J. Krishnamurti Online, September 14, 2015

Questioner: How is one to empty the past?

Krishnamurti: You cannot. You empty the past totally when there is no observer. It is the observer who is creating the past; it is the observer who says, ‘I must do something about it in terms of time.’ This is most important. It is very important to understand, when you look at a tree, that there is the tree and there is also you, the observer, looking at it. You who are looking at it have knowledge about that tree. You know what species, what colour, what shape, what kind it is, whether it is good. You have knowledge of it, so you are looking at it as an observer who is full of knowledge about it, as you look at your wife or husband with the knowledge of the past, with all the hurts and all the pleasures.

You are always looking with both the observer and the thing observed present, two different states. You never look at a tree; you are always looking with the knowledge of the tree. This is very simple. To look at another -wife, husband, friend- demands that you look with a fresh mind; otherwise you cannot see. If you look with the past, with pleasure, with pain, with anxiety, with what he or she has said to you, that remains; and with all that, through all that, you look. That is the observer. If you can look at a tree or a flower or another human being without the observer, a totally different action takes place.

The Collected Works, Vol. XVI,200,Choiceless Awareness