an experiencer and the things he experiences. In all our experiences observer and the observed are always present. 

Krishnmurti says that, "observer is the observed."

If one understands how the observer is observed, then through that realisation he will surely understand the real nature of self. 

We all understand our life through a series of experiences. So to realise the self, the observer, we must understand each and every stage of our experience, the observed.

In any life experience, first our sense organs capture images of the experience, they forward those images to the brain, and the brain stores all images from sense organs into the memory. To make an announcement about the experience, there arises a response from memory. The responses of the memory are the series of thoughts. One thought separates itself from other thoughts and acts as an observer. This is the fundamental split between our thoughts as observer and the observed. The thought of an announcer / observer is our real I, is our real Me. The response of the memory is our real self. After announcing about the experience, 'I thought' could dissolve itself but he wants to continue. To remain alive, 'I thought' kept chattering all the time, creating various concepts and ideas. All the thoughts, ideas and concepts created by 'I thought' becomes our human consciousness. 

The response of memory is our I, the self and the things he observes is always from images stored in memory, hence the observer is memory and the observed is also memory, hence they both are one. 

There is always some time delay between actual experience by senses and the response from our memory in the form of I thought. So I and all his experiences are not actual but always in the past. That means our I and all his thoughts, ideas and concepts are always part of memory, hence always in the past, I itself can never experience reality or our living life. Life is always live and I is always in the past. I can never experience actual life so he keeps creating illusory concepts about life, in doing so he remains alive through his concepts. 

We can easily understand this self realisation process by an example of River and bridge. River is a creation of Nature and flows as per law of nature. We humans, means actually our 'I thought' has created bridges to cross the river. There is some distance between river and the bridge. Those who use bridge will never understand what actually river is. Only those who are interested will abandon bridges to come in direct contact with live rivers. Bridge will not allow us to live with actual river because then his importance will be vanished. To remain a major attraction of our life, more and more bridges will be created and will be maintained. And In actuality, as river can not think so she do not know about us and our bridges. River will flow either silently or violently as per law of nature and not as per our desires and ambitions.